2023 Round Up
As we move from year to year, this is where you'll find older news and articles. The current year's news will be on the Home page.
Early in 2023, we took the decision to formalize the group and seek funding that would allow us to take it from a simple, fortnightly breakfast club into one where we could offer our members more of an experience. We wanted to give them a little adventure, foster new friendships and maybe even invoke a spirit of camaraderie that some of our older members were obviously missing.
By the end of February and after a very successful first outing to J&M Murdoch's Transport Museum, we were keen to get things underway.
Neilston Juniors Football Club offered us accommodation for meetings so we moved to Brig O'Lea Park in mid-March. We then elected a board, set up a WhatsApp group so we could all keep in touch, started writing our constitution and began the process of getting ourselves a bank account.
By the end of March, we were called the Neilston Men's Group and had our group constitution set up. We also received a very generous donation from the Neilston Knit & Natter group from the proceeds from one of their sales of goods.
So, we had a few more successful outings and by mid-May, our bank account was up and running and we'd set up an online presence and email address for the group. That would let us start applying for community funding so things were going well, so well that we felt we could allow the group to grow a bit.
We'd been made very welcome by the Farmer's Boys and we thank them greatly for coming to our aid at a time of need but more members meant we needed a bigger meeting space and, when Neilston Parish Church offered us a slot on a free trial basis at the end of May, we moved our meetings to the Parish Church Halls in June.
We started the process of applying for funding from Neilston Windfarm Legacy, Magic Little Grants and the Co-op and began setting up this web site. Luckily, we then received a spontaneous and very generous donation from Sandra McDermid of 18 beautifully filled and decorated plant pots, which we sold locally, adding a welcome boost to our funds.
July saw get a donation from Neilston Co-op but, on a sadder note, we lost one of our members when Billy Fox passed away.
In August, our funding application to the Neilston Windfarm Legacy was approved. which prompted us to plan the move to weekly meetings by November.
September had us applying for and being granted funding from the Neilston Participatory Budgeting round managed by the Neilston Community Council. Also, Gillian McPherson from Barrhead News interviewed our chair Raymond Kerr about the group, which was published in a very positive article about us in October.
In November, we relocated to Crofthead Bowling Club and moved to weekly meetings.
So, what have we done in our first year?
We grew our membership from the few left from our time at NDT to 20.
We successfully applied for community funding from several sources.
We visited six museums (one of them twice), a wind farm, a nature reserve, a country park, a science centre, and another men's support group.
We had breakfast outdoors at Harelaw Dam, went on backstage tours of Hampden Park and STV Studios, and went to a football match.
In-house, we got a great presentation from local historian Jim Renfrew and finished off the year with an excellent Christmas Lunch in Crofthead Bowling Club.
All of our activities and visits for 2023 are listed and documented here. Here are a few images taken from those...
We'd like to thank everyone that's supported us so far - Susan Kerr, Neilston Knit & Natter, Sandra and Erin McDermid, Neilston Co-op/Linda Murray, Neilston Windfarm Legacy, Neilston Community Council, Neilston F.C., Magic Little Grants, Neilston Parish Church, and all of the Neilston residents that dropped a token into our box at the Neilston Participatory Budgeting event.
Roll on 2024!