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| OUR DGN TO BE - RAY HERBERT |
 On July 1st., our District will have a new District Governor Nominee - PP Ray Herbert from the Rotary Club of Mount Gambier West.
Ray and his wife, Deidre have 3 adult children and 1 granddaughter. Deidre commits her spare time to Lifeline, Tele-cross and Meals on Wheels.
Born in Adelaide, Ray and the family moved to Mount Gambier in 1951. Schooled locally, Ray gained a Hawkesbury Diploma in Dairy Technology in 1998.
Ray managed factories producing cheese & packaged milk. In 1994, the family became co-proprietors of Kalganyi Holiday Park which they sold in 2015. Ray subsequently supervised at Mitre 10 and Masters Home improvement.
Ray has served the community not only through Rotary, but through School Councils and the YMCA, even serving as National Board member under President Royce Abbey. He has also been a Board member of Group Training Employment since 1993.
Ray joined Rotary in 1994 and held positions including Secretary, Public Officer, Bulletin Editor and was President in 2009-10. He has been recognised as a Paul Harris Fellow (sapphire). Ray was until recently, Assistant Governor of Group 1.
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| CLUB STRENGTHENING PR GRANTS |
 Applications for the Club Strengthening PR Grants are open NOW. You can download the Application Form and Guidelines from www.rotary9780.org under the Public Relations Tab on the home page. Closing date for submission of an application is June 30, 2015, so its time to finalise your planning and get your application in! Remember that you can apply for up to $2000 to support your Club’s PR plan |
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| INVITATION TO DISTRICT CHANGEOVER LUNCHEON |
All Rotarians in the Dist rict on email will receive within the next week an invitation to this year's District 9780 Changeover Luncheon. This important District event will be held on Sunday, June 28th at the ‘Wyndham Hotel’, Cnr Darian Road & The Esplanade, Torquay Vic 3228, commencing at 12 for 12.30pm (Victorian time). We encourage you to attend to welcome our incoming District Governor, Jane Cox and launch the new Rotary theme in our District. We would like attendees to pre-pay using Electronic Funds Transfer, and the details will be on the invitation.
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Elimination Games - Alternatives to “Heads and Tails”
 Many of our District clubs have been playing variations of “Heads and Tails” as a short fun interlude during meetings. I’m looking to gather a collection of alternatives to Heads and Tails or Elimination games to use as an occasional change from the traditional activity.
The key guidelines for these games are as follows: they work as an elimination game with a last (hu)man standing at the end – who may receive a small prize; every member and visitor should be able to play; the game must be easy to understand and quickly explain to newbies; and the game can take no longer than two to three minutes. If you have any such Elimination game activities, please send them to me at geoffandmeryl@aanet.com.au
For those who don't know “Heads and Tails”, here is the version used at Maryborough Rotary:
Set Up: You need two 20 cent or 50 cent coins and two members to flip the coins – one each.
Game: Every participant has to stand and take up one of three positions: Heads – both hands on their head; Tails – both hands on their backside; Odds – one hand on their head and one on their backside.
Once participants have taken up their positions, the two “coin flippers” toss their coins into the air, catch them with one hand and slap them onto the back of their other hand to reveal either a “head” or a “tail” They call out one of three possible combinations: Two tails = “Tails”; two heads = “Heads”, one head and one tail = “Odds”. Participants who have taken up the corresponding position to the coin toss remain standing. All others sit down. Those remaining standing have to take up one of three positions again and coins are tossed again. The game continues until either one player remains standing and wins a small prize, or all have been eliminated.
Colour elimination
Set Up: You will need a set of cards or pieces of paper with one common colour written on each, and a container e.g. a hat or small box. Suggested colours: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, grey, brown, orange, pink, cream, purple. Alternatively, have a set of 12 coloured pencils or coloured felt markers.
Games: Every participant stands and the game master takes out one of the coloured cards or pencils and announces the colour. e.g. grey. Everyone wearing any item of clothing or underclothing matching any variation of the announced colour can remain standing – all others must sit down and are “out” of the game. The game master then produces another colour e.g. blue. Those wearing any form of this colour can remain standing. Further colours are produced until one person remains standing and wins a small prize, or all have been eliminated.
