April meeting

This month our speaker was Caron Kendall, who talked to us about the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) and their "Keep Trade Local" campaign. This campaign has a lot in common with the WI's own "Save our high street" campaign from a few years ago.

We heard about the importance of small businesses in our community and why they might be under threat, with a move to shopping at larger chain stores or on the internet. Caron is herself a WI member and spoke about what we can do, as an organisation and individually, to support small businesses in the village. She also works with the businesses, suggesting ways they can help themselves, such as embracing the internet marketplace, reviewing their opening hours and working with each other.

Waterbeach is very fortunate to have many small businesses, the visible ones such as the butchers on the high street and also those less obvious, such as the many self-employed tradesmen or home businesses. These are vital to the village community and we all agreed with Caron that we must help to preserve them.