To celebrate our historic 5000th Club Meeting on 30th August 2023, Rotary Melbourne launched its 5000 Acts of Kindness project.
At the heart of Rotary is the ideal of service and doing good for one another. We are people of action, and we know that each little act makes a difference. Join us in making that difference, by performing your own Act of Kindness, and encouraging others to do the same.
Click on this button to share your Act of Kindness and help us reach 5000 acts!
or share on social media tagging your post with #5000actsofkindness and #rotarymelbourne.
It could be a simple personal act such as offering your seat to someone in need, or donating clothes you no longer wear. Perhaps you offer to babysit for a friend or play a card game with a senior. You could join us in one of our volunteering projects helping pack meals, planting trees, or packing cutlery at an Emergency Relief Network. You may sponsor a young person's education or support us to immunise children in the South Pacific.
Read the latest Acts of Kindness:
At our club’s historic 5000th Club Meeting on 30th August, at our Thomas Baker Oration with Past Prime Minister John Howard, Rotary Melbourne launched our 5000 Acts of Kindness project. How are we tracking?
To better treat snakebite victims in Papua New Guinea, we have purchased our first new ventillator as part of our club's new Snakebite Project.
The Star of the Sea College students who have won our 2024 Environment Award will use the proceeds of the award to purchase 2 beehives, generating 20,000 bees.
Rotary Melbourne has supported 15 new trainees aged 12-24 at Catering for Change, helping to train young people in hospitality who might otherwise be homelessness.
Funds raised by Rotary Club of Melbourne have this year enabled a further 5000 children to be immunised against polio.
Rotary Melbourne volunteers and friends packed 12,000 packs in 1.5 hours with ForAMeal.
Our Rotary Melbourne Elves are out in force this December supporting Launch Housing by helping to deliver over 2000 toys in time for Christmas for children impacted by homelessness.
Last week, Rotary Melbourne 's Health & Ageing committee hosted 50 elderly residents from inner Melbourne at our annual Seniors Lunch at Max's Restaurant in Red Hill. Our club has been hosting this lunch for over 20 years via our Health & Ageing Committee and it is funded by our annual Footy Tipping Competition. The guests, many of whom live in public housing, loved being out in nature and with friends.
Rotarian David Kram AM attended the Hush Foundation Gathering of Kindness at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre on Sunday 29 November. We heard compelling stories about the management choices that create healthcare service that is unkind to healthcare clients and workers, sometimes resulting in serious illness, or death
On Thursday 14 September 23 I took my wonderful Aunt to the Dandenong Botanic Gardens. The sun was shinning and it was going to be a fabulous day for both us to see the flowering cherry trees, lots of daffodils and of course Camellias and Rhododendrons.
My Aunt recently moved from her home, which had a beautiful garden, into an Age Care facility. As we all know if you have had to put one of your loved ones into care it is not easy for them.
We had a lovely drive up into the Dandenongs, had lunch at the cafe and then joined the electric bus, which took us on an open air tour of the gardens with an excellent commentary by a Parks Victoria official.
We stopped for a cuppa and coffee in Monbulk on the way home.
All in all a great day and my aunt was very appreciative of my Act of Kindness.
Spreading happiness to my dear mentor Mark the Guru who has been instrumental in my career and life. Expressing gratitude, acknowledging his guidance, and making him feel appreciate through his recovery.
Spending quality time together to reminisce and create new memories as his begins his new journey and new wheels to get moving again!
Some more acts of kindness from our members who registered their cats and dogs in our annual AFL tipping competition. ♥️💙 The extra entrants helped raise extra funds for our Health and Ageing Committee’s seniors lunch, taking a bus load of special seniors to the Mornington Peninsula each year. What’s more, many of the pets outperformed their owners with their tipping!! 🏉 #5000actsofkindness #rotarymelbourne
I have recently planted the sprouting I generously received at the recent John Howard global leadership lunch.
I made 4 huge meals including hot meals and salads for a couple who were unwell and needed some assistance. I also made a large pot of yummy chicken and vegetable soup for Rotarian John R Wall and delivered to his home as he was unwell. 😀😀😀 (Also added some walnut and apple buns, loaf of sourdough bread and chocolate! )
To launch our 5000 Acts of Kindness project, Rotary Melbourne donated 300 seedlings from the Victorian Indigenous Nursery Co-op for the 300 attendees at our 5000th Club Meeting to plant. It was a marvellous start to spread kindness to the environment. Each guest was able to take home one of the following plants: Acacia implexa, Allocasuarina verticillata, Acacia acinacea, Acacia montana, Cassinia aculeata, Correa glabra, Kunzea leptospermoides.
Donated our kids no longer used toys suitable for ages 3-12 to our local parish for families in need
Last week I visited my all time favourite teacher - John Uren - who taught me in 4th and 5th grade, after having brunch with his amazing wife Marg who began teaching at just 19.
John has Alzheimers. Despite the impact of this dreadful disease - his kindness, humility, keen interest in his surroundings and his integrity still shone through.
I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to thank him for being an extraordinary influence on my life.
It was John who taught me the true purpose of school education and what a teaching vocation as opposed to a teaching job looks and sounds like.
There is a John Uren in all our lives. Gratitude is a gift we can all afford to give.
Thank you to John Howard with two Acts of Kindness by donating signed copies of his latest book as raffle prizes supporting The Smith Family’s Learning for Life program.
Education is power, many multicultural young in the education system need extra wraparound support for them to complete their studies. Homework, proofreading, unpacking the questions, laptop or computer to do their assignments etc
I helped the Victorian Indigenous Nursery Co-op to courier the 300 native seedlings for planting today.
Our Rotary Melbourne Make House a Home project (MAHAH) delivered 15 sets (30 tea-chest boxes) of new homeware to Launch Housing’s front line offices in Dandenong and St Kilda.
Launch’s case workers were delighted to have a refreshed supply of boxes. They allocate them on a highest need basis to long term homeless clients when they can finally place them in a unit. After extended homelessness, these people typically own no homeware to set up afresh once they are housed. The boxes are also allocated to some victims of domestic violence who have left a dangerous situation with no household possessions.
Funded by the Rotary Melbourne budget, our “MAHAH” program is now in its fifth year and in that time has assisted more than 200 homeless people.
Chris Wang prepared and labelled all the boxes at his Sunshine warehouse and volunteers Marg Leser, Trevor Nink, Jim Orchard, Richard Parker and Sue Smith did the purchasing and packing.
Despite the pressure on the availability of DIK trucks, Bob Glindemann assisted and DIK’s volunteer driver Andy Steinicke did a marvellous job driving the congested round trip to Dandenong with Jim.
Launch Housing highly value what we do and the demand is real and ongoing.
“We humans are creatures of habit, and it is just as easy to acquire the habit of speaking kindly as it is to acquire the habit of speaking unkindly”
— Paul Harris, 1935
When he spoke at the 1935 Rotary Convention in Mexico City, Paul Harris had only recently returned from a journey though Asia and the Pacific. He reflected on the opportunities for friendship he encountered on his trip and reminded members of their duty to act as ambassadors of goodwill. Read the full speech.
