Rotary Club of Burlington Central. Club Assembly 21st of February 2019
Guests: Mana and Manel Rotary Youth Exchange students
Fareen Samji Visitor from North Club
Larry Chester Visitor from Oakville Club
Sean Tomkins our Outbound student and his parents
Manel went for Chinese New Year's lunch with Lawrence Leung followed by a visit to an Asian market.
Mana has visited the Trafalgar Rotary club with a member of the North club. She met with a Buddhist monk who lives at 3000 m which is about the height of Mount Fuji. She went to the Burlington Civic Chorale Singers Valentine Cabaret with Anthony and Lee Ford-Jones. She also attended the New Year's Chinese New Year lunch and went to the Pacific Mall. She went to the McMichael Gallery with Wayne Gowan and enjoyed the Canadian art. She was particularly pleased to see a piece of art depicting two large, raw salmon fillets! (Sushi is her all time favourite food, with salmon at the top!) Mana has done another piece of origami for each of the tables to celebrate the Year of the Pig.
Sean Tomkins is excited about the announcement of his exchange destination sometime next week. There is a special event at which this will be announced.
Pitch at the Podium is a new venture for the club and Nancy Penny put up her $10 for a two-minute pitch and told us about Warnica Insurance who are pleased to announce a new service through the Pro Link network which has been set up to evaluate individuals’ insurance policies to help people to understand their policies and find out what they actually need and what they don't need and what they've got, a very useful sounding service.
Larry Chester came from the Rotary club of Oakville to announce the Signature Speakers Series, who have hosted speakers of distinction such as Dr Stephen Levine the inventor of the "Virtual Heart Simulator”, Romeo Dallaire, and Stephen Cornish. Sally Armstrong will be speaking an author and journalist and War Correspondent and humanitarian. She's been much involved with Afghanistan and Women's Issues. She's a four-time recipient of the Amnesty International Award and a Member of the Order of Canada, recently promoted to Officer. She will be coming on May 27 and will be talking at the New Oakville Hospital from 6:30 to 9 PM. The cost will be $55 and there will be no parking fees.
Club Assembly
Karmel Sakran spoke for Youth Services. There is strong support for the Youth Exchange program with the extraordinary involvement and dedication of Sheila Welham. There is a question about whether the Club will continue to commit to RYLA. An Interact Club may be started up at Hayden High School. The logistics are being examined. Karmel solicits members to the Youth Committee.
Robert Martin spoke for Admin. He is looking for ideas and is pulling in a lot of support. Alan Ramsay has been a huge help along with Nancy Penny, Lawrence Leung, all looking at adding to the social activities of the club. The off-site breakfasts have been a success. They’re looking for other venues to do this and places to do good and to put our money. They are looking for ideas.
Community Service. Nancy Penny addressed the need for a new computer for weekly presentations; the current dinosaur PC only runs Windows 7 and needs Windows 10. It's likely that this will come to pass soon.
The Breakfast Programs are active at Tecumseh, Mohawk Gardens and Kings Road schools.
The Telling tales Festival, supported by our club for all the years it's been in existence gets bigger and more successful each year and last year had 7000 in attendance. 22 Rotary clubs and private funding supports this excellent event.
Donations Committee: Randy Reeves. Donations are decided upon in September, April and May.
We have a new banner designed using the Skyway Bridge logo that we already have. This will be distributed to Rotary clubs that members visit for make-ups.
Memorial trees are ready to be assigned.
Sadly the Burlington Rotary Music Festival will be cancelled this year after 22 years of extraordinary work. The money on hand will be distributed to yet to be decided musical ventures. There was no discussion nor explanation as to what led to this decision.
The Continuing Education Scholarship, $200 per annum, has been presented each year to a student at Bateman and since this school is being closed it will have to be redirected.
The Syrian family fund continues.
The hockey equipment for indigenous children in need came in in huge quantities: literally several tonnes were gathered and distributed in eight truckloads! This was from four clubs.
Please look at the Directors’ page on Club Runner to see your slate of Directors and for details of committees.
Also to be found is the duty roster and the breakfast programme roster.
Rob Sybersma present are the treasurer’s report which can be found online. In a nutshell there are $70,000 in the coffers.
Fund Raising: Joe Watson has a committee of Rod Collard, Catherine Brady, Bryce Leggett, Peter Thoem, Ron Lambert, and Andrew Gaydon who are looking to come up with other ways of raising funds. Two ideas are proposed: a monthly club auction, for example: a round of golf for two, and dinner. A painting by Catherine. A weekend at somebody's holiday property. A Rotary Bike a Thon such as the Ride to Provide In February is successful and could be a source of revenue. This will be headed up by Bryce and Glenn.
The Golf Tournament will take place on July 16 a Thursday, led by Rod and Andrew. The partner will be ROCK and there will be meetings every two weeks to which all members are invited. The first meeting will be on March 3 at ROCK .
Lakeside À La Carte preparation is in full swing. The beneficiary will be the Compassion Society; $500 will buy a sign for a company.
The Poinsettias Drive for Polio Plus was highly successful. Ron Lambert sold the most at around $5000!
$1000 will be put towards Abrahams education over the next four years. Abraham was last year’s exchange student, now back home living on Amantani Island in Lake Titicaca in Peru.
Owen McElhinney presented for International Service. There is support through the MOB cluster to develop international projects. There is a water sanitation project in Bolivia currently in progress. There is much enthusiasm among club members for international services. Plans are being developed to provide they water storage tank for Abraham’s school on Amantani Island.
Membership. Gerry Willard spoke for membership indicating how each year there is, for a number of good reasons, attrition from the club that requires replacement. There are three new members this year. Last year Leslie Allison spearheaded the membership mentorship program to help each new member become quickly involved in the clubs and activities. There are currently two new Prospective members.
Advertising through Social Media is in the planning stage with an "Elevator Speech" to be developed. It is hoped that businesses can be engaged to bring members. Hopefully the Career Coach Program will get the club's name out to other non-Rotarians who are involved in that program. Hopefully through that program Millennial's might become interested.
David Roscoe, President-Elect, addressed the club briefly and his focus will be to find the passion in the club for Rotary projects and he is very optimistic about what we can do working together as a group.
Past President Janet Canavan was especially happy to see the three year Strategic Plan being implemented. She is also the new Burlington area Governor. The District Conference in 2020 will be held in Niagara Falls, and this years Rotary International Convention will take place in Hamburg. Next year, 2021, it will be in Hawaii.
There will be a Big Fab Rotary Dinner for $30 In April and May funds to go to Polio plus
Gerry Willard announced the tree planting program on May 4 with 20 trees to be planted. Trees costs from $600-$900 each. A memorial bench costs $4000 the main cost of which goes to the installation. Typically 5 to 6 trees are purchased each year. The program has been going to 20 years.
$20,000 are to go to the Carpenter Hospice Expansion.
On April 13 there will be a fundraiser at the Polish Hall in favour of the Compassion Society, An Elvis Impersonation Evening with pizza and beer; $30 per ticket.
Next week Marnie Alexander will be presenting her Classification Talk.
Anthony Ford-Jones