DG visits have continued by zoom, with only one face to face meeting this month. I will have completed nine more visits by the end of October, that will leave 16 more clubs to visit. We did manage to participate in a World Polio Day fundraising outing with the Leongatha Club on Sunday 24 October cruising from Port Welshpool around Wilsons Promontory to the lighthouse and return.
On Sunday 17 October, the Rotary District 9820 Model United Nations Assembly Awards Ceremony was held via Zoom. The competition was a little different this year, relying on the delegations to prepare a video submission to represent their country’s stance on the global issue of climate change. Delegates were encouraged to wear an appropriate national costume representing their assigned country. 23 delegations were successful in completing and submitting their video. The results were as follows:
MUNA Overall Winner ($300) – Mary McKillop Catholic Regional College representing Colombia, sponsored by Rotary Club Leongatha.
MUNA Runner-up ($200) - Mary McKillop Catholic Regional College representing Israel, sponsor Rotary Club Leongatha.
Registrations are open for the RYLA training week at Rawson during 17-22 January 2022. Please consider sponsoring a young person to attend for an exciting week of personal development and learning experiences. Even approach a local business to sponsor a young member of their staff to attend as part of their corporate training.
The first Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) training session is now planned for Saturday 13 November, and the other session will be Saturday 4 December. The course is being run at the Drouin Senior Citizens Club. If you would like to participate, please contact David Hanlon on 0414 996 798. The cost for the sessions is $50.
Please make a concerted effort to appoint your Club President Elect at your AGM in November. The President Elect training sessions are planned to run face to face in clusters. The East Gippsland cluster is scheduled for Saturday 27 November with the Central & East Gippsland clusters on the next day. The other clusters will follow during the following two weekends. It would be a pity for your Club President Elect to miss this important training opportunity.
Registrations for the District Conference to be held in Traralgon on the weekend of 25-27 February 2022 opened in September. At last count we had 58 delegates registered for this exciting event.
The District has quite a number of pull-up banners on a variety of programs including all the areas of focus. At the moment, the Sale Club have borrowed eight banners to display outside the Archibald Prize exhibition in Sale. Traralgon Central borrowed three on two occasions; once at a Bunnings BBQ, and for their ARH “Lift the Lid” mental health promotion at the Traralgon Centre Plaza. Clubs are welcome to borrow them to display at any event you are planning.
Other dates to enter in your diary are:
4 November – Covid requirements for Rotary volunteers by zoom
14 November – District AGM & Foundation Seminar at Berwick by zoom
With Covid restrictions finally lifting, Judy & I hope to physically see you all soon. We are both fully vaccinated and have the big green tick on our phones.
Cranbourne Rotary Club have beensupporting the Cranbourne West Primary School Breakfast Program for several years by providing an industrial toaster and sourcing funds from external grants. Last year the club received a $4000 grant from Casey Council to support this program.
The program provides breakfast, brunch and emergency lunches for over 250 children per day. The program is supported by volunteers with approximately 4 per day, totally 40 hours per week.
Whenever there was a COVID 19 lockdown, the school provided food packages for families who are struggling financially. Some of the food is donated by Food Bank, but the school had difficulty ordering enough food and keeping it fresh. It was decided to use some of the money to purchase a commercial fridge and freezer. This enabled the school to keep fresh vegetables and fruit much longer and make healthier meals/snacks for the children.
The school noticed an improvement in student attendance, behaviour, concentration and social skills. The school learned that the Breakfast Club is more than just feeding children, it is about showing that someone cares and that the school is a safe place that enables them to engage in their learning.
The Cranbourne Rotary Club continues its support for the school, receiving another grant from Villawood properties and donating club monies. Our Club has a proud history of supporting the local community through difficult times.
Rotary Club Greater Dandenong and Endeavour Hillsimplemented the Rotary Centennial Year Cornerstone Community Garden and Shelter project to build nine garden beds and a shelter at a converted car park next to the Dandenong Baptist Church. The garden beds are for planting of vegetables and herbs to feed the homeless and disadvantaged communities in the Greater Dandenong area.
The club secured a $10K Community Support grant from City of Greater Dandenong for this Centennial project. Rotarians Terry Valentine and Neil Fullard project managed this with building contractor friends, volunteers from our Club, Endeavour Hills Men Shed, Cornerstone, Bunnings and other community members.
This Centennial Year project allows the homeless and disadvantaged communities to plant the vegetables and herbs for use in cooking for the Cornerstone meal program to feed the homeless and disadvantaged community, reducing the cost of meal production. This environmental and sustainable project will also help the local communities to learn new skills.
The Rotary Club of Greater Dandenong and Endeavour Hills continue working in the Community during these very challenging COVID times, assisting other volunteers from The Andrews Centre and Church community with preparation, cooking and serving a lunchtime meal at St. James Anglican Church in Dandenong on Mondays. Club members have been very generous with financial donations of $1,760 for a ‘Virtual Dinner’ enabling us to continue to provide meals for disadvantaged and homeless in our community.
Whenever possible, meals are served as ‘sit down’, however during ‘lockdowns’ all meals are packaged and distributed as ‘take away’.
Food, grocery and personal items are regularly donated for distribution at Cornerstone, St. James Anglican Church and the Springvale Benevolent Society.
