President’s Report to August Board meeting.
Well, the year got off to a fantastic start with a great evening celebrating the Clubs 60th anniversary.
Thanks must go to John Cole, Anne Abbott and Ron Hunter for their efforts in putting together the evening along with David Thompson and Tony Cornelius who did the important in the background jobs of recording attendees and the $ of the evening and to Mike Fackney who looked after the technical presentations on the night. A big thank you to John Prendergast (Past District Governor District 9980 and current President Rotary Club of Petone) who did a magnificent job as MC for the evening.
We have had our first two committee meetings and it is great to see the committees engaged in the projects they wish to achieve during the next year. The first major project we are looking forward to is the wine-tasting fundraiser on 19 August. This was a great evening the last time we held it and hopefully the whole club can get in behind it selling tickets to friends etc.
Through an application to the Chenery Memorial Trust and a member’s donation we have been able to present $7000 to Taita College to assist with some students attending the Hillary Outdoors programme on Great Barrier Island in October.
The Christmas trailer raffle in Queensgate has got the go ahead for another year, so we are in the process of getting the prizes together, getting tickets printed and organizing the roster.
An exciting project that is in the pipeline is to redo the courtyard garden at the Dementia Unit at the Enliven home in Woburn. Mary Houston has kindly donated the funds for us to do this, in memory of Richard (a past member of our Club who was a resident of the unit) and Jenny Thompson has kindly offered her horticulture knowledge to assist in the planning of the garden. The Birdcage project at Te Omanga hospice is almost complete, just needing some fine weather to complete the exterior painting. Well done and thank you to all of you that have helped with this project.
Speakers in July have been:
Stephen Cross (Sergeant – Lower Hutt Community Policing Team, based in Naenae)
Karen Morgan (Principal at Taita College)
Ray Tomlinson (JT Group)
Fiona Varun (Naenae College student that we sponsored Innovative Young Minds)
We all enjoy each other’s company, which is one of the reasons we come along to Rotary on a Monday night, but it is also important that we have a variety of interesting speakers. If any of you know of someone that you think would be great to visit our club and speak, please let me know so that we can invite them and schedule them in during the year.
Robin Aitken, Jaye Howey and I went along to hear Linda Vagana (General Manager of Duffy Books) speak at the Rotary Club of Hutt Valley. She thanked us for our support of the programme in Rata Street school for well over 20 years.
I had great pleasure in attending the Upper Hutt Community awards, where one of our members, Shelly Bryant was given a Civic award for meritorious voluntary community service for Upper Hutt. Well done, Shelley!
Thanks for all the support you have given me, the first month of my year as President.
Kathy Bryant