It’s a wonderful honour for me to commence the coming Rotary year as your District Governor. Twenty-eight months ago, I stepped on the G-train journey. I must say, it has been full of learning, training, information and picking up knowledge on all the aspects of Rotary at the various levels. The training for incoming DGs by Rotary International and by our Rotary Zone 8 training team is comprehensive and professional. It has been a privilege for me to participate in this “induction” to the role of DG. I have been meeting with my fellow Governors 2022/23 from throughout Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands (Zone 8) each month, and meeting with my fellow DGs 2022/23 in Victoria each month. My partner Adele and I have visited every club in the District (some by Zoom) in the past year in an endeavour to learn more about our fabulous clubs and inspiring club members.
My Background – I enjoyed a working career in Banking and Credit Risk Management with ANZ Bank which took me to various places in Australia. I joined Rotary in 1987 as a 33-year-old, Charter President of the Rotary Club of St Helens in Tasmania (D9830). I accepted a position in Melbourne in 1997 so Adele and I moved our family to Victoria. I served as President, of the Rotary Club of Manningham (D9810). A sea-change took Adele and I to the Mornington Peninsula in 2016 and we both joined the Rotary Club of Rosebud Rye (D9820), where I served as Club President in 2020/21. At District 9820 level, I have been involved in Youth Programs, The Rotary Foundation and as Assistant Governor. In 2018, I introduced the Foundation Student Scholarships Grants Program to our District.
We have 2 daughters, 3 grandchildren and we have hosted 8 Rotary Youth Exchange students each for 3 months in our home, all from different countries.
I am passionate about the future of Rotary, The Rotary Foundation, membership growth and mentoring the next generation of Rotary leaders.
We have an exciting year ahead with a fabulous theme “Imagine Rotary”. With your help, I intend to focus on increasing our diversity, equity and inclusion, making our clubs more reflective of the communities in which we serve and to ensure everyone feels welcome and engaged. I intend to focus on starting new style clubs and new or different ways of operating, to adapt to changing lifestyles and family priorities. Many clubs in our district are establishing strong partnerships with other groups in our communities. We see terrific opportunities for Rotary membership from these partnerships.
My/our goals for District 9820:
Priority one - District Leaders will endeavor to ‘be of service to clubs.
Membership - each club should aim to achieve a net gain of at least one member.
New clubs - to start 2 new clubs (for example, eClub, Satellite club, Cause based club, Coffee club, Rotaract club)
The Rotary Foundation (our charity of choice)
- 20 clubs will be encouraged to participate in District Scholarship Grants
- 30 clubs will be encouraged to participate in District or Global Grants (each club will be encouraged to contribute A$120 per member to Foundation e.g. 20 x $120 =$2400)
- each club to aim to contribute A$1,500 to End Polio as a club contribution.
5. Each club to aim to promote at least one club activity in the District Newsletter, on our website (Event) or Facebook page, during the 22/23 year.
In the coming months, I promise to keep Rotarians up to date, via the Newsletter, on our progress regarding preparation for District 9815 (the merger of D9820 and D9810, which is programmed to occur on 1st July 2024).
We are looking at changes at the National level of Rotary via our proposed Zone 8 Regionalisation Pilot. Currently we have a small team of dedicated District Leaders who are booking times/ dates, to come to club meetings to provide an overview of the proposed Regionalisation Pilot. Please make these District Leaders welcome at your club and ask plenty of questions.
Rotary is a dynamic organisation because of you.
Let’s all join as Rotary members to have an enjoyable year.
This year's RYLA camp has finished early due to a COVID-19 outbreak. The camp, at Rawson Village, was a joint project between District 9820 and District 9810 which was scheduled over a week. An enormous amount of planning and work, for well over a year, went into making this week a success, lead by Nigel Cousins and ably assisted by a team of youth. From all accounts, the week was progressing well until Rob Cook, the District 9820 Chair and Nigel had to leave early as they contracted COVID. In the next few days, more of the participants tested positive, so sadly, the rest of the week was cancelled.
Our thoughts are with the people who are sick and we wish them a speedy recovery.
An important part of Rotary life is the Changeover when one leader hands over to another. During the process, the observer relives the achievements of the outgoing while grasping the enthusiasm of the incoming.
On Sunday, the 26th of June, District 9820 had its Changeover at the Warragul Country Club with 115 Rotarians and friends in attendance. It was a cold, wet day outside but wonderfully warm as Rotarians swarmed around on such a momentous occasion.
