Yesterday’s club meeting was a great start and kicked off our current Rotary meetings via ZOOM.
Many thanks to Adrian in organising the technology for us. We had 17 participants attending, including Debbie Bish, President of RC of Rochester. It was great to see us embracing this new technology, enabling us to stay in touch with each other. Due to the success of the meeting and our ongoing banter between members, the 40-minute free allocation from ZOOM was exceeded (with thanks to Zoom). Therefore, it was decided that we get a subscription (approx. $24 per month), which will not limit our time and so to allow more engagement by members.
Adrian and I encourage all members to try to log on to ZOOM for our meetings each Wednesday, from 7.30am onwards. It’s good fun, it works really well and we all felt we were still part of a great club. Adrian is also very willing to help members and guest speakers who needs a bit of assistance. Please give it a go – it’s not difficult and definitely worth it. The permanent link to the meeting each week is: https://zoom.us/j/585081528
Just a reminder to all participants - to make the meetings run smoothly we must:
keep our screens on Mute unless speaking
Raise your hand to speak and the host (Toni or Adrian) will allocate who is to speak next
Telephone Tree
The Board members are about to start a “telephone tree”, whereby each one will phone a number of members each week. By this action, we can stay in contact with each other generally, support each other and still feel an important part of the club. The list will be circulated by an email via ClubRunner that will also contain some hints about email and other communication to assist communication and connectedness during this testing time.
Directors Reports: Treasurer: Peter
Peter gave an overview of our current financial situation with an estimated loss of $16,000 for the year due to the cancellation of all our major fund-raising projects. But the good news is that at present we still have reserves of $104,000,.as yet still unallocated.
Club Service: - Ted
On Tuesday last Graeme Clarke, President Elect at Bendigo Rotary and I had a teleconference with Marg O’Rourke Bendigo Mayor, and Debbie Wood who is Director Presentation & Assets with the City. This meeting was planned a number of weeks ago and a lot has changed since then.
The objective was to discuss on behalf of the Rotary Goldfields Cluster, the Centenary of Rotary in Australia project, that started with some significant aspirations to construct a lasting signature memorial to commemorate Rotary’s achievements. The intervening few weeks has resulted in almost all Rotary Clubs having a lot less cash, if any at all, to direct to such a project. Still the meeting canvassed a few options, and the City will consider further what sort of projects we might be involved with.
My own thoughts (Ted) are that we might try to find something a lot less costly along the lines of the Peace Poles or something similar.
Graeme Lynas suggestion of a Peace Bell has a lot of merit I think. See Canberra’s https://www.canberrarotarypeacebell.org/. Maybe not quite as elaborate, we just need to find an unused bell in an old church or school or ship or ?????
Anyway, the meeting also looked forward to the Centenary of Rotary in Bendigo, which will occur in about 4 years time, and it was thought maybe that’s the occasion for a major project. Hopefully COVID 19 will be but a distant memory.
Youth:- Cathie
The upcoming RYPEN program has been transferred to July at this stage. National Youth Science Forum is still planned to go ahead in October.
International:- Ray
Information from Jeanette Lynch- RFE Co-ordinator. The RFE trip scheduled for late October is to go ahead at this stage as the tourists have already bought their tickets.
Knitting Project- as well as Pepper Green Farm, we have now received the good news that the BUFS Chemist, corner of View & Barnard Sts, is happy to be a drop-off point for knitted goods. However, they don’t wish to receive anything just for now, as they are trying to reduce store traffic while the COVID 19 situation continues.
The container that was planned to go to East Timor in April has been cancelled. Gerard House has 12 bales of knitted goods stored at his work site, and has kindly offered to keep them there for as long as needed. Thank you very much, Gerard.
Patti has sent a special newsletter to all her knitters advising them to slow down due to the shipping container cancellation. Part of her message was to ask the knitters that if they did want to continue knitting then scarves, ponchos, beanies and teddies were the items preferred.
Computers for Congo- Ian Beckerleg and I had a meeting last week with Tom Cecil. Ian donated some surplus IT equipment, as well as offering to help Tom with technical bits and pieces if he needed extra help. Thank you Ian, a good example of using our strengths and interest.
Guest Speakers: - Jim Rolfe
Jim has organised a number of upcoming guest speakers to participate in our ZOOM meetings. Great news, and thanks very much, Jim. See Speakers column....
Other matters
Co-president’s Challenge: Toni proposed a Home Made Mask Challenge for the women, members and partners of our club to make different face masks and post the results in the bulletin (as I, Toni, is a non-sexist, if the men want to participate they may). At some time in future we will have a vote on the BEST MASK.
