Gary Halliday posted on May 12, 2010 08:41
Last night, I had the pleasure of performing a number of very satisfying duties on behalf of our club. As with all other meetings this year, most our members were fittingly on hand to share the experience.
The culmination of our main fund raising effort saw the handing over of a rather substantial cheque to Drug Arm. National Fund Raising Manager, Jane Thompson and Management Team Member, Naomi Talamaivao were on hand to receive a cheque for over $54,000 from our club which will help administer their Street Outreach Service over the coming year. Drug Arm receives no government funding; therefore allowing a partnership to flourish with our club that has become mutually beneficial. The bottom line is that our club gets to stage a yearly Circus Extravaganza for children and Drug Arm receives much needed operating funds. To date, this partnership has seen in excess of $500,000 raised for Drug Arm and more than 100,000 children pass through the turnstiles of The Circus. Not a bad result in just eight short years.
Our club also handed over a cheque for $500 to budding local cricketer, Luke Ohrynowski. Luke’s proud parents Martin and Lisa were also on hand, relieved at the thought that Luke can now attend a competition in Darwin whilst not financially burdening the family. We wish Luke all the success and look forward to speaking to him at a later date when he can update us on his exploits.
We also had an unexpected international visitor drop in for a chat and dinner. The lovely Hilda Holloway of The Rotary Club of Nisku-Leduc (District 5370), in Alberta Canada was introduced to our club by Campbelltown member Collin Chua. Club banners were exchanged and from all accounts Hilda was suitably impressed by proceedings.
Our Farmers Market BBQ seems to be going from strength to strength also. The jury is still deliberating on whether our weekly BBQ stall is a clever marketing ploy that allows for interaction between Rotarians and the community, or in fact simply just what it is, a BBQ stand cooking up bacon, sausage and egg rolls for hungry shoppers. I suppose no one really cares. In any case, the weekly taking and resulting fellowship from this venture says it all.
Our club has committed to taking in a young exchange student from Finland. We now have an obligation to billet the young lady during her tenure in Sydney. Peter Beadle needs to know of any members that can help in this area.
Next week we have Kikki Tagaroulias of the KARI Aboriginal Resources Centre in Liverpool as our guest speaker. Knowing Kikki personally, I’m sure you will find her bubbly personality infectious and her knowledge of this organisation insightful.
Charlie