An alternative to this game is to have participants sit down if they are wearing the announced colour.
Monte Carlo
Set Up: You need a pack of cards. The Ace of each suit is blue-tacked or placed in a different corner of the room or meeting area.
Game: Participants choose to gather in one of the four corners near one of the four cards. A random person is asked to pull a card from the pack. The people in the corner matching the suit of the card pulled from the pack are eliminated and sit down. Participants then re-distribute themselves around the corners and another card is drawn, and so on.
Spin the Bottle Elimination
Set up: You need an empty bottle.
Game: Participants distribute themselves in four corners of the meeting area. The gamemaster spins the bottle on the floor or a table in the centre of the meeting area and all participants in the corner closest to where the bottle points are eliminated. Participants redistribute themselves and the process continues until one remains and wins a small prize.
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| WORKING SMARTER NOT HARDER |
 One of the most time consuming components of being a leader in Rotary is the time it takes to get to meetings – especially in our largely rural District of 9780.
One way to minimize this problem is to have meetings online. Over the last year, the Finance Committee has been meeting this way, and whilst it hasn’t always been plain sailing for us, we believe it is a workable solution that will only get better as Broadband speeds increase in Australia.
Here are some suggestions based on our experience.
Initially we used the “GoToMeeting” program which works well, but can be costly. So we then tried “Skype”. Skype has the advantage of having a freely downloadable program on several computer platforms, it is now part of the increasingly popular Microsoft 365 set of programs, and many computer users would be familiar with it.
For a group call, all members of the group must have the Skype program correctly installed on their computer or device. They also need to have their own microphone and speakers so they can hear and speak through the program. We highly recommend that for best effect on a PC, each participant purchases a headphone set of USB Headphones with an attached microphone.
Well before the first meeting, all members of the group need to share their “Skype address” with each other member, and every member needs to add the others to their “contact list” in Skype. The program tells you how to do this.
Before each call, every participant should test their sound and voice settings by calling the Skype testing service. It is important to do this regularly, because computer updates can affect these settings. And whilst talking of updating, it is important to keep updating your version of Skype to the latest version to minimize conflicts.
We have discovered that the best way to make a group call is for ONE leader to call all the other members at a pre-arranged time. This leader starts by calling one other group member. Once the call is established, the leader then clicks the “Add members” button at the bottom of the screen (in the current version) and then clicks all of the group members in the list of contacts that pops up. As the group members answer, their names (and maybe photographs) will appear on the Skype screens of all participants. There is a video explaining this process available at: https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA2831/how-do-i-make-a-group-call-in-skype-for-windows-desktop
Our group has discovered some limitations to the system. The meetings start out fine with acceptable sound quality for up to 10 people, but we have discovered on a couple of occasions that after 40 to 50 minutes, the sound quality seems to deteriorate. It might have been the prime internet time when we had our meetings (7pm-9pm), but whatever it is, it might be wise to plan quick meetings! Furthermore, whilst it is nice to have live video for meetings, video conferencing is much more demanding on computer and internet resources, so turn off cameras and plan to only use audio contact - especially for more than four people.
We encourage clubs and district committees to give online meetings a go with their committees, and to stick with the process through the inevitable teething problems. On line meetings will not replace all “face to face” meetings, but they can certainly save us time by replacing some of our routine gatherings.
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Special thanks this month to the Rotary Club of Ballarat South, the Rotary Club of Camperdown, the Rotary Club of Hamilton and the Rotary Club of Drysdale for their generous donations to the Aquabox program, and to any other clubs I may have missed. We have heard that Aquaboxes are now on the ground in Nepal, and a company called Himalayan Trekking Institute (HGI) will collect and store the boxes at their Trekking offices and ensure they are safely distributed from there. Only one month to go and we will find out the amazing amount our District has donated to Aquaboxes over this Rotary year. Thank you all!
