Our Club’s 75th Birthday Anniversary Dinner,
With our Club’s upcoming 75th Anniversary Dinner to be held at The Mornington Golf Course on the evening of Thursday 21st April 2022, plans are well under way to mark this special occasion in our Club’s history. At this stage I have sent our quite a few invitations to past members with about a 50% acceptance response. I would like to extend a thanks to our “ more mature “ members for their assistance for supplying the names of many of our past members but there are still a few that I only have the Name and no contact details at all. If any of our current members can assist me with a Mob Ph. / Home Ph. or better still an active e-mail for the following it would be greatly appreciated as time is staring to get a bit short.
Names : Jan Cover - Neil Hussey - Patricia Wallace - Murray Bell - David Benson - Michael Lee - Kel Hobby - Winston Anderson - Terry Smith
Rotary District 9820 & District 9810 - Merge
By now many of us will be aware of the Proposal that was instigated some 12 months ago by RI to merge our District 9820 with District 9810. For those who did may not have received the communicate from our DG last week please find as detailed below the over of the District Merger;
The Board of Rotary International at its June 2021 meeting resolved that Districts 9810 and 9820 would merge as at 1st July 2024, subject to the membership numbers in D9810 being below 1100 as at 30th June 2022. In addition, both Districts were set the task of considering this resolution and consequently formed a joint Consolidation Committee to formulate a plan to bring this merger to fruition. Following agreement by the Boards of both Districts this plan was submitted to the Board of Rotary International in late November 2021 and gained its approval at their meeting of 28th February 2022.
As a consequence, the Boards of D9810 and 9820 met independently yesterday (6th March 2022) and unanimously approved the move to merge Districts 9810 and 9820 as from 1st July 2024.
The new District will include some 2,000+ Rotarians in over 80 Rotary clubs and six Rotaract clubs and will be known as District 9815, because the number 9815 is halfway between 9810 and 9820. D9810 covers the area from the ‘Bay to the Hills’ in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne from Chelsea to Healesville, while D9820serves the Mornington Peninsula and from Dandenong to East Gippsland.
Australian Rotary Health – Annual Report 2020-2021
Last week I received a hard copy of ARH Annual Report for the year 2020-2021 and whilst reading thru the 40-page document a few items of note ‘popped up‘ that I may be of some interest, one in particular was the Financial Report whereby our District 9820 in 2021 contributed $141,699.00 to ARH. This equates to approx. 6.5% of the total of 2.2 million $$$ raised across some 24 combined District’s, with only 5 Districts ahead of us in overall donated funds, not too bad for our “ neck of the woods”.
Bunning’s BBQ – Donated Funds to RAWCS
As mentioned at last weeks club meeting our recent Bunning’s BBQ was ‘ earmarked” for all funds raised to donate to a family in Traralgon who are in dire need of assistance. At present the McLaren family have recently been “struck“ with what can only describe as truly traumatic for parents to be confronted with, this is part of the communication that I received some three weeks ago and I cannot imagine the dramatic life changing situation they find themselves in: David and Rosalie McLaren live in Traralgon, Victoria with their 6 children. Prior to 2019, the McLaren family were happy and healthy. In 2020 Alyssa (12) became unwell which led to her, Bradley (10), Penny (4) and James (1) all being diagnosed with Progressive Pseudo-rheumatoid Dysplasia (PPRD), a rare genetic condition that affects the growth of the bones and joints throughout the body and causes progressive disability and constant pain. Their lives changed overnight. Just over 12 months later, Alyssa and Bradley both now require the full time use of wheelchairs for mobility.
When I tabled this story last week and mentioned that out BBQ proceedings of $1,100.00 be donated it was very pleasing to hear from the members, led by John Parkinson, to ‘ round the figure up to $1,500.00, well done.
Shelter over The Long Table
Late last week I penned a letter to the Building Company, Croft Wootton Constructions, who have been appointed as the company to erect a Shelter Over The Long Table, informing them of our financial status that requires us to respond that we have the funds avaibible in order for their company to commence physical work. This now all but completes the administrative documentation that has taken some 18 months of planning to now allow the structure to be built.
Rotary – 7th Area of Focus – The Environment
This year’s Rotary 9820 District Conference had a very strong theme towards The Environment and a number Guest Speakers delivered some very interesting and thought provoking presentations on this area of focus. To that end as a follow up the many Rotary Clubs in 9820 have been invited to participate in an Environmental ‘ working bee” over the coming weeks;
Invitation
The Western Port Sea Grass Partnership, has organised a working bee at Grantville on Thursday 24th March at 10am. We have students from RMIT assisting our scientific team to clean up and monitor and explain what we are doing, what we have been experimenting with and progress to date. I would greatly appreciate it if we could get a Rotary team together to do the same at Lang Lang the following day Friday 25th March 10am.
Unfortunately, Vic Grosjean is unable to join us as he has speaking engagements (which does not surprise me at all) but hopefully, he will be able to join us on a boat trip in the northern part of Western Port on Saturday 30 April which I am in the process of organising. The boat (Tidemaster) takes only 40 people and preference will be given to attendees at the March working bees.
Working on the mud flats requires a reasonable amount of fitness and wearing cloths and especially footwear that you will not mind throwing away, footwear is best to be old sneakers (or wet suit foot wear) NOT gum boots there have been too many sucked off and left in the mud.
We will be recording all these events so that you will be able to put them on your websites (especially when someone does a face plant in the mud!) a point made by the best RIPPR Jenny Scott in her summing up at the Conference, she had looked at ALL our websites in 9820, that we do not put our present and future projects online enough. Please email me at rjwcox@bigpond.net.au if you can attend at any of the above and I will forward further details of these events.
Captain Dick Cox OAM, President Elect/Community Director Rotary Club of Somerville Tyabb, M: (+61) 437 793 162 E: rjwcox@bigpond.net.au
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