2025

 2025

Dear Group Coordinators and Group Leaders,

I have been asked to bring this new Third Age Trust Essay Competition to your attention so that you can share the information, where appropriate, with members in your group.

 The Third Age Trust Essay Competition 2025

The new u3a Essay Writing Competition has launched and it’s an activity for all sorts of interest groups to get involved with – from science to English, history to debating and beyond. u3a members are invited to research, write and submit an essay of up to 1000 words that can ‘make the case for a person, policy, invention or idea having a positive impact on society’. Please tell your Group Coordinators and Group Leaders about this opportunity.

Submissions are open now until 12pm on Friday 9 May 2025, with prizes for the winner and runners up.

u3a – u3a Essay Competition 2025

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Submit an essay (max 1,000 words) championing a person, policy, invention or idea that has positively shaped society.

Who Can Enter?
All u3a members. You must be a member by 1 March 2025 and stay a member until winners are announced in June 2025.

Key Details:

·        Free entry (one essay per person)

·        Deadline: Submit by 12 noon, Friday 9 May 2025

·        First prize – £100 Lifestyle shopping voucher donated by the creators of Friends Extra.

·        Two runners-up – prize books donated by Bloomsbury.

For further information about entry requirements and to submit the essay go to:

u3a – u3a Essay Competition 2025

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Kate Kiely, Beacon Administrator1

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SHERWOOD U3a Beacon News for Members

  • Good news!! We are now beginning to use Beacon email to send messages to members. You may have already received a message if you are in Afternoon Tap Room Games, Gardening Group 2, or Strolling – where the Christmas meeting had to be cancelled at short notice.
  • We will soon be sending emails to all members and hope to send Newsletters too via Beacon email in future. It is important that we have members’ up-to-date email addresses so please add them to your Membership Renewal Form, or email them to me, Kate Kiely, at beacon1@sherwoodu3a mansfieldwoodhouse.org.uk. We appreciate that there are still members who do not use email so we will continue to contact you in the usual
    way.
  • Where Group sessions are being cancelled for whatever reason, we are asking Group Leaders to send emails out by 8 am on the morning of the event. This is particularly relevant to all the walking groups who meet from 9 am, so we are asking Members to get into the habit of checking their emails in the morning.
    Beacon emails won’t look any different to your usual emails but will have the following statement at the end of the email: This email was sent by Beacon on behalf of … (name of Group Leader) Gradually, over the coming weeks, you will notice that your committee will move away from using personal email addresses for committee business, and will have new email addresses like the one above @sherwoodu3a-mansfieldwoodhouse.org.uk.
  • This is simply for administrative reasons and to ensure continuity when a committee member leaves their role. Their replacement committee member will simply inherit the email address.

A Reminder about Beacon and Information for New Members. Kate Kiely, Beacon Administrator

Beacon is an online management system designed by u3as, for u3as and it is currently used by over 600 individual u3as across the country: It allows us to manage data and to communicate with members easily and e iciently via Beacon email

• It is a time saver for those who manage membership and group information

• With new regulations on Data Privacy, it ensures that we comply with all legal requirements

  • In the future we plan to send Newsletters via Beacon email and, as you know, we ran some tests in March to find out if there were any problems with doing this.
  • Thanks again to all those who let us know they did receive the email and Newsletter without any issues occurring. We did find a few minor teething problems, such as incorrect email addresses which we have now resolved. If you never received a test copy of the Newsletter via Beacon, please get in touch with me as soon as possible and let me have your email address for checking purposes. We plan to run the same test again with April’s Newsletter, which means you will still receive your Newsletter from Margaret as usual, and in addition another test copy via Beacon. In May we plan to switch over entirely and you will get your copy of the Newsletter via Beacon. Email me at: beacon1@sherwoodu3a-mansfieldwoodhouse.org.uk

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Group Leaders’ Meetings 22nd October 2025.

  • Further details to follow.

Kate Kiely and Sue Davison, Group Coordinators

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