The Lunch meeting on Wednesday 19 July was our 3rd Meeting of this Rotary Year and our 4,994th Club meeting in our one hundred and second year.
MC was Bernie McIntosh and the week's reflection was delivered by Cheryl Lacey - see Cheryl’s interesting observations in a separate article in the bulletin.
The meeting celebrated birthdays of three long standing Club members - Trevor Nink, Bob Fels and Peter Dakin.
Sadly we paid tribute to Alistair Urquhart who passed away on the previous weekend. Alistair’s funeral service will be held at 11:00am at the Barwon Heads Unitising Church on 25 July 2023, followed by his burial at the Queenscliff Cemetery. The Club’s Obituary for Alistair is posted later in this bulletin.
President Chris also passed on the sad news the passing of Malcom Simpson’s wife, Patricia, who will be missed by many who enjoyed Malcom and Patricia’s company in the North Balwyn - Ivanhoe Group.
Our Guest speaker was Dr Sonja Hood, CEO of Community Hubs and President of the North Melbourne Football Club, on the topic Empowerment of Communities through the Spirit of Football. Peter Rogers Chaired the speaker session on behalf of Quin Scalzo whose return from overseas had been delayed. Like Peter, the Scalzo family involvement with NMFC has a long history beginning with being supporter members for 60 years. Michael Scalzo is a founding member of the key coterie group, The Shinboners, that’s operated within the NMFC since 2010. Several members of Quin’s family attended as guests.
Dr Sonja Hood spoke of her roles as CEO of Community Hubs and North Melbourne Football club chair. She spoke of the shared experiences of people of all background in following football. She articulated football as being about connection. Connection is the secret sauce that ‘gets you there”. She saw involvement in football as a volunteer activity binding and making the community function. Community Hubs do this by inviting isolated community members in, offering early childhood playgroups, supporting learning of English language and through vocational pathways. We recommend you take a look at the meeting video to learn more about Dr Hood’s presentation.
