The Rotary Club of Northbridge gratefully acknowledges the generous sponsorship of Northbridge Plaza
Birthdays & Anniversaries
Member Birthdays
Luke Keighery
May 3
Kevin Tattrie
May 6
Ros Virtue
May 18
Douglas Herridge
May 29
Join Date
Michael Bartok
May 14, 2002
18 years
Ian Burnet
May 17, 2005
15 years
Peter McNair
May 17, 2005
15 years
Valda Andrews
May 25, 2010
10 years
President's Message
Malcolm Lye
The resources of our club always impress me. This week, I sat in on a Zoom discussion among several members, organised by Sally. The aim was to generate ideas for fundraising now that all our traditional methods are closed to us. The group also discussed possible worthy causes for the club to support, which would be the recipients of any new fundraising efforts.
There is no lack of needy causes as funding for charities has almost dried up across Australia because of the COVID-19 crisis and the resulting serious damage to the wealth of companies and individuals. A large number of clever ideas and suggestions were put forward by the discussion. Sally has already chosen several for further development and she will be bringing these to the Board at its next meeting.
In these difficult times it may be that none of the ideas proves to be practical. But if we are lucky, one or two will be successful and produce some funds for charities that are really struggling now. If so, it will be the outcome of smart, creative thinking by a number of members of our club.
Keep well!
Malcolm
Club Meeting News
Welcome
President Malcolmwelcomed all members and guest speaker, Brett Odgers.
Announcements from Zoom meeting on 5 May 2020
Luke Keighery reported on the previously noted proposed support to Kathmandu during the COVID pandemic. Our $6000 donation has now been sent to them.
PPE and other medical supplies provided by Doctours will be going to East Timor, and David Robertson and Luke have been discussing the provision of medical supplies to Fiji.
Luke also advised that ShelterBox have been helping with the pandemic, and suggested that members might like to contribute some EOY donations to Rotary for ShelterBox.
Rob Coote spoke about the dispersal of funds raised during the bushfires. He is currently talking to South Coast clubs about the best ways for the funds to be used in their area. Some funds have been sent to Kia to build a multi-purpose pavilion which can be used by the community following the loss of their community facilities during the bushfires.
Rob also advised that former Rotarian Ian Jones reported he recently visited Kinglake, Victoria where $7000 of Northbridge Rotary funds contributed to the building of a new fence following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. He noted that a sign acknowledging Northbridge Rotary’s contribution has deteriorated over the years and it was agreed that we contact the local Rotary club and offer to pay for a new sign.
Valda Andrews reminded members to send her any nominations for the Paul Harris award. She also reminded members about Rotary Centurions and noted that she would be sending an email out to all members about this.
Unfortunately Rotary Foundation reported that there had been an increase in cases of polio in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that if the USA does indeed withdraw funding from the World Health Organisation as they threatened, there will most likely be an even greater increase in cases as their ability to administer polio vaccinations in those countries will be restricted.
Jon Gidney thanked the members who have paid their $25/month “dinner fee” to the club’s charities account. So far $800 has been received and the first tranche of funds has been distributed to support the Health Staff Appreciation Group.
Eleanor Chevor advised that she had raised $550 so far from the sale of knitted items she has been working on. Well done Eleanor and thank you!
Kim Wilkins advised he had eight members at his first Rotary Book Club meeting and welcomed any further members. He said a wide range of interesting books had been discussed.
Sally O’Neill advised that the Fundraising Committee had been working on ideas for fundraising in this current environment. If any member has any ideas please get in touch with her.
Ranald Stewartmentioned that he had been part of a Rotary Assembly meeting at which was discussed a book, Creatures of Habit, written by Mark Huddleston, a South Australian Rotarian and Membership Chair. The book is about understanding and disrupting the patterns of service club membership decline. Ranald commended the book as well worth reading.
Guest Speaker - Brett Odgers
Fay Petrou introduced our guest speaker - her friend and business coach, Brett Odgers. Brett lives in Sydney, and after his early career as a photographer and film director, has gone on to develop a global business consulting practice helping organisations build winning teams and develop inspirational leaders.
Brett started by talking about how the current pandemic crisis will bring 10 years of progress in just a few short months by way of innovation, how we do business and the need to change our way of being. He said this unexpected event has created shock and disbelief, anger, sadness, hope and acceptance. But it has also made for creativity, innovation, progress and abundance.
He spoke of ‘thought leadership’ – trusted sources who move to inspire people with innovative ideas, turning ideas into reality through know-how and expertise.
He spoke about the uncertain future and discussed 4 possible futures:
Fear focussed – some will not recover.
Highly Reactive – doing unfocussed things resulting in a new normal.
Responsive – do smart things with enormous reward, opportunities and adjacent possibilities.
Act now – create and do clever things.
