CHARITY DINNER. We have the charity dinner coming up on Friday May 18th. This is the club’s biggest fundraising effort except for the book sale. Justine has sent an email to all members asking us to approach businesses for an item or voucher to be auctioned off on the night. All proceeds go to our charitable trust which gives back something like $40,000.00 to our community each year. Items collected are to be handed into Justine’s office at Checketts McKay. All those club members available to help on the night should also contact Justine.
CONFERENCE. As it turned out Paul Checketts and myself were the only Alexandra Rotarians to attend this year’s conference at Oamaru. We roped Mike Parr into our delegation photo because we reckoned he comes to Alexandra meetings as often as he goes to his club in Timaru! There were some excellent keynote speakers. Graham Henry turned out to be quite a comedian with inside stories from his days as All Black coach. The famous story about getting Stephen Donald away from his white bait stand to the RWC final in 2011 was recounted with a few exaggerations. Other keynote speakers were Shayne Jones (social worker with a special interest in Maori), Jessie Harman (ex-DG on membership), Liz Rowe (Dunedin business entrepreneur), Associate Professor Yoram Barak (psychogeriatrics) who told us all about “successful aging”, and Mark Inglis the mountaineer. It’s always a bit of an effort getting organised to go to events like conference but it’s worthwhile.
MILLERS’ FLAT MEETING. Those of us who ventured out to meet up with our Roxburgh members and ex-members enjoyed a good meal at Faigan’s Café on May 30th. Dennis Kirkpatrick showed us around the restored historic bakery next door to the café and explained how it had all worked. Sue McGregor and Dennis were later in the evening recognised for their contribution to Rotary with Paul Harris Fellow awards. Both of them are worthy recipients of this honour.
MEETING MAY 7TH. Chris Pickering and Carol Dempster of Oranga Tamariki were guest speakers at our last meeting. They are part of a new ministry for children dedicated to supporting any child in NZ whose wellbeing is at risk of harm now or in the future, and also work with young people who may have offended, or are likely to offend. Their work is obviously challenging at times but also very rewarding. Part of their philosophy is that the ministry’s work benefits from community input. An important guest at this meeting was Ritchie Stevens who with his digger and assistance from Neville Grubb and others has converted the time to complete Ren Lothian’s Clutha river bank project from several years to just a few weeks. A well- deserved vote of thanks was passed on to Ritchie for his efforts.
NEXT MEETING. Our speaker will be NZ artist Dick Frizzell. It should be a good night. See you there!
Sue and Dennis - Worthy PHF Recipients
Two and a half Alexandra Rotary members attended 2019 Conference in Oamaru.
7th June Our Plantings working Bee
Our plantings opposite Molynuex Estate need some TLC. Those available will gather in Boundary Road together with local School Children at 12:30pm Friday 7th June. Bring gardening tools and gloves.
New RI President Elect
Holger Knaack, of the Rotary Club of Herzogtum Lauenburg-Mölln, Germany, has been nominated to serve as president of Rotary International in 2020-21. This follows the resignation as the president-nominee of Sushil Gupta due to health reasons.
