The Leamington Lillies celebrate 15 years

The Leamington Lillies were delighted to turn this month's meeting into a birthday celebration and fund-raising party, for their chosen charity, Evelyn’s Gift.

The Lillies were started 15 years ago and have been going strong in Leamington, even through the Covid lockdowns and the fun of online meetings. The committee had worked hard to come up with an ‘All the fun of the Fair’ Theme for the evening. Members were invited to guess the number of sweets in the jar, pin the earrings on the president, a tombola, a hoop-la game, but the human fruit machine game was the biggest hit of all! There was a Lilles gift box on the way home too.

It was almost a full house of members attending and all were pleased to see Sue Postlethwaite and Sue Gill from Warwickshire Federation enjoy themselves in the end of the evening team game of “Dress the WI Member”. This entailed a team taking turns to dress their Team Captain in a hat, scarf, rubber gloves, glasses and carry a tray of glasses to finish. Great laughs!

In the true spirit of the WI, the Lillies also spent to evening helping a charity in the community that does such great work. Earlier in the year they had been visited by Helen from Evelyn’s Gift, who told them her story and about her charity. Helen suddenly lost her seven-year-old daughter, Evelyn, and so in 2014 she set up the charity to carry out random acts of kindness in Evelyn’s memory. She also supports CPR training, and everyone all learnt a lot that evening with a demonstration of CPR and a chance to try it for themselves. Not as easy as you think!

Take a look at Evelyn’s Gift website (https://evelynsgift.co.uk/) to see all that they do, but in essence they provide support to families in poverty by providing essential items, school shoes, uniform. Toiletries, underwear and wash bags for rough sleepers amongst other things. They produce resource packs for bereaved children and families.

Everyone had a special Lillies Birthday cupcake and a bubbly “cup of tea” that ensured the evening went with lots of laughs and chat. Donations are still coming in for Evelyn's Gift but we are in excess of £340 so far. Roll on the next 15 years!