How quickly the weeks pass and life returns to the new normal. I think we are all still a little tentative and the occasional Covid breakout makes us all a little jittery. It was wonderful to attend the chaptering of a new club at Eynesbury and to see the fellowship of Rotary in full swing with the usual raffles and donations. This was made all the more impressive by the magnificent venue.
Then of course we had our first face to face meeting for this Centennial year. A lovely chance to come out of lockdown and see one another in 3D rather than 2D! Our member, Mina Guli introduced our Guest Speaker Rosie Wheen, who shares Mina’s passion for water and the environment.
We also had a chance to celebrate an Irish festival with members attending in the green, and to have David Kram play ‘Happy Birthday’ for his own birthday, whilst we all sang along.
Our hard working Board continues to provide a dedicated and amazing commitment to the club ensuring its wellbeing, delivery on projects and good governance. The club has continued to encourage new members to join us and, whilst, we had to return to the virtual meeting last week, we were able to introduce our newest member, Sumeer Bhandarkar to the club. A remarkable achievement to have outstripped last year’s new member total, already, whilst, going through months of lockdown and without the enticement of the usual meetings. This is a testimony to the real work of Rotary.
We are working hard to be able to accommodate, both, those who wish to return in person, and those who want to be part of the virtual meeting. The complexity we are grappling with, in bringing these ‘hybrid’ meetings together, lies in the technology and our partnership with the Sofitel. Any technology needs to be removable and that poses some challenges in our meeting room. We have a great team working on it and I’m sure we will have something in place over the next few months. In the meantime we will try and have a combination of online and face-to-face meetings so please check the Bulletin for accurate details.
Our projects continue to flourish and along with the ‘SAFE Families’ Ambassador program our ‘Healing the Hurt’ program is kicking some significant goals. The Trauma Recovery Network has been able to provide EMDR Therapy through telehealth to people affected by the bushfires. Some of the team can be seen below.
You will also have heard that the International Womens’ Day excelled again this year and brought over 4,000 people to the work of Rotary (a conservative estimate). It also gave individual smaller clubs a tool to use in their own fundraising to supplement the very successful fundraising of our club. This continues to be our largest and highest profile fundraiser. A great success story for Kerry Kornhauser and her dedicated team.
We have so many projects and individual efforts to be proud of in our Rotary club and I am humbled to work with these amazing ambassadors of the great work of Rotary.
Have a wonderful week and I look forward to seeing you at some of our significant meetings in April.
Until next time – take care and spread kindness. Marion
