Well, the President’s Address to the Club is now behind me. I didn’t factor in technical challenges however Chris Adams, Roy and Andrew assisted with setting up the equipment and John Shaw went home to obtain a lead allowing connection of the TV to my laptop, this enabled 4 members to join us via the Hybrid link. Thank you to my Knights in Shining Armour.
The goals that I presented for the year are:
Improve communication within the Club
Grow our presence in the Community
Keep meetings to a minimum time frame and palatable for guest speakers
Varied Program
Member retention
Spread the workload
Remove the pressure for Committee chairs
Work with the schools to introduce an Interact club
Continue to develop activity with Clubs in our Cluster – Belgrave & Monbulk
Keep few low
Have fun
Thank you for your brainstorming notes on the 3 items in italics plus “How can we consolidate our events”. I will pull all the items together in the coming days. But one priceless response on consolidation was “All Debutantes must run in the Kids Fun Run with Thomas in their dresses and suits. They should arrive in American cars full of Trash & Treasure (in the boot).
As mentioned at the meeting I will be Acknowledging our Country once a month as follows “I acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional country of the Wurundjeri People , the Traditional owners and Custodians of this land , and pay respect to elders past and present. I recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land, which continue to be important to the Wurundjeri people living today”
Wednesday evening several members from the Club attended the Belgrave Changeover at Rose Cottage to support Gus Rozycki becoming President. Going forward the 2 Clubs plus Monbulk intend to hold Cluster events.
This week we received publicity in 3 publications – page 5 in Star Mail had half a page covering “Helping hands for the hills” Chair of Community Emma’s coverage took up 1/6th of the article. The second was the Emerald Village Association’s newsletter, where we had mentions on page 1, Rotary Club’s article on page 2 and a photograph and heading “Rotary in Action” on page 4 which also provided advertising for our T2T Market being held on 1st Saturday of the month. And thirdly, all of page 11 of the “3781” Newsletter covered the R100.
We are continuing our work on the Hills Storm Recovery with members volunteering to work at the St Michael’s Relief Centre at Kalorama and others with the “Help the Hills” hands on clean-up work in Conjunction with Paul Yandle, Emerald CFA. Last night DG Daryl Moran advised that funds received into RAWCS sit at $47,000 and he will be looking at the Hills Cluster Clubs to have input in the distribution of the money.
Due to the latest “5” day lockdown the next meeting will have to be back to ZOOM. At this point in time a question mark hangs over the possibility of being able to run the 6th attempt of the Deb Ball date on 8th August.
Last week saw the first meeting for our new President, Shalini Penny. We all hope you have an enjoyable and successful year. Starting well under lockdown, but nevermind - we have done it before, before, before, before .....
We all undertook a short survey for Pres. Shalini who will be pulling together the threads of our responses to assist in making the club even better than it is now.
For those not at the meeting, the questions were:
How can we improve communications in the Club?
Suggest ways we can retain current members
How can we consolidate the events we organise?
How can we grow our presence in the community?
Over the last few weeks, with the response to the Storm Recovery, celebrating Vicki's year and the work of our club members, all of us will have realised we have a special and unique culture in the Rotary Club of Emerald and District.
Links to look at
On the last question above, the editor would like to point out that we have many links you can look at to see items of interest. Much activity goes on in the background to keep links up-to-date (well as much as time allows). We need your support ... take a look at the below!
Our website - https://www.emeraldrotary.org.au/ - this has been updated with annual reports and is awaiting new initiatives from this year's committee chairs - there is also a page on the R100 celebration and the Storm Recovery - when was the last time you took a look??
Facebook - we have a number of pages that need your 'FOLLOW' and sharing of stories, sharing and commenting is even better for impact!!
If you haven't joined the loyal little group liking, sharing and commenting can you engage with the links above and help us improve our footprint locally? Many thanks!!!
Not forgetting PHF - DGN Ken Miller
As we marked some PHF's at our Changeover Meeting, there was another one awarded to one of our club members by District.
DGN Ken Miller received a second Sapphire for all his work at District level including heading up the team looking after communications and PR. Well done Ken ... WE LOVE YOU!!! (Thought I would say it before PP PHF Catherine Elfick did).
In the News
Well done Ros Weadman for again getting us some great coverage in the latest edition of the Emerald Village News.
Pres. Shalini wanted to share with the club the lovely letter of thanks we received from Lyn. Lyn is a special member of our club and we are all so sorry for her loss and will be there for her over the weeks and months to come.
President Shalini Penny visited the Kalorama Relief Centre in early July and provided some images of the many donations received from the community to assist those impacted by the Storm Disaster of 9/10 June 2021.
We are regularly asked to share information on other Rotary Club or community group events. Rather than list all of them in Sparkle, please check out them out HERE
Emerald Village Community
Emerald Village Community update can be found HERE
Ros Weadman adds a regular paragraph about Rotary in this newsletter.
Rotary Invocation
For good food, good fellowship and the opportunity for service through Rotary we give thanks
Rotary Toast
To Australia and the people of Australia (toast) To Rotary International (toast)
