We’ve had another strange couple of weeks, that have shown us how vulnerable we are to where this highly adaptable virus appears next. One minute, we are all enthusiastically preparing to meet in person, and the next, we have to consider the implications on our members and the limitations that we are constrained by.
Be assured that your fantastic team of office bearers are working hard to get us together in person soon and hopefully that will be in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we have organized another suite of spectacular speakers and the final touches are being put on the Peace Symposium.
The Peace Symposium will align with our celebrations on 21 st April which we hope will be a face to face meeting of as many of our members as can attend. Naturally, we have been ensuring a contingency in the event of any limitations on our meeting in person.
Our meeting on the 17th of February, will be with guest speaker Andrew Crisp, Emergency Management Commissioner – Victoria, on the topic, ‘Black Summer Bushfires - One year on’. We have invited the East Gippsland Rotary Clubs, with whom, a number of us, spent time before Christmas. They will join this event. Andrew presented last year at the Bushfire fundraising event and proved to be an excellent speaker and this is shaping up to be a very interesting session.
Our trip to East Gippsland, was very productive and it became very clear that these areas have been heavily affected by ongoing trauma. The clubs and community embraced our ‘Healing the Hurt’ initiative and are looking to partner with Pam Brown and the team to either, deliver training to their front line community members, or to provide the Medicare funded services that can remotely support traumatized individuals. Another sign of the amazing work that our network of Rotarians can do. This treatment is now being extended to the WA bushfires and the clubs in that region.
Our evening meeting this week is a speaker who also participated in the ‘Happy as Larry’ lunch that Brighton North and we organized. Mark Balla is President Rotary Box Hill Central, a Philanthropist, TED Speaker, and Author. His topic is "The Journey to the Toilet: How Mark Balla is getting girls to school by solving a problem no one else saw". We hope to see you there.
Finally, it is only a few weeks to our International Women’s Day breakfast which is another collaboration that we have with Brighton North. This is on Tuesday 9 March and the line-up of speakers is very exciting with Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, our Lord Mayor Sally Capp and RI President for 2022-23 Jennifer Jones as well as Colin Carter, business man and past President of Geelong among a few of them. Further details can be found at the following link: https://www.iwd.org.au/speakers
Have a wonderful week and I look forward to seeing you in person soon.
Until next time – take care and spread kindness.
Marion
