Hello everyone & welcome to this week’s special edition of the weekly rumble featuring our 21/22 District Governor Jeff Egan & partner Kaileen Casey. Another great turnout & warm welcome by our members to our guests on Wednesday which was in our alternate venue of the Stables area at Roches.

 

After three attempts to visit our weekly club meeting, DG Jeff was able to make our meeting on Wednesday accompanied by Kaileen. Being Jacaranda week was something special for Jeff & Kaileen to experience the Purple trees and a snippet of the Purple ambience on offer during this time of the year.

 

In attendance also was AG Anne & her little granddaughter, Mable along with Aaron from Grafton PCYC.

 

DG Jeff gave a wonderful overview of his core passions during his DG year. He re-iterated the great work of our club of events & projects especially our recently completed combined Bridge project with Grafton Rotary (NB: Features in this month’s RDU Magazine on Pag 10). Collaboration is something that Jeff & district like to see where possible as we are all Rotarians doing good in our community. Jeff encouraged anyone who doesn’t have a “My Rotary” account to create one & research & use the fantastic resources available on this site. Jeff gave us a number of other items of benefit of Rotary including one of the most important was to have “Fun”! He also talked about becoming a member of the “Sir Clem Renouf End Polio Now Club”. The process is very simple by paying $10 per member per year to the Rotary Foundation. The board will discuss this idea and instigate a process for members who would like to become a member.

 

Link to My Rotary:

Then click “Register” at top right – A full process is located in the district directory on Page 52.

 

Jeff also explained that the 2022 District Conference is now called the Rotary Expo and will be held at Tenterfield from 25^th – 27^th March. Jeff let us know of some wonderful key note speakers not to be missed. More information is available: https://rotary9640.org/page/district-conference. Jeff explained that the expo will return to the normal three day event starting Friday evening through to Sunday morning. For members wishing to attend Bob Booth is organising accommodation so contact Bob if you need accommodation.

 

Jeff’s partner Kaileen spoke to the club about her project for the 21/22 year, “Lights for Solar Buddy”. Solar

 Buddy is an Australian charity uniting a global community with a big dream to gift six million solar lights to children living in energy poverty by 2030, to help them to study after dusk and improve their education outcomes. Kaileen explained the Solar buddy idea & where some clubs have engaged with local Primary Schools where children can write a short letter and insert it back into the Solar Buddy light for the children in the Poverty countries to read. The lights are made form 40% recyclable plastic helping the environment also. With this valuable information given to us, we will evaluate this valuable project & ascertain if we can participate in the project. More information is available at: https://solarbuddy.org/

 

Finalising our meeting we had a quick happy dollar session with our Sergeant at Arms, Mark who just happened to be celebrating his birthday on Wednesday & he shared his cake with the meeting attendees.

 

I would like to again thank DG Jeff & Kaileen for taking time out of the busy schedule to visit our club & we look forward to having them again in the future. Thank you also to AG Anne for attending & Aaron from PCYC for coming along to see what Rotary is about.

 

Next Wednesday’s meeting we have Rex Wiseman coming along to talk to us about Ferries on the Clarence, so come along and learn about some of the Clarence River history from Rex’s talk.

 

Take care, stay safe & see you on Wednesday.

 

Centenary President,

Robert