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| IT'S TIME TO MAKE FOUNDATION DONATIONS |
We have be en challenged with many demands on our "aid" money in recent months with seemingly one disaster after another. This might help to explain why the figures for our year-to-date giving to the Rotary Foundation, our own charity, is quite a bit less than last year. If clubs or individuals have planned to make donations in this Rotary year, we encourage you to do so in the next couple of weeks. The money we give to the Foundation SHARE program comes back to our District in three years time to enable our District Clubs to take advantage of Rotary Grants for projects we believe are worthwhile. Please make your payments now through our District Giving chair, Peter Simons or direct to the Rotary Foundation office in Parramatta (after informing Peter). More details will be found in a letter emailed to all District members around the same time as this newsletter.
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| NATIONAL ROTARY SUCCESS & YOUTH CONFERENCE |
The National Rotary Success Conference is to be held over the weekend of 5–6 September 2015 at the Hellenic Club, Woden in Canberra.
Jonathon Welch from the Choir of Hard Knocks and Andrew McLeod will both be actively involved in the conference. RI Director Mary Beth Growney Selene will be the keynote speaker on the Saturday morning. Mary Beth is a dynamic speaker on membership. She was heavily involved in the Young Professionals Conference in the US.
Who should be attending? All Rotary Leaders, Presidents and Presidents Elect, PR Chairs, Membership Chairs and Future Rotary Leaders and Rotarians who want to be involved in the continuing success of Rotary in Australia. There will be presentations about a number of new innovative ideas on a wide range of topics, all practical ideas that can be used in al Rotary Clubs.
The program will consist of mainly breakout groups enabling everyone to be able to participate and interact over the weekend in a practical, worthwhile and meaningful way. The breakout groups will cover a wide range of topics.
Coupled with the Rotary Success Conference this year will be a Youth Summit for people under 40 years of age.
This Conference will be focussing on the future. We are positive that every Rotarian will gain practical knowledge and new ideas to take back to their Clubs and Districts from this Conference. You will meet Rotarians from across Australia and New Zealand and be able to share with them your ideas and hear their ideas; it will be a great experience for everyone.
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| CAMBODIAN STUDENT DISCOVERY TOUR - AN ALTERNATIVE TO SCHOOLIES WEEK |
 The Rotary Clubs of Ararat, Beaufort and Stawell are calling for expressions of interest from local young people wishing to participate in an 'alternative schoolies' trip to Cambodia in Nov-Dec 2015.
The trip to Cambodia is open to senior students and is an ideal alternative for those looking to celebrate their year 12 graduation with a meaningful experience. The cost for the 13 day trip is expected to be under $3000 for each student, which includes travel, accommodation and meals, as well as fundraising for humanitarian projects.
The purpose of the tour is to learn about the history of Cambodia, to form a deeper understanding of the difficulties that developing countries face and to understand the complexities of international development work. Students will return with a greater understanding of the world around them through the experiences of this tour and form memories that will last a lifetime.
This follows a successful trip to Vietnam in January 2014 where students raised money for educational projects in Hanoi and Hoi An and contributed to educational needs in Vietnamese rural schools through Loreto-Vietnam Australia Foundation.
This year the proposed itinerary to Cambodia combines, history, culture, humanitarian and educational experiences. An experience not to be missed!
A Unique Cultural Experience:
Students will visit community development projects of Morodok a local Cambodian NGO in Sre Ambel, a rural town in coastal Cambodia. Students will be fortunate to have a Stawell-based guide who lived for a year in this village as a host during their stay. This is a unique experience that most visitors to Cambodia do not get.
Our Tour Guide:
Carly Garonne is an avid supporter of Rotary having been a former Rotary International Exchange Student, RYLA and RYPEN participant and former President of the Interact Club of Mildura. Her family hosted 10 Rotary International Exchange Students while she was growing up that inspired her international travel.
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| VOLUNTEERS REQUIRED TO REFURBISH HOWARD HAUS, BOMANA, PNG |
 David Goldsmith (RAWCS Chair D9780) is seeking 18 or so volunteers to head to Bomana in Papua New Guinea.
First team leaving on 18th/19th of July – return 1st August ‘15.
