We are living in troubled times where we will need to change the way we go about our daily lives. Many in our community will face financial hardship, as people lose their jobs or small business owners cannot reduce their overheads sufficiently to a level required.
All of our meetings have been suspended until the restrictions are changed. We plan to issue a weekly bulletin to help keep all members up to date re our members situations and well-being.
I hope this situation will encourage members to forward items of interest to Danny to be included in the bulletin. Much of the content will be from district or RI but if you have something you feel would be of interest to our members please pass it on.
I have advised the AG that we have suspended our meetings in the forseeable future.
Please follow the guidelines set out by the health services stay safe.
Yours in Rotary.
Ray
From the Secretary
Dear members, in my report I will try to keep you abreast of all the latest news on the Corona Virus as it affects the Rotary movement. I can tell you that rotary is still conducting its business even though members aren't meeting face to face.
Bryan has been working hard behind the scenes looking at forums for us to use and he is in the process of setting us up on software known as ZOOM that works like a video conferencing program. Bryan will soon send you a link to the first ZOOM meeting we would like to conduct next Monday night at 6pm.
What you can do in the meantime is download the ZOOM application either onto your phone, tablet or personal computer (you'll need a web cam on your PC to see each other) and when the invite comes click YES. It will go into your calendar if you allow ZOOM access to your calendar.
Make sure you glam up if you are going to let the program access your camera!
We know that disasters can devastate a community, leaving people in urgent need of medical care, housing, and other necessities. Unlike most natural disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic is having a global impact that affects all of us. Rotarians like you are people of action even in a time of crisis, and Rotary is uniquely prepared to help communities around the world.
Clubs and districts can apply for Rotary disaster response grants to support COVID-19 relief efforts. These grants can be used to provide supplies and medical care and to support rebuilding efforts.
The Rotary Foundation Trustees recently approved placing $1 million in our Disaster Response Fund to make these grants immediately available for applications related to COVID-19. To make sure these grants can remain available, we’re asking for personal contributions to the Disaster Response Fund. These contributions will support the work Rotarians do as they help care for and protect people in their local communities and around the world. Make a gift to the Disaster Response Fund now.
Thank you for your dedication and service on behalf of Rotary.
Sincerely,
Gary C.K. Huang
Chair, The Rotary Foundation 2019-20
Cr Sandra Wilson suggested I get in contact. I am Director of Crashendo!, an after-school music education program at Laverton College. The program is free for students who do not have access to music classes and the instruments are provided. Crashendo! caters specifically to culturally and linguistically diverse students from economically disadvantaged families. A large percentage of the participants are refugees who have fled persecution in Thailand, Burma and Sudan. Crashendo! offers a direct benefit to the students and beyond that to their parents and the wider community. While learning to be creative and informed musicians, the students also develop skills in teamwork, commitment, concentration and coordination.
Crashendo! was established in 2011 as a partnership between Laverton P-12 College, Hobsons Bay City Council and Victoria Police Hobsons Bay. The program has grown from 20 to 90 students and diversified from string instruments to include flutes and clarinets.
The program is entirely dependent on philanthropy, grants and in-kind support. The average annual cost per student participating in Crashendo! is $1,000. This includes tuition, sheet music, instrument repairs and accessories, and afternoon snacks.
Is it possible to apply to Altona City Rotary for support for our program? Your support for Crashendo! would be greatly appreciated by the students and their families.
For more information about Crashendo!, please visit our website - www.crashendo.net
The Philippines is one of the most disaster prone areas in the world and is hit frequently by typhoons, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and flooding. These calamities generally cause many families to be displaced from their homes. Access to food and clean water becomes essential. The Rotary Club of Canterbury in Melbourne, Australia, has developed a new program called FORaMEAL to donate First Response Emergency Meals which consist of rice, oats, lentils and a sachet of minerals and vitamins. The meals are nutritious and come in a simple pack, enough to feed a family of six and only need a pot of boiling water. These packs are stored by local Rotary clubs in the Philippines in safe food vaults in readiness for the next disaster. They are quickly distributed free of charge and keep families fed until other relief food arrives.
To date, the FORaMEAL food packs have been successfully distributed to people in need in Burias and Ticao islands (typhoon), Ormoc (earthquake), Mt Mayon (volcanic eruption) and Marawi (insurgency).
Back in Australia, Rotarians, the general public and students, come together to assemble the packs. These events are renowned for creating high levels of fun and good will. Recently Rotary Clubs from Hobson Bay in Melbourne conducted an event at which they assembled packs enough to feed 14,000 people in just 2 hours. Well done Hobson Bay RC… and thank you. For more information about FORaMEAL go to http://www.forameal.com.au.
President Raymond Lipscombe
Rotary Club of Altona City
Dear President, Raymond
Greetings from Operation Cleft Australia!
We as Australians and Rotarians have never faced a situation like the present Covid-19 global crisis. We have a Pandemic, State of Emergency, border closures and nothing but bleak economic and dire health warning news! For good reason our Rotary Clubs are closed and under enormous pressure to meet commitments and sustain our many programs. What does all this mean for a successful 15-year-old Rotary project like Operation Cleft?
The good news is that through the support and generosity of Rotary Clubs and Rotarians across Australia over these years, Operation Cleft has been able to complete on your behalf more than 13,000 free, life changing surgeries for the poor and disadvantaged cleft suffering children of Bangladesh.
The challenge for us is that while Covid-19 continues to be so central in our thinking, more than 5000 mothers in Bangladesh this year will give birth to children inflicted with a debilitating Cleft Lip and/or palate issue.
