Community Activities

Members are encouraged to get involved in local community initiatives.  Projects we have supported in the past include village litter collections for Clean for the Queen and for the OFWI Centenary, the Party in the Park village fund-raising event and the Adderbury Community Days. We have taken part in the Adderbury Christmas Market, the Church and School Fete and Kew Grow Wild Seed planting at Katharine House Hospice. We have also supported the local Red Box project to mitigate period poverty through donations of sanitary supplies.

2025 On 16 August members will be joining the celebration of 25 years since the opening of Church House and Adderbury Library. As part of the Great British Spring Clean members joined a community litter pick around the village for two hours on Saturday 22 March. More litter than ever was collected.

2023 As in previous years, our first community activity this year was a litter pick around the village in April. Despite problems with the delivery of equipment, a group of nine members and local residents collected ten bags of rubbish. In June we completed a second litter pick, this time along the main roads out of the village. The bags of rubbish we collected completely filled a large car boot. For our contribution to the village Activity Day in September we had a table at the Institute with information promoting our WI. We also had an eye-catching activity to raise awareness about sewage pollution in the waterways, and as we had hoped, this generated interest and discussion. Our stall at the Christmas Market was very successful, raising £203 for WI funds and in December our Christmas tree won in the Community category at the Christmas Tree Festival.

2022
Our first community activity this year was our annual litter pick round the village as part of the Great British Spring Clean on the morning of Saturday 9 April. The weather was fine and this year we had a lot of support from local residents. This meant more areas of the village were covered than ever before and fourteen bags of rubbish were collected. In June for the celebrations of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee we provided a special tea for the senior citizens of the village at which each guest received a small commemorative medallion. Our stall at the Christmas market in November proved a very successful fund raiser and we were delighted when our entry for the Christmas Tree Festival in December was voted the best decorated tree. Members of the Craft Group had created beautiful decorations all made from natural materials..

2021 
The Adderbury Christmas Tree Festival was held at the beginning of December and the theme for our entry was a celebration of one hundred years since the founding of the Adderbury and Milton WI, the predecessor of our current branch. The theme was chosen by the craft group who created striking decorations based on different parts of the original WI’s banner. These included a sickle, gloves, a pair of bellows, a cradle and a distaff. A recreation of St Eadburga in her cloak with a holy book in her hand was placed at the top of the tree. The standard of entries was very high and although we did not win  we were delighted to have been part of the Festival again. The decorations have been kept and we plan to display them again as part of a project about the original branch and its banner.

In September we had a stall at the Village Community day where our theme was sustainability. We had lots of examples of things that can be recycled or repurposed, including jams, cakes and chutneys, toilet roll cores to be used as root trainers, recyclable dog poo bags, jumpers made from unravelled old ones, bags of seeds one member had collected from her own plants and dried, recipe sheets for using gluts of vegetables, names of local stores where crisp packets can be recycled, and cards with suggestions of simple ways to live more sustainably. We offered slices of different cakes made with courgettes and didn’t charge for anything. We had a steady stream of interested visitors throughout the day On the following weekend we organised our second village litter pick for Big Green Week for which we were joined by local Guides and several families. As in June’s Great British Spring Clean the event was supported by Cherwell District Council with the provision of hi-viz jackets, bags and litter pickers. 

Covid-19 restrictions meant that neither the Adderbury Christmas Market or the Christmas Tree Festival could take place in 2020..So to bring a little festive cheer to the village, we organised a Scarecrow Trail and competition for Adderbury Village for the weekend of 19/20 December. Villagers were invited to make a Scarecrow, dress it for the season and display it, with the chance to win a WI Hamper for Best Scarecrow. This proved to be a very popular initiative with many people enjoying seeing all the Scarecrows around the village..