PRESIDENT MARION'S LAST BULLETIN REPORT TO MEMBERS

Dear colleagues, this is my final message to you as President.  It has been an absolute privilege to be your President in this Centennial year.  Our Club has some of the best and most committed community service-minded people I know, in particular, everyone on the Board; our stalwart members; and our amazing project champions.  If you had any doubts about what our Club can do, then the VP’s day would have dispelled those.  Our Club has operated throughout COVID to support its community, as if there was no COVID.  It has been the support and commitment of our Board that has kept our Club going through this very difficult year.

We’ve had our ups and we’ve had some downs but the ups have outweighed them!

In our celebratory year and even during lockdown, we managed to successfully profile our wonderful R100 projects and enjoy a tremendous Centenary lunch that made all in attendance so proud to be part of Rotary and especially of our Club.  Our year raised almost $118,000 for ‘Rotary Give Every Child a Future’, ‘Healing the Hurt’ received $100,000 towards programs for mental health, ‘Safe Families’ established an Ambassador’ program that now has 20 Ambassador clubs with another 14 in the pipeline, and ‘End Trachoma’, ‘The Hush Foundation’, and ‘Hepatitis Awareness’ projects also had their own successes.

I remain incredibly honoured to have been selected as your President and to have fulfilled my commitment to all those who put their faith in me.

In reflecting upon our objectives, the Board has indeed addressed very many of the challenges it set for itself in advance of the year.  We have introduced a significant number of new members – inducting 15 new members, with seven others waiting to go and increasing our ordinary members by six - thanks to the incredible efforts of Chanti Bou, Kerry Kornhauser, and their teams. By profiling Rotary, its members and its projects, they enabled Rotary to put its best foot forward in engaging with those who would join or collaborate with us.  This also included a strengthened relationship with the City of Melbourne.

Chantida Bou and her team collected Rotary stories from many of our members and initiated topic-specific events, including international speakers, which raised the profile of our Club and its followers.  Her topics included: Navigating the Challenges and Opportunities in Retirement; New and Emerging Leaders in Rotary; Business and Professional connections in Rotary; Positive Energy for a Better World; Mentoring in Rotary and what it Means in Practice; Building Resilience and Mindset in Rotary.  This created much social media interest and a cohort of international followers.

We managed to continue to have higher than usual membership engagement, even though this was mostly on Zoom – which was briefly novel! – before we longed for face to face meetings again. Our events team of Chris Stillwell, Suresh Marcandan, Mikaela Stafrace and Renata Bernarde ensured we had fantastic speakers and were kept knowledgeable of the COVID challenges.  Our event featuring Brett Sutton was converted to a webinar, so as to manage the extraordinary interest, with 300,000 click throughs and over 3,000 subscribing to attend.

We introduced the ‘Great Debate’ with Sydney as a fun way to engage with our Centenary clubs, and both Sydney and Wellington are longing for a return bout and the chance to challenge for the ‘Stillwell Cup’.

Behind the scenes, we had Nina Hunter, Peter Waschusen, Mark Pinoli, Ari Talantis and Yidan Xi preparing and sharing all our fantastic stories via vignettes, RCM events, and social media.  David Carruthers championed the members’ lunch program, and brought us insights from our members both new and older.  There was always Jo Mavros to help out with the organisation, and we discovered she has special zoom ‘spotting’ talents!

Our governance team of Russell Board, Peter Hanlon, Peter Davis and Tony Greenwood ensured that our governance practice remained absolutely best class, and they continue to manage improvements to our policies and constitution.

Our projects could not have been more important for this year and whilst Jim Orchard led the Caravan project to provide physical support for the bushfire recovery, Pam Brown and Norman Talarud-Bay led the mental health support with their training and ‘Healing the Hurt’ programs.  This RAG also managed to get DGR 1 status.

Our ‘Safe Families’ program took off with the Ambassador initiative championed by Dorothy Gilmour and - as a result -  we now have dozens of clubs fundraising for their own local initiatives and raising awareness of this shocking problem, using the assets developed by Dorothy and Mary Barry.

Our International Women’s Day fundraiser, with Kerry Kornhauser and Robyn Hollands leading the team, managed to reach a record 4,000 plus viewers with a stellar speaking cast that included our Lord Mayor Sally Capp and Jacinda Ardern, who has been rated the highest ranking Prime Minister globally.  We also attended the celebratory events and further strengthened our relationships with the other Centenary clubs of Sydney, Wellington and Auckland, and our Sister City clubs, including a strengthening of the alignment with Amiens through David Kram.

‘Women CAN’ prospered under Mikaela Stafrace and grew exponentially.  We were also able to provide some opportunities for our worst-smitten community under COVID, the Arts community, to engage with us.

The Centenary lunch and following Peace Symposium, which had to ‘pivot’ quickly in the COVID environment, were both exceptional events.  The lunch celebrated the best of Rotary, featuring 100 years of the projects that make us proud to be Rotarians, including those especially developed by RCM’s R100 team, alongside a presentation of the future as outlined by our MUNA school students.  The lunch was exceptionally well executed by our Past Presidents, led by Chris Stillwell, and the Peace Symposium was equally well orchestrated by Murray Verso, Mark Pinoli and their teams.

In this new post-COVID world we have set in train a comprehensive effort to provide hybrid meetings into the future.  This will combine the best of our online and face-to-face meetings and be inclusive of all our diverse and growing membership and is being championed by President elect Reg Smith

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In the background, maintaining the routines of the Club, were the hardworking members of our Club:  This included the lunch organising team, SecondBite, ‘Round the Bay’, and all the committee work that managed to transition within this strange environment and keep our suite of awards and special meetings on track.  Our newer members, including Serena Low, Yidan Xi, Claire Fraser, George Giamadakis and Sarah Macleod Bourke, also put their shoulder to the wheel bringing new skills to support our online environment.

For those who attended our VP’s day, you would have seen how much has been achieved.  Our International team, with all of the recent constraints, was able to support those less fortunate than us by shipping sewing machines to East Timor, supporting Cambodians, and many other projects.  Our newest committee, the Environmental Sustainability committee, hit the ground running by working out our carbon footprint and initiating a new award for Environmental Sustainability.  It was a stellar performance by the whole Club.

Serving the vast majority of the Club has been an honour.  However, I now intend to take a temporary ‘leave of absence’ after what has been a very demanding year. Nonetheless, during this, I intend to progress a ‘feather duster’ project which you will no doubt hear about – ‘Jumbo Tennis’!

So, as we end the year, I hope you feel as proud as I do of our strong, vibrant and dynamic Club and its members; a Club that took us through COVID, celebrated its Centenary with panache, and is ready and set for a vibrant future in the post-COVID world.  (Copies of the Centenary lunch video are available from Jo)

As our outgoing Board farewells our members, we all wish the incoming Board – another spectacular line-up of Rotarians - and the 1st year of the New Century our very best wishes.

I look forward to returning after a break, and in the meantime I wish you, beannacht leibh, auf wiedersehen, au revoir, arrivederci, lehitraot, geia sas, sayônara, and a great 101st year!