In a flash, District Governor Bill Degnan became Past District Governor Bill Degnan after reviewing his year and thanking all who had made a difference to District 9820 over the year.
Being a District Governor is usually a partnership with their spouses to ensure as much effort goes into the role as possible. Bill's wife Judy was no exception and was a powerhouse in the background through the lead-up to Bill becoming DG, and during the time Bill was DG.
Conversely, District Governor Elect Paul Mee slipped into the role as District Governor Paul Mee as PDG Janet McCahon did the honours of inducting him. Paul's wife, Adele, has already been working with Paul, and I think we are in for a good year in Rotary.
The guests were privileged to learn about the "DG Plan" at the Changeover.
After 51 years of service, the Rotary Club of Seaford Carrum handed back their charter to me on Monday night (21st) at the Grand Hotel, Frankston. A good crowd of existing and past members, plus PDG Janet McCahon & Grant, and PDG Ian & Lyn Pickering, plus Emily Barr & Nicole from Peninsula Rotaract. Sam Graham was MC. Richard Ellis, Peter Harris and Louise Welbourn spoke.
Paul Harris Fellows were issued to John Blaze and Marleen Ling and a sapphire to Louise.
The club donated their $39,000 barbeque trailer to the SES, and dispersed their considerable funds to various charities and Rotary projects.
Louise Welbourn, is going to Frankston North RC Club
John & Judy Berends, & John & Annette Blaze are going to Casey RC Club.
David Langworthy, founding chair of both Disaster Aid Australia, and Disaster Aid International has been recognised in the Queens Birthday Honours Awards.
David has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his services to the community over a range of roles.
David has also been a Rotarian since 1982 initially with the Rotary Club of Endeavour Hills, now the Rotary Club of Greater Dandenong and Endeavour Hills.
Congratulations to Rotary Club of Mount Martha member Jonathan Mayne who was awarded a Paul Harris Fellow + 2 Sapphires at the Rotary Club of Mount Martha Changeover.
Solving real problems takes real commitment and vision and Jonathan continually displays these attributes. Softly spoken and a quiet achiever, Jonathan’s actions speak much louder than his words. His actions have united people to create lasting change in places where it is desperately needed.
Last year, our club had almost $3000 left over from a project when they arranged for water to be supplied to the Papua New Guinea (PNG) village of Komea. The neighboring village of Sigri's only source of water was carried by hand in buckets from a river 2 km away. Jonathan volunteered to direct and coordinate a water capture project, using the leftover funds from the Komea project. Our club has a close association with a PNG national Moses Pulop, who grew up in Komea and now lives in Geelong and works as a Registered Nurse. Together Jonathon and Moses planned to paint the village roofs, install guttering, downpipes and piping into 4 x 9,500 litre tanks and then onto taps throughout the village. A PNG government official was impressed by what he observed and provided a fifth tank. Our club put in extra funding for more piping and supplies.
The villagers brought the supplies from Mount Hagen, then work commenced. All the labour was done by the villagers and for the very first time the village of Sigri had clean running water on tap, in time for celebrations on New Year’s Eve.
This project was funded by Moses and friends, the Rotary Club of Warrnambool Central and the board of Dragon Boats Australia (through Jonathan Mayne and Douglas Sinclair), to bolster our club’s contributions. Thanks to Jonathan Mayne and his diligent organization and his ability to raise funds for the project, the entire operation in Sigri was completed in under a month and cost less than $12,000.
The villagers of Sigri telephoned Jonothan last month to thank him. One of the villagers told Jonathon that his grandmother, who had lived in Sigri all her life, was very excited as she had never seen water come from a tap.
Rotary Club of Warragul Centenary Project: Indigenous Art Garden
The Rotary Club of Warragul is excited to be working with our local community to create an indigenous art garden. The garden will recreate a painting as a living art space that people can step into and enjoy. Also called Art From the Air, a drone above the garden will be able to capture the likeness of the original painting.
Our club launched this new project as a celebration 100 years of Rotary service in Australia and New Zealand. A painting by Kurnai artist, Dr Aunty Eileen Harrison, inspired a landscape plan that guides the creation of the garden on the under utilized grassed hillside at Rotary Park, Warragul.