Second team leaving 1st/2nd August – return 15th August ‘15
Each team is required to have one person with carpentry skills and one person with plumbing skills and unless either have tiling experience, one person is needed for that also. Both men and women are encouraged to come. One of the team of 9 will be the cook for the group.
Accommodation is provided in single and twin-bunk rooms at Keaga Haus. Each room has a ceiling fan and a hand basin. A completely refurbished ablution block is provided with a washing machine. The kitchen facilities were also recently refurbished and are in very good condition and well appointed. There is no charge for accommodation.
Meals
Previous RAWCS Teams have delegated the cook to organise the food to be purchased from the local supermarket. The average cost per day is about $60 or $65 per day (non drinker /drinker (based on beer).
Travel Cost
The travel cost is about $1000 per person (based on a return flight Melbourne to Port Moresby with Qantas). Actual costs may vary depending on the airline. All visitors to PNG require a Visa that is free for volunteers and takes 1 - 15 days from the PNG Consulate in Brisbane. All Team members will use the electronic Volunteer registration process on the RAWCS website.
Free Time
Saturday and Sunday is free and a trip to Owen’s Corner (the start of the Kokoda Trail) is usually arranged together with a trip to the local markets. The Team usually visits the Port Moresby Rotary Club that meets at the Yacht Club in Port Moresby. A farewell dinner in the Yacht Club is easy to organise.
Below is the link to the Visa application. A very worthwhile project as they all are. Please consider carefully as it is an experience of a lifetime.
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| ROTARIANS WORKING ACROSS DISTRICTS |
 Within our own district we have a club that gained assistance from a club in another district. It was during the drought in ’08 that MASH (Mont Albert & Surrey Hills Rotary Club D 9810) sought out the Rotary Club of Beaufort to see how they could help.
Many years later the relationship has gone from strength to strength. The RC Beaufort even travel to Melbourne to assist MASH by giving assistance in their fundraising activities. A few of the activities where assistance is provided have been Defying the Drift, Lake Goldsmith Steam Rally, The Beaufort Show and the Tree Planting amongst others. The District Sustainable Communities Committee has become involved in the Tree Planting program, a future story in the making.
This is a great example of how clubs can strengthen each other across districts where across the globe or in our own backyard. Picture: MASH members learn what life is like down on the farm.
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| DISTRICT GRANTS APPROVED BY THE DISTRICT COMMITTEE |
This year’s applications for Rotary Foundation District Grants funding have been received, reviewed, and funding has been allocated.
The District Spending Plan has been submitted to TRF and we confidently expect agreement. TRF simply want to ensure that all grants are eligible for funding under the TRF Terms and Conditions. Funds will not be made available until after July 1 and only after we successfully report on last year’s District Grants projects.
Assuming TRF agreement, this year a record $45,900 will be made available to club and district based projects. Last year the funding made available was $32,649 which was itself a record and a considerable increase from the $8,235 the previous year. Back in the old days of District Simplified Grants the average was about $12,000 per year.
This year it is possible to fund grants to the level requested by 10 clubs. The grants approved by the District Grants Subcommittee include the following club projects.
• Erect eight Very Low Cost Shelters in the village of Veluapara, Bangladesh.
•Restore bathrooms and toilets at the Passo Displacement Camp, Ambon, Indonesia.
• Books for beginners.
• Water tank for Kompiam District Hospital, PNG.
• Livvi's Place - All inclusive playground, a space for everyone.
• Clean water for Vulnerable Children & Families, Kampot, Cambodia.
• Street swags for homeless.
• Sariri village water reticulation project, Oro Province, PNG.
• Taking initiative to the community (through YMCA).
Approved funding of district sponsored projects.
• Indigenous medical scholarship at Deakin.
• Nursing paramedicine scholarships, two smaller scholarships at ACU Ballarat.
The list of projects demonstrates a considerable diversity.
All the information about District Grants, including the application form, is available from the D9780 web site or from the District Grants Subcommittee Chair.
Clubs must be qualified. This means each club must send at least one representative to The Rotary Foundation Grants Seminar which is normally held in November, and must sign two MOU, one the formal one required by TRF in Evanston and the other an Addendum MOU which spells out the specific D9780 requirements.
