WISH Summer Newsletter 2024

WISH Summer Newsletter Article 2024

A warm welcome to the summer newsletter everyone! Yes, it’s halfway through the year already (can you believe it) which provides the ideal opportunity to reflect on achievements made and to share some exciting new developments to look forward to…

Once again, we had fantastic attendance this year at our two national networking events held to align with national housing sector conferences. As per usual the tickets, which are free for WISH members, flew out of the door! Can I say a huge thank you to everyone who came along to our events in Brighton and Manchester and an even bigger thank you to the generous support and sponsorship provided by Lovell, calfordseaden, Novus Property Solutions and Connect In. Thank you!

Brighton WISH Event 2024

Manchester WISH Event 2024

In June we were absolutely delighted to launch the first WISH career mentoring programme in partnership with Page Executive. It provides the opportunity for 25 women from member organisations to take part in a free, national, mentoring programme. The programme includes individual mentoring sessions alongside a range of webinars designed to support career development. We had a huge interest from members, and we will be running another career mentoring programme next year so if you were not successful this time then please apply again next year…

Work has been ongoing to promote our Presidential campaign #HearHerVoice and a number of the organisers of large, national sector events have shared our guidance for conference facilitators and chairs and we’ve received fantastic feedback about the positive impact. The next stage of the campaign has been about effectively hearing female voices in the workplace. We have created some guidance notes which will be launched very soon….watch this space!

Earlier this year, in conjunction with our two fantastic training providers, Gemma and Hayley, we reviewed our training offer for members. We now provide regular, free bite size sessions covering those topics our members told us in the annual survey that they would benefit from. These sessions have been incredibly popular and details on upcoming training sessions along with WISH events to add to your calendar are provided below along with some more information on the Leadership Programme that is starting in October.

We have been working closely with women working in social housing in Ireland and we anticipate a launch of WISH Ireland later this year, taking the organisation into the European Union!

And finally, can I just say a HUGE thank you to all of our regional board members. A dedicated and committed group of female volunteers with a passion for promoting gender equity and inclusion without whom the WISH magic wouldn’t happen. Your commitment to creating inclusive spaces and championing the voices of women is making a real difference for WISH and across the housing sector. Thank you one and all!

>Read the full Summer Newsletter here