Vegan parents, the battle for the AGM creche is on again

[Guest guest]

Were any of you planning on attending the Vegan Society AGM? We were

planning to and looking forward to the social afterwards, but now we

have a problem if both myself and my husband want to attend the AGM.

 

We had a vote on whether they should keep the AGM creche just a few

years ago, and the members (mostly non-parents) clearly and

overwhelmingly voted with us and against the council of the time,

that we should keep the creche to allow equal opportunities, so the

creche remained, but yet now they tell us there will be no creche

this year. We only missed one AGM recently and that was last year

just after the birth of my third child, otherwise I know that vegan

parents were very glad of the creche and did attend the AGM, we were

not the only ones using it.

Does the Vegan Society want to exclude parents from getting involved

because this is the perfect way to go about it?

 

I wonder how much of their revenue would be lost if all the families

who pay family membership in future protested against the loss of the

creche by either leaving the Society or just paid single or couple

membership? I would have thought that the family membership would

cover the creche as a reasonable expense. What is family membership

for if not to cover extra expenses which are required to help the

Society make a little extra effort to include families?

 

I would urge Vegan Society members with children to go along to the

AGM with the children, even if they make a noise, in fact the noisier

the better, because that will make the point just how much the creche

is needed to make business run smoothly. If parents stay away because

of there being no creche, this is just allowing them to tell us that

our involvement is no longer important. As far as I am aware the vast

majority of council are non-parents and this would seem to normally

be the case because parents are too busy! The unfortunate consequence

is that the nuclear family is very poorly represented within the

Vegan Society.

 

I'm really shocked that they have done away with the creche as I

thought they were improving, what with the arrival of the new kids'

page in the magazine.

 

They fail to see that not everyone has an alternative childcare

arrangement available, so some of us have to miss out if there is no

creche. I don't think this is at all fair, because it is not as if we

have not tried hard to find childcare at various times, and it is not

our fault that none of our previous close friends from before we had

children turned out to be the type of people who would babysit for

us. Our family don't live near enough to do it unless it is at a time

when they are visiting. It must be even many times harder for many

single parents.

 

Lesley