WISH Winter Newsletter 2023

WISH Winter Newsletter Article

A big festive welcome everyone to this Winter newsletter from WISH!

Who can possibly mind that the days are shorter and darker and that the weather is colder and wetter when twinkly lights pop up everywhere, the annual WISH survey goes live and there are so many festive networking events being hosted across our WISH regions?

This time of year also provides a fantastic opportunity to reflect on the past year and to look forward to developments for 2024…

Starting with reflections, well, it’s been an incredibly positive year. An amazing array of in-person events have been hosted by our 10 fantastic Regional Boards and our online offer of WISH webinars that are free for all members to access has gone from strength to strength. Our membership has continued to increase and our following on social media platforms has almost doubled. Our collaborative voice has been heard through the housing sector press, national conferences and sector bodies and our 2 year Presidential Campaign, #HearHerVoice, has already had such a positive impact – featuring in the housing press, being promoted by conference organisers and most importantly of all, positively impacting on women in the sector. In addition we’ve collaborated with the Chartered Institute of Housing to hold powerful networking events aligned to CIH conferences in the North West, Scotland and the South East and collaborated with expert organisations on research around gender equality, inclusive consultation and the Gender Pay Gap.

We couldn’t possibly achieve all that we do without our amazing Regional Board members – this group of volunteers make WISH what it is and we were delighted this year to recognise their achievements with our first ‘Living Our Values’ awards celebration. Our nominations have just closed for the 2024 awards and it is with immense pride that I would like to do a shout out to the following women working on our Regional Boards who are our regional winners:

Catherine Louch, Sarah Onions, Carolyn Wood, Carlene Goodearl, Amy Garner, Pamela Sinnott, Kelly Privitera, Amy Tagoe, and Charlotte Murray

There is much to look forward to in 2024 and two big developments will be WISH Ireland and a free for members WISH mentoring offer.

We were delighted to be approached by colleagues in Northern Ireland to ask about establishing WISH in Ireland and it’s with huge thanks and gratitude to women at the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA) and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) that we can announce that WISH is coming to Ireland! We are super excited to announce that the WISH region will cover the whole of Ireland and we are looking forward to sharing with you all the details over the next few months.

As regards WISH mentoring, we have been working with the fabulous team at Page Executive to collaboratively devise a mentoring offer. We are hoping that this will be available from June in 2024  - watch this space for further detail…

And of course something we always look forward to is International Women’s Day (IWD). Our annual WISH survey really helps us shape not only the services we provide for members but also our campaigning around IWD. Please can I remind everyone to share the survey far and wide  – we would love to hear as many voices as possible. Complete the survey here.

Have a wonderful festive break everyone, Season’s Greetings to one and all!

Lucy Malarkey, WISH Managing Director

Read the full WISH WINTER 2023 newsletter here!