He spoke about a book called “Abundance – the Future is Better than you Think” by Peter Diamandis & Steven Kotler which looks at providing abundance as humanity’s grandest challenge and how to rise to meet it.
Brett spoke about the various ways people can utilize their time during this period of pandemic – online education, adapting business and being innovative.
People also need to tell stories and write about their experiences, and not to assume their story isn’t valuable. Authorship can be the implementation and promotion of smart ideas which can be taken up by others. Everyone has knowledge and experience to share.
Malcolm Lye thanked Brett for his most interesting and thought provoking talk.
Items of Interest:
The Diary Files - The State Library of NSW is trying to capture the realtime thoughts and feelings of citizens experiencing life during this pandemic. You can do this online at https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au - click on The Diary Files. The aim of this project is to develop an archive so future generations will be able to get a sense of what the everyday life of individuals was like during this time. You can write a maximum of 300 words, and write as many entries as you like.
Here’s an interesting blog by Bill Gates written on 30 April about the creation of a vaccine for COVID-19 -
The next Andrew Lloyd Webber musical to be live-streamed is CATS. It will be live-streamed at 4.00 am Saturday morning for those of you who can’t sleep, but it will be available for viewing for 48 hours after that. Just click on this link to take you to the website - https://broadwaydirect.com/cats-to-stream-next-on-the-shows-must-go-on/ .
In 2003-2004, through Doreen Cooper, the caterer at the Golf Club, we were introduced to the Ry Langdon Foundation. This Foundation had been established to assist a young man who had accidentally injured himself and had become a paraplegic. He was a budding artist and had hopes of being to continue in that career notwithstanding his physical disabilities. To assist the young man the Board pledged to donate, over a period of time, a total of $25,000.00 to the Foundation. A series of events were undertaken with the express intent that the funds raised would go towards honouring that pledge. The first of such events was an Art Show which was run under the leadership of Ian Jones. Finally the terms of the pledge were fully honoured with a donation in March 2006.
CONGRATULATIONS to Sally O’Neill – proud first time grandma – on the birth of her grandson Callum.
If anyone has any jokes or funny stories, feel free to send them to me for the humour section of the Bulletin! We certainly need a little humour in our lives at the moment!!! Email them to helen.gulson@ozemail.com.au
The Rotary Club of Northbridge is offering a Peace Scholarship in 2020-21
The Rotary Peace Fellowship is the premier educational program of The Rotary Foundation and supports Rotary’s mission to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace. It is intended for individuals who have chosen a career related to international relations, peace, and conflict resolution; who have work experience in these areas; and who have a commitment to community or international humanitarian service and working for peace.
These links explain the scholarships and where they are offered.
Due to COVID19 Virus Safety Restrictions this event has been cancelled until further notice
Looking for something different to do in Northbridge?
Get in the groove with the local band, Laneway 91. Enjoy the evening with popular music, catch up with friends over delicious food and a drink, and help Rotary raise money for rural communities in need.
Dave Banks (left), President, Nambucca Rotary Club presenting a cheque to a member of the community.
Photo caption:
L-R: John Turner, Marko Delatovic, Nick Hillyard and Peter Grinter.
Rotary President, Peter Grinter, presents cheque to Nick Hillyard for BlazeAid at the Charity Fundraiser at Northbridge Golf Club on 24 January.
Over the recent months our nation has been beset by numerous disasters on a national level. As you are no doubt aware your local Rotary Club, the Rotary Club of Northbridge, has approached you to assist us in raising funds to help alleviate, in some way, the suffering occasioned to our fellow Australians. We, the members of the Club, have been blown away by the response and generosity of the members of our local community to our requests.
In October last year we conducted a bucket appeal at the Plaza for funds for the relief of drought-stricken farmers and we raised an amount just shy of $20,000.00. This was followed the next month with another bucket appeal at the Plaza to raise funds for victims of the bushfires then devastating the mid north coast of New South Wales which raised just under $16,000.00. Two months later we were back again asking for money for the victims of the fires then raging down the South Coast and nearly $26,000.00 to date has been raised. This is a grand total of some $61,500.00.
In dealing with funds raised by means of these appeals when, quite often, there are national appeals being conducted to raise substantial funds for the same cause, we have found that while the needs of the individual victims of the particular disaster are being helped financially by those national appeals, quite often community amenities are destroyed. However, the repair or replacement of those amenities which would greatly assist the devastated community achieving some return to normality do not qualify for assistance and literally fall through the cracks. To overcome this problem, we try to work with the local Rotary Club in that area and direct funds to helping restore those amenities and allowing the local community to rebuild as an interacting community.
In the middle of all this we conducted our regular annual ‘Tree of Joy’ at the Plaza to solicit Christmas presents for The Smith Family’s Annual Toy and Book Appeal for underprivileged children. This appeal resulted in our collecting enough presents to fill 24 waist-high, 75 litre, self-standing green plastic garden bags. Another magnificent effort by the local Community.
