Membership Update

Dear Members and Friends,

Hello from a wintry Maidenhead. I hope the cold is not proving too difficult for you yet. I know some areas of the UK have been forecast snow over the next few days, so it seems to me to be the ideal time to begin hibernating!

It has been a few months since my last post, so I thought it was about time I updated you on what has been going on in Membership recently.

I am sure you are all aware that Sarah, our Membership Assistant, left us at the beginning of September to travel. She chose to visit numerous South American countries, which I am sure they are all as great as they looked! We miss her greatly, but wish her well for her future and her travels.

Emma Nelson joined us as Sarah’s replacement in August. It seems as though she has been here for such a long time already, as she has settled in so well. I am sure some of you would have had the opportunity to speak to her too.

We have been and are remaining to be very busy, with lots of events to attend, and numerous studies and focus groups being run at the moment, and also the build up to Christmas 2010, which has proven to be a busy time for us all.

To name a few, I attended the Naidex exhibition in September, the Day to Day living with RA event in October, the Can You Feel My Pain road show also in October, and the SSR conference at the end of October in Aberdeen. So as you can see it has been a hectic few weeks.

Emma and I were also invited to attend the NRAS group in Newport, Shropshire recently, which was a very good meeting, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a great opportunity to meet some of our members, and to hear their points of view on a lot of topics.

It doesn’t end there. We both have other events to attend before the Christmas break, and so will be busy until the end of 2010.

Membership is running well. We are increasing our numbers on a weekly basis, so we are pleased that we are still managing to reach and help more people with RA. Thank you to all of our members that recommend our services to others. We couldn’t do it without you.

Well, I wanted to wish you all an early, but very happy and restful Christmas from all here in the membership team at NRAS, and hope that 2011 is a good year for you all.

Best wishes

Sally