The Drenthe Association Thriënte, for Drenthe in Flevoland, is stopping. Drenthe’s theater evenings, baking cakes and reminiscing together are over. Again Neutral shooting in March and then it will be over after almost fifty years.
The decreasing number of members and the high age of the members still present makes it impossible for the board to keep things going. “At the summit we had seven hundred members, now there are more than a hundred,” says chairman Roelf Raterink, who is originally from Eext and ended up in Dronten after wandering.
But the number of members is declining and many members are well over eighty. “We couldn’t do anything with corona and people dropped out, and you now see that people prefer not to go out in the evening anymore. What are you supposed to do with twenty people?” asks Raterink. “Then it will be more of a fun birthday.
Money also plays a role. “The costs are rising for organizing an evening in a room with cake and refreshments,” says Raterink, who saw the main income stream dry up due to the thinning out of the membership base. “Our source of income was baking donuts. We worked with thirteen people and baked thirteen thousand donuts. I was the coffee maker myself. The donuts sold quickly. But three evenings of baking donuts is now too much. That income we miss now and so we can’t do much anymore. Stopping is a combination of factors.”
Thriënte was founded in 1976. “The people of Drenthe sought each other out, that’s how it grew. Many came in the wake of farmers who got a farm here. And farmers came to live here on a plot, sometimes in a shack, and had nothing here,” says Raterink. “It was about solidarity, speaking the same language at the meeting. And talking about the past: ‘Do you remember back then?’ And sometimes a poem was spontaneously read or a song sung.”
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