Gary Halliday posted on March 31, 2010 07:24
Our club had many guests to tonight’s meeting including Jane and Michelle from Drug Arm; Max Bunter, all fresh from presiding over the Circus Extravaganza; Reverend Tanifa from The Bonnyrigg Samoan Methodist Church and PDG Bill Little from Village Aid.
Reverend Tanifa was on hand to accept a cheque from Community Services Director, Jim Rudling in the amount of $2800.00. The good Reverend will be putting the money to use housing families who have been affected by the recent devastating Tsunamis in the Pacific. Tanifa has put aside the agony of losing members of his own family to help others rebuild their shattered lives. With a passion that only comes from a deeply caring person, he thanked our club from the bottom of his heart and promised that every cent would be spent wisely in those efforts. We should all feel extremely proud that our club has contributed, even in a small way to significantly helping our proud Pacific neighbours in their hour of need. David Goldston brought Tanifa’s plight to the attention of our club and rightly received special praise from The Reverend. We look forward to inviting Tanifa to one of our future meetings to update us on the progress of his mission.
Later in the evening, Bill Little updated us on his Village Aid Programme in the Philippines’. Using a PowerPoint presentation, Bill illustrated to us what a little bit of ingenuity can achieve when shoddy building methods fail to keep the elements from destroying class rooms and alike. Bill also described in pictures, just how elementary construction of a water tank can be. A bit of wood, some chicken wire and concrete and in no time you have something that can hold clean drinking water that can serve an entire village. Bill is not a man that simply talks the talk; he actually gets his hands dirty by personally supervising projects on a regular basis. Our own Joe Cauchi can testify to Bill’s resilience as he has accompanied Bill on several Village Aid projects in the past.
The following people all deserve high praise for contributing towards the success of The Circus Extravaganza; This years apprentice and next year’s master, Peter Houghton; Circus stalwart, Max Bunter; Jim and Indra Rudling; Jock and Joe Cimino; Shann O’Connell; Jim Leahy; Gary Halliday, (who also had the dubious task of handling some very delicate circus enquiries); and from Drug Arm, Jane, Michelle, Rose, Naomi and her sister and Phil, (apologies for surnames excluded). We now look forward to welcoming Jane Thompson in a few weeks time to collect a cheque from our club that has been deservedly earned. Finally, none of it would have been possible without the dedication of the great people at Communitel who again administered another successful money raising campaign, supported by Sandro, Emma and the team from Somersault and the very talented performers from Ashley Brophy Productions.
There is no meeting next week, 6th April, so use the break to recharge your batteries as we enter the last three months of The Rotary Year. On the 13th of April, Barry Thompson will be our special guest. His topic will be Club Leadership.
To all my friends and extended families, I wish you all a happy and safe Easter and look forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks.