The meeting today started with a very light crowd with our President Bryce Leggett officiating over his penultimate meeting of his term of office.
There were the usual duty roster items and announcements relating to the golf tournament and Lakeside as well as other things when I happened to look around and wonder – who is the scribe today? I could see none of the usual scribes present except me. No one else seemed to be keeping notes. Hmmm, maybe I am the designated scribe – and I don’t have any note paper or even a pen (turns out that I wasn’t the scribe).
It was at this point that Augustina was giving her usual report on the past couple of weeks when I located a pen from the attendance desk as well as a sheet of paper that the speaker had handed out.
After several uses of the words “like” and “oh yeah”, the main news from Augustina is that she is going on a 2 week trip to the east coast with most of her other exchange students. Following that will be her last meeting with us and she flies home to Argentina that same day.
Our Sergeant at Arms was in fine form and gave one of his best fundraising efforts. After the usual fines and happy/sad dollars he spent a few minutes complementing Dimitre Atanassov – one of our newest members, who is in charge of fundraising for the Rotary Music Festival. He commented that this was quite a responsibility for a new member and he suggested that we help him out in this regard. He raised $306 for the Music Festival by sort of conning us that he would match any money raised. After the fundraising effort he then presented a cheque for $4500 from himself and his other co-workers at CIBC Wealth Management in the Burlington office.
Speaker –Joanna Matthews
Vice President of Strategic Development
ROCK – Reach Out Centre for Kids
Joanna was introduced by Johanna Haan. For the past 13 years she has held the position of Executive Director for a Halton-based settlement agency and an adult mental health and addictions organization. The agency ROCK comes under her purview.
ROCK may be familiar to many of us as it was one of our partners a few years ago in our golf tournament. Its mission is to promote and achieve optimal mental health in our kids and families. Its focus is on kids from birth to age 17 although they do extend coverage beyond that for a year or two. Mental health issues among children are the focus of ROCK and some of the issues are schizophrenia, anxiety, depression and suicide. On this latter point, Canada’s youth suicide rate is the 3rd highest in the industrialized world and is one of the leading causes of death among young people. Surpassed only by injuries, mental disorders in youth are ranked as the second highest hospital care expenditure in Canada. In Canada only 1 in 5 who need mental health services – receive them.
ROCK served 3600 clients last year with 150 staff at approximately 30 locations in the general Halton area. Clients are referred to ROCK by doctors, teachers, parents and others. Individuals seeking help can also drop into their offices. It is funded through its partners which are various groups, foundations and individuals although the Ministries of Education, Health (LHIN), and Halton Region also provide substantial funding. Its head office is located at 471 Pearl St in Burlington although a new main office is to be built – also on Pearl St.
Mike Molloy thanked the speaker and presented her with the usual Certificate.