We, the members of the Rotary Club of Northbridge, wish to gratefully acknowledge the generosity of our Northbridge Community and to place on record our sincere thanks and gratitude for the material and financial assistance you have provided so readily when asked by us.
Where does the money go?
“Two people cried as they were so overwhelmed by Rotary generosity”
Karin Eurell
In typical Rotary fashion, we partner with another Rotary Club that is located close to the disaster zone. In this case, we connected with the Nambucca Rotary Club and the $15,000 raised from our first bucket appeal has been distributed already to where it is badly needed.
Nambucca Council provided Rotary with contact details of the 38 people who registered for Council assistance as they had lost their home in the bush fire.
The 38 names and phone numbers were allocated to 6 Rotarians to call and present them with a cheque for $300.
The President of Nambucca Rotary told us: “I have called 6 people so far, two cried as they were so overwhelmed by Rotary generosity.”
A further $1,400 is being donated to Out of the Ashes for porta loos –for people who have lost their home and are living in a tent.
The balance of $2, 200 will go to BlazeAid to assist farmers in the area by providing fencing materials which will be purchased locally.
Photo captions: The educators opened the box with mannequin torso at Christmas, and they were thrilled. It is the first clinical equipment that the hospital education team own themselves. Thanks so much 😊🙏Marg
A cry for assistance is certainly not uncommon in developing countries, especially when it concerns medical equipment. Northbridge Rotary Club heard the cry through two of its members Liz Grey and Ros Virtue, and immediately took up the challenge of fulfilling the needs of one of our closest neighbors, East Timor.
At Dili National Hospital, there are currently 12 Clinical Nurse Educators of which two are midwives. This year they became recognised as the first Timorese Clinical Nurse Educators at the Hospital to teach new nurses, midwives and student nurses on the wards.
Margaret McDonald-Ashe, a Nurse Educator for St John of God Nursing Development Program in Timor-Leste said “There is no budget allocation available for teaching equipment at the Hospital or the rural hospitals. We need assistance to carry on this really important work”
Past President Derek Matz ( Northbridge Rotary Club ) said “we managed to purchase or obtain via donation the vital pieces of equipment that were requested – mainly 2 adult and 2 child mannequins, a laptop and projector, stethoscopes, thermometers, 12 oxygen saturation monitors, a defibrillator with 10 batteries, bandages, medical tape and much more.”
“We can now continue the fantastic work the educators are doing, and even take on a few more people to move into the rural areas and train them as well.”
Margaret couldn’t thank Northbridge Rotary Club enough along with all the people who donated the equipment.
Children from the Wellington district enjoying their day out at the Dubbo Zoo with BBQ lunch.
Rotarians in Action:
Members of Northbridge and Wellington NSW at the Dubbo Zoo
Photo: Cheetah, Dubbo Zoo
The Rotary Clubs of Northbridge (Sydney) and Wellington (NSW) have embarked on a joint project to support the families of drought-affected communities in Western NSW. There are 744 primary school kids from the Wellington District and they are all being treated to a day at the Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo including a BBQ lunch.
The project is being run over a 7-week period. Rotarians from Northbridge are driving there to connect with their fellow Rotarians in Wellington and to jointly run the BBQ. Northbridge President, Peter Antaw, said that of the families: “The children are suffering as well, most of them don’t understand the financial and extreme pressures that their parents are going through.” The families are anxious about their future but there is also much determination to keep their communities alive.
Australia is experiencing one of its most severe droughts on record, with areas in NSW facing the prospect of running out of water by mid-2020.
The Burrendong dam is now at 4.5% capacity and dwindling rapidly.
The crisis is severely impacting the Wellington area and so special treats like a visit to the zoo is just not possible for many locals and their families.
3000 muesli bars, supplied free by Nestles, as well as 744 sausage sandwiches and a cold drink will be given to the children of the district which includes regional small towns such as Geurie, Mumbil, Stuart Town and Euchareena.
The joint project was launched on 11th September and Channel 7 Prime TV attended the Zoo to film the event. ABC Morning Radio interviewed the Presidents. The kids thoroughly enjoyed their day with most of them citing the Cheetahs and Meer Cats as their favorites.
Ben Shields (Mayor of Dubbo Regional) and Daryl Thompson (Headmaster of Wellington Primary) also attended the launch. They both congratulated the Rotary Clubs for identifying children as the hidden victims of the drought. President Greg Hart of Wellington Rotary also thanked Northbridge Rotary and the Rotary Australia Benevolent Society for their very generous contributions to the project, and for driving up from Sydney to help at the BBQ’s. Without Northbridge, Wellington would not have taken on this project.
