Current Activity
This year's committee is looking forward to again supporting our youth.
Breakfast Club
The committee has commenced breakfast club at Emerald SC on Tuesdays & Fridays. This is a great opportunity for children to get together and socialise before school. The program is becoming popular and growing.
Youth Cluster Well-being Project Launch
AG Brian Hodgson – Explanation of Cluster Project – Youth Well-being
- Cluster project – youth well-being – district grant $6000 matching grant – 3 clubs to contribute.
Progress has been made so we are now in a position to present information. $12,000 is being spent $2k contribution from each club and a matching $6k District Grant.
Committee Members of the Project and Progress
PP PHF Tina McInerny from Emerald partnering with Emerald Secondary College
- The Emerald Primary School Project - Rotary Youth are going to provide a 3 section garden, incorporating a indigenous food garden, a herb garden and kitchen vegetable garden.
- In the Indigenous garden we will provide a buddy. It will be a place to go and sit, if you are feeling lonely and sad and that alerts others to your feelings....so that they come to join you.
- The club is hoping this will be a project that the students themselves will help to organise. That is, design, costing, and with a bit of luck planting,
- We are also hoping to get one of the first nation people to come and help us, and talk about the food
- We will ask the Men's Shed if they will assist us.
- Want to have it done this Rotary Year.
John Coleman - Monbulk
Consolidated work with Monbulk Secondary School and Marter Christi School in Monbulk
Wayne McKenzie - Belgrav
- Upway High School – working with the principal
- Venue for a music function- school on board with mental health program
- Meeting with Musical Director of school – opportunity to see the needs of the school.
- Able to do a number of major things with the school.
- Pupils will be performing on the night with musicians.
Other partners:
Belinda Grooby - Founder – Tribe Youth
SALT – Sport and Life Training
This program is an ESSENTIAL for every sports club and workplace needing to re-engage with their communities as we emerge from this unprecedented time. We have all experienced COVID, but we haven’t all had the same experience. For some, their re-entry is going to be difficult for they will be carrying heavy loads, while others will have the capacity to reach out and care. The role of every club and workplace is to identify the needs of its people and create systems of support.
The SALT Club and Workplace Re-Connect Program is an interactive, online presentation that digs deep into how your club or work community is traveling right now and equips you to support one another into the future. Through a newly developed and highly informative live quiz, the SALT presenter will establish what the main issues are for each group and will flexibly respond, teach, and connect.
- Interactive approach is core to SALT
- A lot of courses are available – check out website
- Talked about PTG – Post Traumatic Grow
Highlights 2020-2021
What a year! What an extraordinary year. No gatherings for our Youth in the midst of a Global Covid Pandemic. No end of year parties for them. No Award Nights for them. No rituals for the Year 12 or Year 6 as they entered new phases in their lives. Our hearts went out to them, as they struggled to get through their schooling and the uncertainty of the future.
But we did manage to help in small ways. We made up Care Packages filled with all sorts of goodies, that would sustain them through their study periods and hopefully lift their spirits. A goody bag for each of the 110 Year 12 students at Emerald Secondary – filled with chips, lollies, biscuits, tinned fruit, noodles and muesli bars and whatever we could get our hands on, so that they understood that we cared.
For nearly 200 Year 6’s at Gembrook, Cockatoo, Emerald, Macclesfield, and Selby – we prepared Time Capsules –filled with a coin, a motivational bracelet, a sheet of paper with current prices for food, balloons, lollies and chips, and a Christmas decoration, with our best wishes written on it, and whatever else we could get our hands on.
Small gestures sent with love and care - that were greatly appreciated by kids and staff alike.
We were able to offer a donation to Emerald Secondary for musical instruments and support them by attending their Rotary Youth Driver Awareness Day.
At the beginning of 2021 – we have been lucky enough to get to know some of the children at Breakfast Club a couple of days a week – it’s only an hour, but it gives the kids somewhere to go, and it gives us such a great deal of pleasure to spend time with them.
This year it also gave us great pleasure to be part of the setting up of an Interact Club with Berwick Rotary at St. Margaret’s. It has been a delight to watch these young ladies learn about raising funds, about helping the community and international projects, and all this while they were dealing with their own difficulties due to the Covid Pandemic. Thank you to Catherine Elfick for all her hard work on this.
We have also been working in conjunction with Belgrave and Monbulk Rotary Clubs under the auspices of Assistant Governor Brian Hodgson, who managed to secure us a $6,000 grant from District to pay for interactive workshops on mental health with a wonderful Group called SALT (Sport and Life Training) for the 3 High Schools – Emerald, Upwey and Monbulk.