The club signed on to the RORP (Rotary Overseas Relocated Playgrounds) project in 2020/21 and placed it in the hands of Friend of Rotary, Mel Bell. Despite Covid 19 restrictions, four playgrounds were harvested, the components coded by Mel, before being refurbished by Rotary Club of Mt Martha and transported to Sri Lanka. The club have an arrangement with the City of Greater Dandenong to remove their playgrounds, saving them from going to land fill, and providing healthy exercise for children in poor countries for many years to come. It’s a “win-win” situation!
Two projects in the last year have proved the benefit of clubs attracting Friends of Rotary, often people wanting to help their communities, but unable to commit to full Rotary membership.
The Rotary Club of Casey continued under the COVID 19 cloud to keep their group together via Zoom. They raised $2,380 through an online re-purposing auction, and are very proud of this. The picture shows a collage of these Zoom meetings, including a visit from Mardi Sheperd.
They gathered 11 boxes of sporting gear, including footy boots in collaboration with Beaconhills College, to send to the sports-mad youth of Milingimbi, in North East Arnhem Land. Our severe border closures have held back delivery they hope they can arrange transport up very soon. This is the second collection n and this aligns to their Healthy Living, Health Food campaign. They are optimistic that they can run the Holland Festival early next year and have other things lined up. The speakers have been really special and they basically haven’t skipped a beat!
It’s well-known among locals that the Yarram swimming pool is under-utilised because, no matter what the air temperature, the water in the pool is always freezing! The water is so cold that the local schools swapped their swimming lessons from their pool to warmer pools in Sale, Toora and Traralgon.
For the past two decades, locals have been advocating for a warmer pool for their community.
Yarram Rotary Club has focused a lot of their fundraising efforts on getting a warmer pool for the district. Earlier this year, some $600,000 in funding for the first stage of a warmer pool project was announced by the Wellington Shire Council.
With the Rotary Club's $61,000 funding, work on stage one of the project was set to get underway.
This first stage would have been to erect a galvanised steel frame covered by a fabric membrane with cafe style blinds over the main pool and the toddlers' pool.
However this shelter did not comply with the Royal Life Saving Guidelines for Safe Pool Operations meaning the structure needed to be expanded and provide a clear zone from outside the wet deck of the pool.
The second stage of this project will see heat pumps installed which will raise the temperature of the pool to 29 degrees.
An additional $300,000 grant through the Federal Government's Local Roads and Community Infrastructure program will see this project completed to a high standard and everyone in the Yarram district can finally enjoy a warmer pool for many years to come.
Apart from fun and fundraising, this year’s event also provides an opportunity to help your local cinemato recover from the pandemic. The amount paid to the cinema would not normally be less than $10 per seat and a typical ticket price might be $20.
To arrange an event, talk to the group booking person at your cinema and make sure they plan to offer this movie to the public. The cinema can then make all the arrangements to source the movie from the distributor, Transmission Films—there’s no need for clubs to get involved in that.
To assist you in promoting the event, we’ve created a template that your club can use to create your own marketing materials:
It’s a PowerPoint file—simply insert your club name and event details and:
save it as a PDF and arrange for your local printer to produce posters and handouts
save it as a graphics file and post it to your social media, website, newsletter, etc.
It would be great if you could arrange showings of THE DUKE in your community. Let’s make this year’s Polio Movie Event a blockbuster—and End Polio Now!
District Governor Bill Degnan and Judy, together with the Rotary Club of Traralgon Central, invite you to “COME AND JOIN US” in beautiful Traralgon where the D9820 Conference will be held on the weekend of February 25-27, 2022. Registrations are now open and we look forward to seeing many of you in the Valley for a conference filled with inspiration, fun and fellowship.
We have some excellent speakers:
Luke Richmond – adventurer & motivational speaker
Luke is a professional adventurer and author who lives in Tasmania, Australia. He has climbed the highest mountain on six continents, survived minus 60degree temperatures in Antarctica, been held captive in the jungles of West Papua, and paddled Australia’s longest river. He has witnessed death before his eyes on the highest peaks and healed his mind with a 55day ocean row across the Atlantic, setting a new world record. Luke, with his wife Elise, dragged carts containing all of their food and water across 1800kilometres of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Luke has found comfort in suffering while on adventures and his hard-earned lessons are shared in his two bestselling books. ‘We only have one life, and one chance, so get out there and make the most of it.’ – Luke
Erin Coldham – Speaker for Star of the South Project
Erin Coldham is the Chief Development Officer at the Star of the South project, which seeks to harness Bass Strait winds to power more than a million homes with clean energy, while creating thousands of jobs.
Erin is proud to be part of the team progressing this critical infrastructure project for Australia, bringing her extensive experience working with all levels of government on major, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure projects.
In her role at Star of the South, Erin is currently responsible for all development activities required to bring the project to construction and operation, working with industry, regulators, policy-makers and local communities to bring offshore wind to regional Gippsland and the State of Victoria.
Included in A Word About Wind’s Top 100 Women’s Power List 2021, Erin is a champion for female talent in the energy industry and is driven by the positive opportunities offshore wind represents for Australia.
For an update on the planning for the 2023 Melbourne Convention and hear about opportunities for Clubs and Rotarians to be involved in Host Hospitality Events and volunteering for the Convention see the video on the District website using this link.