We are only able to continue to provide these amazing humanitarian life changing surgeries if we have your continuing generous Club support. AUD300.00 (held at this level now for 4 years) will provide for the full costs of a single Cleft surgery.
Our wish is that you can remember Operation Cleft in your Club deliberations this financial year.
We thank you and your club in anticipation of your support and donation for this successful Australian Rotary project in this challenging 2020 year.
Thank you for helping to transform the lives of these desperately needy children. Your support means that as an outcome from this provision of free Surgery, these children can participate in School, enjoy improved health, make and sustain friendships, be accepted in their communities, play normal sport and …. Smile.
These are difficult and challenging times with Covid-19 impacting us all. As I write the reported cases of virus infections across Bangladesh are just 22 - significantly less than might be expected!
We have no clear idea of how this might change and unfold in coming days, and how it will affect our free Cleft surgical program in the weeks ahead! What we do know though, is that on average 14 children in Bangladesh will continue to be born every day, inflicted with a serious cleft lip/palate disability.
In these changing and challenging times for each one of us, we remind ourselves that with you, our generous partners and Rotary friends, we have, since 2005, enabled Operation Cleft to successfully undertake more than 13,000 life-changing surgeries. These surgeries are nothing short of a miracle in the eyes of the family and children impacted. This year, since July 1st, together with our program Partner DCKH we have completed in just 8 months 1,116 surgeries.
Every surgery is so deeply appreciated by the family and extended family involved. These families are very poor and doing it tough. There is no way they could afford to pay for such a complex operation. Without surgery babies will so often suffer serious malnutrition, affecting their immune system, resulting in ear, nose and throat infections. Along with this comes the social rejection and depression experienced. Hence what you and we are doing is so life changing and appreciated.
Despite the impending virus issues, it is imperative that we continue through these unknown and uncertain times to provide hope and a future for these Cleft suffering children and their families.
Thanks for your continued donations, support and partnership particularly through this present very difficult tough period. Together we are making a difference by gifting a child with a smile for life.
Enjoy the latest stories and information in this Autumn Newsletter.
Thank you,
Bruce McEwen
Chair.
Ron's smile and future will be brighter
Most of the time, children like Roni; who is eight years old miss out on receiving the life changing surgery. He has suffered ear and throat infections all his life.
When all boys and girls his age play together and go to school, Roni would miss out on many simple childhood activities. Scared of being bullied and laughed at, Roni's parents decided not to send him to the village school. The dad said that ‘Roni is a very bright boy and sometimes even a bit naughty. He loves to play Cricket “.
We met Roni during a cleft camp in Chittagong where we could see how much he enjoyed meeting other children and to play with them. Roni has four brothers. Sadly, his eldest brother was also born with cleft and further, he is deaf and dumb. The income of Roni’s father who works as a daily labourer hardly covers their living costs. For his family, it is a huge burden to take care of the children and to pay the medical expenses.
The good news is that with generous people like you in our country, Roni can have a normal childhood thanks to the life changing corrective surgery. It will not only change his appearance but will also give him access to education and his future choices would be limitless. His parents told us, that he is so excited about the prospect of going to school in the near future!
Generous support received from Abbott Australia
A very kind staff member from Abbott Australia; Jacqui Hodgkinson convinced her colleagues and work to choose OCA as the chosen charity to support and fundraise for during their Melbourne Cup weekend gathering.
The generous bunch at Abbott Australia raised over $15,000 to provide free cleft operations to poor children in Bangladesh!
We would like to express our gratitude to all who supported!
Thanks to our Media Supporters
We were fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to share our OCA story with The Senior newspaper in November last year and The Leader (City of Whitehorse) early February this year.
Please click below for the stories on the publisher's websites.
What started as a viral infection in China and was not taken seriously for far too long is now a global pandemic. COVID-19 has already changed our lives profoundly.
For us in Rotary, conferences and club meetings have been cancelled and each club and district are facing considerable challenges, certainly in the short to medium term. This is on top of the debilitating bushfire, drought and flood events during the past year.
For us in Australian Rotary Health, our ability to continue funding life changing research into mental illness and other health areas is paramount. The ARH Board, research committee and staff have run our great Australian Rotary project with distinction for the past 39 years and we don’t intend to let the coronavirus cause us to falter.
While there will undoubtedly be pressures to reduce the number of researchers we can fund, the extent of that will depend on the continued support from Rotary clubs and districts, by far our main source of income. I do earnestly ask that you continue to endorse Australian Rotary Health, knowing that 100% of every donated dollar is used for our health programs and indigenous and rural scholarships.
While we have been fortunate to build up our corpus in recent years which has allowed us to be in a very healthy financial position, COVID-19 is a challenge like no other we have seen. It will certainly have a profound effect mentally on many Australians. An experienced researcher told me today that, in her opinion, for many it will be a struggle to get back to normality.
The Governor General, David Hurley AC, rang CEO Joy Gillett earlier this week as a Patron of ARH. Among other things, he asked how we were faring with COVID-19 and whether our programs and plans are on track. David asked that his best wishes be passed onto all those involved, and so I do.
It is heartwarming to see our GG so connected and caring.
As we move into greater isolation, good health to you all from those at Australian Rotary Health.
Greetings from Evanston! We value your opinions and would like to hear about your experience working with Rotary International offices. Please help us evaluate your regional office and explore what we can do to improve our service.
Please complete this survey by clicking the link below before 5 April 2020:
