Week Ending 1st May

Brynmor

The previous dry and sunny weather has now given way to showers and some breezy days in places. Such a shame we can't get out further afield other than local trips: the motorways and main roads are absolutely deserted...

1. Campaign: It’s not alright – it’s arthritis

It’s not just “wear and tear”. It’s not just “aches and pains”. It’s not alright – it’s arthritis. You can join us to speak out.

The campaign was launched a couple of weeks ago. You may have already seen the adverts on the television. This last week has seen Versus Arthritis take to the airwaves and you can follow them on Global Radio stations where our advertising is voiced by our supporters themselves - these are their own stories, in their own words.

Today, Friday 1st May is Arthritis Global Takeover Day!. All Global Radio station homepages will be taken over with ‘Versus Arthritis’ branding. We’ll also have Radio hosts from each channel sharing the campaign and directing people to join us LIVE on air. Continuing weekend broadcasts can be heard on LBC, Radio X, Gold, Smooth, Heart, Classic and Capitol radio stations.

2. New Community Members

Just after posting the last Week Ending, we realised that we were in for a bit of a busy time as we discovered that new members signing up to the Community rose by quite a bit!

Over the last 2 weeks we have had over 170 applications for membership in the first week and around 190 the following week. This is a big jump in our weekly average. Moderators have all commented how busy it has been and active users have been between 90 - 100 each day. Welcome to all our new members, do join in across the Community and enjoy the company.

3. Garden Tips

This week has been National Gardening Week - The country’s biggest celebration of gardening from Monday 27 April - Sunday 3 May 2020 as posted on the RHS website.

Versus Arthritis has recently posted a set of Tips for gardening with arthritis - some provided by members of our Online Community. Here is our gigantic Anyone for Gardening? thread running from 2010 to Feb 2018. The subject was then revived in August 2018 under the title Gardening 2018. Would it be worthwhile pulling together all our tips into one place?

4. Continuing Updates

For the past two months we have been adding small changes to our Community to improve things for you. The "Back to Top" button has been very welcomed by those of you who like to post very long Comments 😃

Posts now have a full time-stamp to them and using the @username in a post ensures that the person you mentioned gets a Notification when they next sign in to the Community.

One or two members have discovered their Activity Wall. We have planned a separate article explaining a little more about this feature. Hot Tip: your Activity Wall isn't a great place to "say hello" as no one will see it unless they visit your profile!

Stay safe and stay well.

Brynmor