Our year end dinner was held on Tuesday evening at the Ellerslie Rugby Club. Vince Campbell, our outgoing president for this year and also our incoming president for next year gave a short presentation on our clubs achievements over the past year. He said that we have supported just over thirty different projects and have donated just over sixty seven thousand dollars to those projects over the past year.
He then gave out perfect attendance awards to Graham Gilchrist, Eric Solash, Harald Kukertz, Rose Marie Basaraba, Ivan Docker (not present) and Hans Granholm. He went on to give out Rotary Foundation awards to Graham Gilchrist, Eugene Sekora (not present), Ron Brown (not present) and Rose Marie Basaraba.
He then thanked all of he many members who have given generously of their time to keep our club running smoothly over the past year, starting with a special thanks to Hans Granholm for all of his advice and guidance to Vince in his first year as president and to Eric Germain for his amazing work with out Interact club. He then went on to thank Dennis Freeman and Sandy Germain for their work on our flag program, Vi Hughes as editor of our bulletin, Hans Granholm, as publisher of our Bulletin and ClubRunner website admin, Eric and Ken Germain for their entertaining Rotary Wheel efforts each week, Eric Solash for tracking attendance each week, Heather de Kok for managing our social media, Audrey Martyn for organizing all of our wonderful speakers and Stephan Jansen van Vuuren for being our Sergeant at Arms each week. Finally he thanked the members of the board that have served with him over the past year, Dmitri Papanicolas as past president, Donna Hutton as president nominee, Rose Marie Basaraba, who has just completed her second three year term as secretary, Graham Gilchrist, our treasurer, Ken Sutley as administrator, who did some excellent work re-organising our door duties roster and also in reviewing and revising our bylaws, Carin Jansen van Vuuren as youth services, and finally Patrick Gibson for his efforts organising the Polio Hockey Pool, the Go Fund Me campaign and the grant application that raised matching funds for the New Hope School.
Next year’s board will be Vince Campbell continuing on as president, Dmitri Papanicolas as past president, Donna Hutton as president elect, Jim Peddie as president nominee, Audrey Martyn as secretary, Graham Gilchrist continuing on as treasurer, Bill Sinclair as administrator, Eugene Sekora as community services, Carin Jansen van Vuuren as international services, Nicole Germain in youth services and Doug Milne as the member-at large. In addition, the following people will also be contributing their time to our club, Hans Granholm as bulletin publisher and ClubRunner website admin, Vi Hughes as bulletin editor, Ellen Weber in membership services, Eric Germain as Interact club co-ordinator and hosting our board meetings at his business offices, Dennis Freeman and Sandy Germain for our flag program, Eric and Ken Germain for our weekly Rotary Wheel, Eric Solash will be tracking attendance, Loida Lumanlan will be organising speakers and finally our Sergeant at Arms will be Dennis Freeman.
Vince then presented the Rotarian of the Year award for our club to Graham Gilchrist, who has put in hundreds of hours this year as treasurer re-organising and smoothing out the job of treasurer. Vince said that this is undoubtedly the most time-consuming position on the board.
In his message as incoming president, Vince said that we have many things to look forward to this next year. These include adding new members to our club, organising the Polio Plus Hockey Game (to be chaired by Patrick Gibson), training of host families for the Rotary student exchange and organising a new Interact club at W.P Wagner High School with Jim Peddie as advisor. In addition, we will be voting on our revised by-laws in a few weeks. We will also be continuing with our efforts for other projects, our support of the young people at the J Percy Page Interact club, our flag program and our flag program partnership with the Venture group. He also hopes to see more meetings in other venues and maybe even a Pie Night. In closing he thanked everyone for their ongoing support of Rotary and said that he is looking forward to a great year.
Photos curtesy of Carin van Vuuren