Only eligible clubs can apply for grants. The requirements are not onerous. Our D9780 restrictions include; setting a maximum grant of $3,000 per club per year, ensuring that clubs provide funds greater than or equal to the amount of District Grant funds sought, and that clubs will only be paid their grant funding on receipt of a satisfactory brief report, including copies of receipts. Our D9780 MOU Addendum simplifies, or may eliminate, the formal TRF banking requirements.
Next Rotary year the District Grants Subcommittee Chair will be PP Martin Hill of Ballarat, email: ushills@bigpond.net.au.
Over the past two years District Rotary Foundation Chair Brian Trenery and Jerry Leech have tried to settle down the grants application process. The introduction of the new TRF grants model known as "Future Vision" has incorrectly be seen by some as a brave new world and too complicated for clubs. In fact the procedures for clubs have been simplified. The challenges have been at district level where there are new requirements necessary to meet stewardship requirements as more responsibility is devolved to districts. One major advantage is that we can now have overseas District Grant Projects. We are more in control of things but we do have to meet TRF imposed requirements, all of which make sense.
An advantage too is that, thanks to clubs increasing their TRF fund raising under the leadership of PDG Ted Gaffney and PP Peter Simons, we have considerably more money that can be allocated to District Grants.
So the good news is that next year there will be even more money available for District Grants!
Please attend the TRF Grants Seminar in November. Please get your club to sign the two MOU. Please submit applications to Martin Hill before April 15 2016.
Late Breaking News. We have been advised that the 2015/16 Spending Plan has been approved by TRF subject to the 2104/15 D9780 Grants Report being finalised. This is in hand. Funds should automatically transferred to D9780 by TRF shortly after July 1 when the new District Treasurer takes over.
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| WENDOUREE BREAKFAST 25TH ANNIVERSARY |
 The Rotary Club of Wendouree Breakfast celebrated 25 years’ service in their community with a celebration dinner held on Saturday 2 May 2015 at Pipers by the Lake, Wendouree Parade, Ballarat. Current and past members joined in the festivities with guests including members from other Rotary Clubs. Approximately 86 people attended the milestone event.
The Rotary Club of Wendouree Breakfast is a proud club of Rotary International and like all clubs, is managed by a voluntary board.
The Club’s 51 members, with an equal representation of men and women with an average age of around 50 years, makes it one of the younger clubs in Rotary District 9780.
The Club is renowned for its great sense of fun and fellowship and its lively breakfast meetings. Members are dedicated service providers contributing regularly to a range of local, national and international service projects. Fundraising activities are held regularly with all proceeds being distributed to local and international projects. In the 2013/2014 Rotary year more than $35,000 was distributed to a number of Ballarat organisations.
Members may be found participating in projects such as the Red Cross Blood Donation Challenge, Smoke Detector Battery Changeover Service, Ballarat Swap Meet and the Ballarat Beer Festival. The Club was also involved in the organisation of the Mother’s Day Classic, which was a joint initiative with the Rotary Club of Alfredton. Club members also participated in the ANZAC Day celebrations by making poppies, erecting bunting at the George Hotel and constructing the 3801 poppy memorial used at the Dawn Service at the Arch of Victory on ANZAC Day.
President Mark Bennett said, ‘It is a rewarding experience to be a Rotarian in this Club. I am very proud of the level of support provided by our members who uphold the Service Above Self Rotary motto at all times.”
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District Chair for the Interplast Committee John Oswald has forwarded a link to the latest Interplast newsletter to be circulated to the members of the District.
Otherwise here is a taste of the contents
• Our thoughts are with Nepal
• Fundraising to change lives
• Over to you Melbourne!
Upcoming Programs
Right now and over the next few weeks, we have volunteer teams in the Solomon Islands and Bhutan for surgical programs, a team in Mongolia mentoring in burns management, as well as program evaluations being undertaken in Laos and Bangladesh.
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| ROTARY HELPING WITH HEAT RELIEF FOR PENSIONERS |
 At the Rotary Conference in Maryborough, it was announced that district clubs may soon have the opportunity to be involved in the creation and implementation of an exciting new initiative called HEAT RELIEF.
