By Bev Mackfall, Deputy President 2017

Late in 2016, at Oliver Hyde’s planning meeting for the upcoming year, Senator Richard Grange left a snippet of an idea which blossomed and I grabbed hold of.  Back int’ day, there was a Charity Tea Pot, or Chari-Tea Pot.  This relic would be brought out at socials, pub quizzes, train pub crawls… and raise money while members mingled and got inebriated…!  Each time you bought a drink, you’d pay a little bit of a Tea Pot tax, and donate some change into the Chari-Tea Pot.

With this little bit of an idea, I ran with it.

I bought a small kids tea set, and started trying to paint.  It turns out, I’m not very accurate and detailed when it comes to paint brushes.  I’ve always been something of a perfectionist, and sitting next to Fran with his Wargame miniatures looking awesome, I had to swap to something a little more precise – kebab sticks!

I stabbed away at the tea pot like a tattoo artist (or my assumptions of a tattoo-ist), and tried to encapsulate everything to do with JCI Barnsley on this little canvas.  I wanted to capture some iconic moments that people recognise as US!

If you’re playing the “Spot the iconic-ness!” I featured a representation of the Centurion helmet from JCI UK National Conference 2015 hosted by our good selves, a Yorkshire Rose, and a nod to our Annual Train Pub Crawl.  The dots are a homage to the JCI branding colours palette, which we often use to represent the five prongs of JCI – Business, Social, Communiy, International and Training.

So, the Chari-Tea Pot will join us on our travels and events, as it did in days of yore, and be an instrument of charity fundraising.  After the Tea Pot has made an appearance at a number events (perhaps every three events or every three months… there’s no rule, just when there’s a nice amount to donate), we will pick a charity to be the recipient of the Tea Pot Tax collection!  As we do not have a designated one and only charity that JCI Barnsley is supporting this year, I’m swirling the idea that all Barnsley members can nominate a charity to be the recipient, and we’ll draw a name out of Oli’s bowler hat like a raffle at an upcoming Barnsley General Meeting.

So keep your eye out for the Chari-Tea Pot making an appearance at an event in the future!!