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Portage La Prairie Retired Teachers' Association

Portage La Prairie Retired Teachers' Association

President: Charles Clifford

Address: 3-51 Kelly K St. Portage la Prairie, MB R1N 3W7

Phone: 204-857-6497

Email: carc72@mymts.net

2020 REPORT

The year 2019 – 20 was expected to be a year of growth for our chapter. Although we have seen some encouraging activity, it has not been consistent. We are trying some different approaches to our meetings. Looking at the luncheon and dinner format instead of just breakfast meetings. We have tried not to be too political, which is one of the reasons people give for not attending. We have about 130 RTAM members in the Portage area which could be a powerful resource for our community if it were utilized properly.

We tried a Christmas luncheon with a singsong and found it quite successful with 46 members coming out. Peggy, our RTAM President, attended  and spoke to the group. It did require a very extensive phone campaign and an announcement on Portage on Line.  We will continue to look at  ways to involve our members and get them excited about what RTAM can do for them and what they can do for RTAM. We have three radio stations, an online station, and a newspaper that is printed once a week. All are very community minded, we need to look at ways of involving all of them more.

Many of our members are very involved in the community as individuals or through other organizations. It may be a possibility of using our organization to help our members serve our community as they have done for so many years in the past. The pool of talent, creativity and yes energy has so much potential for keeping us healthy and living very fulfilled lives. We realize that growth may be slow but it will come! We did have the opportunity to get involved  in two events as volunteers. The next few months may cause some difficulty for us because of the pending Covid-19 pandemic .

Many of our younger retirees continue to work part time in school divisions and other areas, which seems to be a trend. We will continue to make RTAM more inviting to them and our members.

Respectfully submitted by:

Charlie Clifford, Chapter President  


2019 REPORT

Respectfully submitted by Charlie Clifford, President

Members: ~160

The officers of the chapter are: President Charlie Clifford, Secretary Brenda McConnell, Treasurer Les Porteous, Historian Morris Boychuk

The 2018 – 19 year has been a busy one for our chapter. We held ten meetings this past year; seven breakfast meetings and three luncheons. Meetings are held the last Friday of the month with our Annual General Meeting held in April. The attendance ranges from 12 to 47. We have a membership list of about 160. For each of the three luncheons all members were contacted by phone, email and notice of meetings are posted on "Portage online". Our members range in age from 62 to 96.

We try to keep our business meeting portion to a minimum, making sure that our members are up-to-date with what is going on at the local, provincial and national level. We find that KIT is a great vehicle for keeping people informed and is often discussed at our meetings. We also find that having members on the RTAM Board of Directors and Provincial Committees is an asset to our chapter. We make an effort to encourage members to run for election for the Board of Directors and/or let their names stand for membership on Provincial Committees.

We have a strong senior’s organization in Portage that plans outings and bus tours, so we have no need to organize outings. Some of our service clubs also plan group outings. Many of our members are involved with a lot of volunteering through other organizations but we have not volunteered as an organization.

For our luncheons, we try to have a speaker, door prizes and some kind of interactive activity. We continue to look at ways of encouraging more participation by our membership. We still need to look at more ways of involving more recent retirees. We will continue to be as creative as possible in exciting our membership to play a more active role in RTAM.

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