Earth works for stage 1 is commenced in May to build the skeleton of the park. The club is grateful to the Baw Baw Shire Council, for providing $97,000 to meet some of the project costs. The Rotary Club of Warragul committed $34,000 so far and is managing procurement and the contractors for stage 1.
The landscape design, pictured above, will help the park become a place for learning about life as a Kurnai before white people colonized the land. Stories will be woven around the elements in the design - animal footprints imprinted in paths, bird patterns burned into totems, rocks representing the sun, moon and stars and plants in an open forest.
The paths lead to a central circle with six wooden totems and a low seating wall around the outside. The circle represents a meeting place for learning to occur. Moving from the centre of the circle to the outside, seventeen stumps represent elders who share knowledge with young people.
The totems for the meeting place will be made from trees donated by the local milk factory Fonterra. The trees were harvested and taken to Wulgunggo Ngalu Learning Place near Yarram. A tutor will be employed to teach the skills of wood burning and the totems will be carved with the stories of birds of significance to the Kurnai people.
Alongside the paths, the cross hatch pattern will be created by planting thousands of red, white and black foliage plants. The club is investigating working with local training organisations to grow the plants. In 2023, the plants should be ready for community planting days involving local schools.
In the spirit of celebration, the project enables us to share fellowship and we hope that our actions will attract new members to our club.
Call for help: If anyone has Ophiopogon negrescens (black mondo grass) in their garden and would like to donate some clumps to the project please email andreak@dcsi.net.au
Top row, Simon Varvaruc, Nigel Cousins, Brad Graham, Emily Cross and Chengkuach Alier.
Front row, Richard Howlett, Kate Holzaphel, Malak Usama and Lachlan Hall.
I congratulate them all for their perseverance and kindness in pursuing this special RYLA initiative through a very difficult time.
On Thursday the seventh of April 2022 a group of District 9820 Rylarians and their families gathered with Rotarians for a dinner and celebration.
Together with RYLA 9820 Chair, Nigel Cousins, Youth Chair, Rob Cook, and District Governor Bill Degnan, they were at the Berwick Inn to celebrate a graduation. Fourteen Rylarians from the 2019 had achieved all the units, or selected clusters of units, from the Certificate IV in Project Management Practice, as a part of their RYLA program. They worked on Rotary projects to gather evidence and demonstrate competence. This particularly involved Rotary's East Gippsland bushfire relief program.
The Certificate program was heavily affected by Covid-19, with two TAFE Colleges unable to complete the program, however, Rob Golding and Helen Sabell, from the College for Adult Leaning, in Mitcham, Victoria, stepped up to make it work.
Just an update on your district’s very welcome donation for our flood appeal.
We settled on combining the $5k with a donation from a corporate organisation and have worked with the Gympie Club and community about a suitable project.
One of the local primary schools lost most of its trees as a result of water logging and much of their underground cover for the children outside was destroyed. They are using the total of $25k to build an undercover area for the children (a gambling grant is also being applied to this) and the build of the covered areas will start in the near future.
Please convey our special thanks to the district for your support. The Gympie community has certainly done it tough.
When Barry and Lynne’s son joined the Federal Police, he was a single man always on duty over the major holidays. Police policy was where possible to allow married men and women to celebrate Christmas, Easter etc. with their families.
With this in mind, Barry approached his club Rosebud-Rye Rotary to fund a bar-be-que meal for the Police Officers on duty on New Years Eve. With the club’s blessing a small group of Rotarians and family met at the Police station and prepared a meal for 100 to 120 Police Officers on duty New Years.
Initially fully funded by the Rotary club, the Rosebud and Rye Community started to offset the costs by supporting the club with discounts on food and drinks. Now in it’s eighth year the members of the community fully support the dinner. Manager Michael Patterson from Woolworths Rye, donates all the sausages, pasta and coleslaw salad, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and drinks as well as condiments. From Rosebud, Owner Greg Goss from Greg’s family Gourmet Butchers donates all the meat.
On New Years Eve, Doug Helleren OAM, Bernard and Doris Wong, Darren and Kate McGrath with Barry and Lynne Irving cook and serve a bar-be-que and salad meal for all on duty as well as leaving meals for the night shift.
The menu consists of: Hamburger, sausage, egg, pasta and coleslaw, salad, pineapple, beetroot, cheese and a dinner roll and well as soft drink or water.
