2023

Filoxenia Virtual WI meets on the second Monday of the month at 7:15 via Zoom and is an excellent way for family members to connect and share the WI experience.

We are proud to be a part of the first virtual WI in the Huntingdon & Peterborough Federation, ‘Filoxenia WI’ making WI history. The WI flame has been ignited, and we are attracting members from Bristol to Athens.

Email: filoxeniawi@gmail.com

Instagram: filoxenia_virtual_wi

Twitter: @Filoxenia_WI

Facebook Members Group: Filoxenia Virtual WI

Facebook Page: Filoxenia Virtual Women’s Institute

Book Group

Once Filoxenia was established as a Virtual WI group meeting online via Zoom last year, members began looking for ’spin offs’ and a book group was suggested. There was support  for this and I offered to act as the coordinator.
Members who were interested in joining the sub-group were asked to put forward suggestions for books for the group to read.
It was decided to meet monthly on a Friday evening at 7pm UK time, during the week after our monthly meeting takes place. The very first meeting of our new Book Group was held in  December of last year with seven members attending.
Our first book was ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ by Bernadine Evaristo. The group had a lively debate after everyone gave their initial
view and the group was evenly split – half of us absolutely loved it and half of us hated it or just couldn’t get into it!
The format of the book group meetings is as follows: for each member to tell the group whether they enjoyed the book or not; their opinion of the style of writing and plot  development etc.
Not everyone always likes all the books we read, and the group decided to introduce a marking system for each book to keep a record of our impressions, with 10  being the highest and 1 being the lowest.
So far the highest ranking book has been “My Brilliant Friend”.

The aim of a book group is that it encourages readers to read ‘outside their comfort zone’ and thus find new authors to follow and our members have also enjoyed this.
The books we have read cover a wide range of genres and time scales. Our book for the October discussion is Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. It is a very different book compared to those we have already read, so we shall see if members enjoyed this one.
We have books listed taking us up to November 2024. This is to enable those of our members living in a rural situation, outside of the UK (our President lives in Greece) and those who like to use a library, plenty of time to get hold of a copy and to read it before each meeting.

If others would like to join us, please do contact us (details below). Guests are welcome.
Happy reading!
Verity Ladds
Filoxenia Virtual WI member
Filoxenia Book Group Coordinator

Huntingdon & Peterborough's scarecrow competition,

unfortunately, we did not win.

Book club selection

Feb- Girl, Woman Other by Bernadine
March – Gray Mountain, John Gresham
April - The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
May - Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
June - Where the Crawdads Sing - by Delia Owens
July - Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquiven
Aug - Lessons in Chemistry - by Elena Ferrente
Sept - Great Circle by Maggie Shiostead
Oct - On Chapel Sands - by Laura Cummings
Nov - The Secret Scriptures by Sebastian Barry
Dec - The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christie Lefteri
Jan - Educated by Tara Westover
Feb - Norah Webster by Colm Toibin
March - Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
April - The Salt Path by Raynor Wynne
May - Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill
June - The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
July - I’m Sorry you feel that way by Rebecca Wait
Aug - Taking Flight by Michaela DePrince
Sept - Under a Wartime Sky by Liz Trenow

2023 Report

At Filoxenia VWI we follow the same general format of a “traditional WI”, but with some differences. Our monthly meetings begin with an invited speaker giving a talk about a topic of interest, or sometimes an adventure in the case of Genny Brown who gave an inspiring talk about her expedition to Antarctica to raise funds for Lyme Disease. Other times we have enjoyed a live “show” such as Alia el Asmar’s entertaining and informative “Vegan Treats” cooking demonstration. After the talk or demo, an interesting discussion and Q&A session always follows with the speaker and members. Next, we have a bit of social time and discussion of the usual WI business. But the bonus is we don’t have to drive home and we can make our own tea just as we like it in the breaks!
In addition to our monthly online meetings, we’ve also enjoyed some social events such as an in person get together at the WI Centre in Huntingdon last year, online coffee mornings and most recently a “Filoxenia Festive Friday Fun” event in December 2023. The Festive social was on Zoom and began with members sharing some of their own Festive traditions, stories and habits. We learned about the legend of the Christmas Spider (which originates from Ukraine and may explain the origin of tinsel on Christmas trees), dancing Christmas in and out in true (Pagan) Swedish-style, and the Greek Orthodox traditional celebrations for New Year and Epiphany. The picture provides a taster of a group activity led by Filoxenia VWI team member Terry Webb during the Festive social event, that we all thoroughly enjoyed.

We also have a Book Group that meets on a Friday evening at 7pm UK time, during the week after our monthly meeting which is on the second Monday evening of each month. The Book Group is a big success, with the members thoroughly enjoying reading and discussing a very wide range of books. We have room for more Book Group members, and we are currently able to accept new members of Filoxenia, full or dual. Why not consider joining Filoxenia VWI as a dual member, in addition to the traditional in person WI you already belong to? It doesn’t have to be either or – you can have the best of both worlds.

Find out more via Facebook (Filoxenia Virtual WI) or Instagram (filoxeinia_virtual_wi). We are always happy for guests to come along to one of our monthly meetings or Book Group, for free up to two times. You can request this by emailing filoxeniawi@gmail.com
Antonia Svensson Dianellou
President, Filoxenia Virtual WI

Favourite Speaker

	Alia el Asmar presented Vegan treats to us. Alia literally ran around her kitchen for an hour between two workstations and computers cooking her treats. "I have never seen a speaker working so hard before". Alia also supplied a 12 page recipe booklet at the end of the evening.