Ian Searle

Vice-Chairman

The Third Age  Trust

See his newsletter below:

 

The Third Age Trust

The trust maintains a national website, which is a mine of useful information, topics and contacts and members are commended to take a look and make themselves familiar with the content.  The URL is:  www.u3a.org.uk

On the home page is a 'Members Only' section, which provides a wide selection of topics and subjects of interest to U3A members.  To access this, all U3A members are encouraged to register, which may be done on-line, to provide ready access to the content of this section of the website.  Ensure you enter 'Carrick' on the Group line and you'll be granted access without delay!

This extract, from the national website, summarises the Trust's Mission Statement :

             700 U3As and 207014 members sharing learning experiences

U3A Home Page Image 

 
The Third Age Trust is the national representative body for the Universities of Third Age (U3As) in the UK.  U3As are self-help, self-managed lifelong learning co-operatives for older people no longer in full time work, providing opportunities for their members to share learning experiences in a wide range of interest groups and to pursue learning not for qualifications, but for fun.
 
The Aims of the Third Age Trust are:

1. To encourage and enable older people no longer in full-time paid employment to help each other to share their knowledge, skills, interests and experience

2. To demonstrate the benefits and enjoyment to be gained and the new horizons to be discovered in learning throughout life

3. To celebrate the capabilities and potential of older people and their value to society

4. To make Universities of the Third Age (U3As) accessible to all older people

5. To encourage the establishment of U3As in every part of the country where conditions are suitable and to support and collaborate with them

The Objectives of the Third Age Trust are to:

1. Provide national support to the Universities of the Third Age in the UK

2. Provide support and advice to potential new member U3As and seek to start new groups in areas where the U3A movement is under represented

3. Raise the profile of the movement both nationally and internationally

 

 

 

An update from the Third Age Trust from Ian Searle - Vice Chairman

A word of thanks to start with to the U3A Carrick committee who kindly agreed to nominate me for a third term as Vice Chairman of the Trust. All being well, I may be asking you to nominate me for the chairmanship next year, assuming I don’t get cold feet or tire of the travelling.

At the AGM in Swansea there were a number of new trustees as well as a new Vice-Chairman to work alongside me. That is Barbara Lewis, an energetic American, who has worked very hard on publicity up to now but her brief is now a lot wider than that, as she shares with me the chairmanship of a dozen sub-committees on the Standing Committee for Education. The realignment of our Regions to coincide with the government Regions (plus Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland) has involved the election of a further six new trustees as the former ones came to the end of their term of office. You may imagine this creates challenges: this week sees me travelling up to the National Office in Bromley to assist the Chairman in a second batch of ‘inductions’ for the newcomers. This is a serious business: they each are given a pack of information, pages of stuff, which not only sets out their responsibilities as Trustees but also their responsibilities as Directors of a Company of Limited Liability. The annual turnover of the Third Age Trust is fast approaching one million pounds, so this is not a simple, amateur club, this is serious business.

It is very hard to make what we do clear and even harder to make it interesting. With 700 U3As in the UK as from this month, with over 207 000 individual members, we are hard pressed to meet many demands that are put on us to help and support everyone in so many different ways. In the "Directory of Services available from the Trust" which I drafted many months ago and which has since been refined, printed and distributed to all U3As, we list the range of services available.  In my current capacity I tend to get involved in many of them, often because they are supervised by the Standing Committee for Education.

I seldom get as deeply involved in any one of them as I am at present with the Online Courses: by a series of chances I have ended up tutoring a new online course which is a literary criticism kind of course, dealing with two modern novels. Last week I dealt with sixteen submissions of between three and seven pages each, reading, commenting and returning the work individually to the writers in question, a job which took me about 12 hours or more.  This week I start all over again with the second of eight such Units. All over the country my colleagues are equally busy.

From time to time my travels take me not only to London (and Bromley), but to other U3As and other Regional groups. One recently was held in Taunton.  Convened by Mike Long, the National Education and Development Officer, this meeting was called principally for new ‘Education and Development Contacts’ who will work with the various Neighbourhood Groups. One such is Dave Neale, who is the Contact for West Cornwall, so stand by for news of his new role. At the end of the month I am also driving up to Chew Valley ( Somerset, just this side of Bristol ) where I shall share the morning with an Open University tutor and we shall between us spark off a Regional Study Day discussion about how older people learn.

Elsewhere, other colleagues are beavering away preparing for next year’s Summer Schools, Shared Learning Projects, consultation meetings for U3As on the subject of the Role of Groups Coordinators, a special Retirement Show in Glasgow, plans for a national survey of members to follow up those made in 2001-2003, work with the Department of Innovation Universities and Skills aimed at help with the training of informal learning practitioners, work on the U3A News and Sources, possible research projects, the development of yet more new U3As, a whole range of study days, lecture days and combined activities, some with WEA or the OU, and special lectures in London and Wales principally on Science and Environmental topics, and next year’s Conference in Edinburgh.

On the last subject we are in something of a quandary: attendance at the National Conference is generally rather poor and we want to try to boost it. The problem is that for individuals who attend at their own expense the cost is a disincentive at nearly £300 plus travel. Everyone who manages to attend invariably says what a fantastic opportunity it is to talk to lots of people with similar interests and differing experiences, but the cost remains a barrier.  Why can’t U3As fund either in full, or in part, at least one delegate?  The delegate in question could not only carry the vote(s) to the AGM but could be expected to report back on the many excellent discussions and lectures that take place. It certainly re-enthuses those who attend.  So, Carrick, how about stumping up for one of your committee members to spend three days in Edinburgh next September?  The reserves would easily support it.

Ian Searle, 18th October