This year the Police superintendent invited the Rotary team and the community supporters to a breakfast cooked by police officers. Each of the team were presented with a framed certificate of appreciation acknowledging their support and thanking all for their ongoing support of the Police working on New Years Eve.
I presented a membership talk to Rotary Club of Maffra on 23/3/22. Their President has encouraged their local school to become a corporate member and a representative now attends each meeting. They have spoken to each of their local shop owners but have found they are much younger, focussed on rebuilding their businesses and the current style of Rotary meetings doesn’t appeal. I suggested a business of the month award. A photo opportunity and chance to promote their business is an easy way to continue contact the local business owners. It’s important to continue the conversations.
The temptation is to give up and say, “well they are not interested”. I think businesses will appreciate your club and the work that you do. In addition, Rotary provides many opportunities such as MUNA or YEP and this may ignite their interest.
While I was there, we inducted a new member who is well known for her community work. Community leaders can be a source of new members as they are already motivated to make a difference to their community.
Farm World – Lardner Park Gippsland
We are aware that Rotary clubs have difficulties promoting themselves. The membership team in District 9820 has begun taking opportunities to take our message to where people gather. We recently went to Farm World and used our new membership lens cloth for spectacles as a brochure.
Rotary International Women’s Day Breakfast
We used our new membership banners to promote Rotary to over 300 people who attended from a variety of business, community, and school leaders on the Mornington Peninsula. Everyone received a lens cloth for their spectacles.
Helping Clubs
Our new style membership banners were paid with funding from RI and have have been used at the District Conference where we had a membership stand sharing with LGBTQ + fellowship. This created some interest with other clubs wanting to have their own banners to use when they are out doing programs. Rotary Club of Sorrento borrowed the banners to use at their Polio film night.
Our District PETS and Assembly was on the 30th of April. Membership was high on the agenda and we had Barbara Mifsud attending. A session including table talks was slotted for the Assembly on the Sunday.
Next District Membership Chair – Grant Godino
Welcome to Grant Godino who will be taking over the Membership Chair in 2022/23 as I move into the DGE role. I have just returned from the International Convention with Jennifer Jones messages about DEI and caring for our club members. We see membership as the major focus for our District and my active support in promoting and assisting the membership team will continue. As Rotarians we need to be proud of our clubs and not be afraid to ask people who have the same values and desires to help change to world into a better place and enjoy meeting new people.
Polio update To date, there are 8 recorded cases of wild polio. This is a fantastic figure, but the work has not yet been completed. A breakthrough occurred between the Taliban and polio vaccination teams and the Taliban will allow vaccinations to take place. This will certainly help with our fight to End Polio.
Giving to the Foundation Many clubs have been contacting me in relation to giving to our Foundation. When they navigate to the website, they can only find how to give via credit card, which causes some concern. Below are details on how to do a bank transfer.
Sir Clem Renouf Club We now have our first Sir Clem Renouf club in our District. Rotary Club of Casey generously donated $26.00 for each club member to the End Polio fund. They have also made a generous donation to the Annual fund.
I personally thank Rotary Club of Casey. It is because of clubs like this, that makes me confident that we will end the fight against Polio and that we will be able to continue to support clubs and communities in their service projects.
District 9820 giving to Foundation For the past 2 years, our District has shown a small growth in giving to our Foundation's annual fund. I would like to thank everyone for supporting the work that our Foundation does. By giving today, we can support your club projects that support your communities in the future.
Unfortunately, our overall giving is down. Can I urge everyone to find that little bit extra from the club or personal giving to increase our impact?
Peace scholarship Our District was approached to see if we could help sponsor a peace scholarship this year. Both myself and District Governor Bill were approached by Murrey Verso from District 9800 to see if we could assist with sponsoring a candidate. District Governor Bill was more than happy to help support this person. Past District Governor Charlie Speirs immediately sprang into action to make the necessary grant application. Our timeline was short. Thank you, Charlie for making this happen. We look forward to hearing from our sponsored applicant upon completion of the scholarship
Give Every Child a Future It great to advise that our District has supported the Rotary program ‘Give Every Child a Future’. This program needed funds to continue their vaccination program across nine Pacific Islands. We were able to donate $20,000.00 from our District Designate Foundation program.
Support Your support for our Foundation is crucial. Without your support, our impact globally will only diminish. District grants for clubs is a fantastic way your District supports your community projects, for us to continue to support your communities, we need your support. Please give to our Foundation.
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.
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