In a nutshell, this council-sponsored project aims to help the most vulnerable members of our community to be better prepared for heatwaves.
Rotary Preserve Planet Earth Chairman Alan Killicoat said “this HEAT RELIEF project ticks all the boxes for a Rotary project. Pensioners are very much at risk when high summer temperatures are sustained for a number of days and nights. This project could deliver vital advice on cooling as well as house retrofits and solar panels. It has clear social, environmental and economic benefits”
The project is being developed by the Council members of the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance (made up of 13 councils) with a number of other councils considering coming onboard. The Alliances wrote to the Preserve Planet Earth Committee seeking Rotary assistance and the committee agreed to become a project partner.
After the conference announcement, Rotarians from twelve district clubs expressed interest in being involved. The PPE committee is now seeking further expressions of interest. If your Club is interested in knowing more about HEAT RELIEF, please contact PPE Chair, Alan Killicoat on (08 )8752 1604
At this early stage, the project partners committee have identified the following roles for the PPE committee and Rotary Clubs across the Region.
1. Preserve Planet Earth Committee role in project development.*
This will involve attendance at around 6 high-level meetings with funding bodies and State Government politicians over a four to six month period as the project takes shape.
2. Rotary Clubs local role in HEAT RELIEF roll-out
This could involve Clubs working with their local governments to ensure that all pension card holders in their municipality understand the range of services being offered by the Heat Relief program.
This could involve distributing publicity, developing press releases, securing interviews on local radio and regional TV, picking up pensioners and driving them to venues and liaising with other service clubs as well as Probus and Landcare groups.
* A pilot Heatwave Support program involving the City of Bendigo and the municipalities of Central Goldfields, Mount Alexander, Macedon Ranges and Buloke will be completed by mid-year.
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| PROJECT - BIRTHING FACILITY IN EAST TIMOR |
The Rotary Club of Erina, on the NSW Central Coast has an opportunity for a person with plumber/electrician/painter/builder to join the team going to Remexio in East Timor to assist with the renovation of the existing birthing facility. The team will be staying in local accommodation and a container will be sent prior, loaded with necessary items.
This is a RAWCS approved project and current members have been working in the Remexio for a number of years.
The dates are from the 14th of July to 28th of July 2015
Please do not hesitate to contact the organisers details are below.
If there are any further queries you may contact, email monniehart@hotmail or mobile 0418 969 598 or the project manager Ross Pearse, rosspearse@me.com or mobile 0408 416 906
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We would like to welcome Shahed Amin, a Project Engineer with the Swan Hill Rural City Council was inducted into the Rotary Club of Swan Hill on the 9th of April.
The District would like to hear from clubs that have new members so the whole district can celebrate.
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Send Us Your Articles
Send articles for "Illuminations" to District Secretary, Derrick Marsden using email: sandek44@bigpond.com. The deadline for submissions is the 10th of each month and we aim to publish on the 15th of each month.
Have you checked your personal profile?
To review your personal profile, login at the link on the top right of the District website. If logon details are needed, click on "I forgot my password" and follow the instructions (logon details will then be emailed to you). Edit My Profile' from the main Administration Menu after logon, under "For Members". Review the details in each section, and click on 'Edit' to make any necessary changes. Save the changes. To change your password, select 'Change My Password' from the main Administration Menu after logon, under "For Members". Create a new password to one you will remember, and save. Have a good look around the administration site. Thank you for helping ensure that your membership record here, and at Rotary International, is accurate. Keep up to date by regularly visiting the District Website.
Privacy
You are receiving this email as a member or friend of one of the 59 Rotary Clubs within Rotary International District 9780. If, for any reason, you do not want to receive communications of this nature, please email our district web administrator at webadmin@rotary9780.org. You can download our District 9780 Privacy Policy from our District Website. It is located in "Download Files" in the bottom left hand corner of the Home Page.
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webadmin@rotary9780.org.
Save a tree. Please think twice before printing this document. Do you really need a hard copy?
Club Secretaries: Please remember to distribute a hard copy of this eNewsletter to those members with no internet presence?
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