Teesdale and Cleveland Area Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
CIO Registered number 1184347
The CIO was registered in July 2019 but we have collectively taken years to get its assets transferred from the old charity, reg no 1134519. The financial and trustees’ reports of the old charity will disappear from the Charity Commission website when we close that charity down, but they will remain downloadable from
https://www.darlingtonquakers.org/teesdale-cleveland-quakers/tcam-charity-documents/
Over the interim period all financial transactions have been carried out through the charity. Hence the CIO shows no balances and no financial transactions. The Trustees’ report mentions only those activities which cost us nothing and brought in no income. This is the holding of Quaker Meetings for Worship at our six locations, usually weekly but less often in the case of Osmotherley.
Cash and other resources held £0
Income £0
Expenditure £0
July 2019—Dec 2020
Activities proceeded normally from July 2019 to March 2020 . From late March 2020 Covid dominated our hospitals and care homes and we like everyone else were subject to government guidance or legislation which variously required us to
-
Stay at home and mix with no one outside our households
-
Conduct worship at our normal locations but
-
Record all those attending
-
Space people out at 2m intervals and provide a one-way route through the building if possible
-
Wipe down before and after those surfaces that Friends were likely to have touched
-
Warn Friends not to come if they had any Covid symptoms or, latterly, a Covid positive test
-
Most Meetings offered Zoom worship; some Meetings offered Zoom socializing but not Zoom worship; as time went on we offered blended meetings where those attending by Zoom appeared in the meeting house on a screen or projected onto a wall.
-
Our trustees’ meetings and Area Meetings have been well attended and well conducted throughout, and we have learned that for some Friends Zoom makes attendance possible when physical attendance is difficult or impossible. There have been gains as well as losses
-
We have lost to Covid a small number of older Friends, and some Friends have been affected by Long Covid
-
We have done our reputable best but we have lost a great deal by the loss of quick chats before and after worship, which were often forbidden, or impractical when worship was held on Zoom. Our normal Away Weekends have been impossible both in 2020 and in 2021. It will take a while to rebuild the reliance on one another that is facilitated by physical presence.