CPals 25th Anniversary

Merv’s presentation

C’Pals 25th Anniversary Celebrations Lunch

Our Club’s 25th Anniversary Celebrations Lunch was held on Friday 29th August at the Cardiff RSL Club, with some 65 members and guests attending. Special place cards and programmes were on hand, courtesy of the very talented Carolyn Keane.

MC for this special occasion, Marj Stanton opened proceedings before handing over to President Barry Keen who welcomed the special guests and members to this significant achievement for our Club, along with thanking fellow committee members for their efforts in bringing this function to life. Marj then introduced Joseph Vijay (representing ASCCA) whose organization assisted in nurturing our Club from its early days through to the present.

We were priviledged to have Val Woodman attend. Val, as part of Newcastle City Council, was instrumental in seeing the need for I.T. assistance for seniors. With assistance from NCC, along with ASCCA and a couple of ‘local identities’, ComputerPals for Seniors, Newcastle was born.  Here is a link to her very interesting speech.

Lindsay Threadgate, one of the 3 longest serving current members (the others being Carolyn Keane and Merv Pope) then spoke of the efforts of those in the early days setting this new organization on a course to suit the needs of seniors endeavouring to grasp all this new technology.

Local MP Tim Crakanthorp then hailed the contributions of ComputerPals to the city’s seniors, enabling so many of them to take their first steps into the technology world including his mother, who, in his own words said she was ‘computer illiterate’.

Tim read a poem written by CPals member Harold for the occasion.  Our member Merve created a video file of the poem read by an AI voice. Watch the video below.

Formalities over, it was then time to view a very well compiled video presentation from Merv Pope on the history of our Club, reflecting on the progress of ComputerPals over these past 25 years. Highlighting this was the I.T. learning, along with the special interest groups (DigiPals, WriterPals, MemoryPals) and Social Outings. This video was created using powerpoint and current AI tools.

Harold’s poem