My fellow Rotarians and friends of Rotary,

The Object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise, expressed as these four principles:

First: The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service.
Second: High ethical standards in business and professions, recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying by each Rotarian of his/her occupation as an opportunity to serve society.
Third: The application of the ideal of service by every Rotarian to his/her personal, business and community life.
Fourth: The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional people united in the ideal of service.

As we had our third board meeting on Monday the 6th of September, it would be good to focus on a few projects we have undertaken within the last couple of months:

• Our Rotary Club of Strathfield, through our Community Service (click) Director Rick Vosila, is committed to assisting the Parish Pantry in any way we can. Now we have an associated project. There is a very direct need for a cool room to store perishable items to be supplied to the needy in this area. Rick and PP Arie Pappas are in the process of finding the right contractors to build the Cool Room.

• Our Vocational Service (click) Director Alexey is developing a Technical and life-skills Training Program in order to prepare indigenous communities for the workforce. In order to take this program to the District level after piloting it from the Rotary Club of Strathfield, we approached our District Governor Jeremy Wright for assistance. We are glad to note that the DG Jeremy is looking at our request very favourable.

• Our Youth Service Director (click)  Ying Ho has been busy strengthening our existing Interact and Rotaract clubs with the assistance of our club’s coordinators PP
  Roger Vince and PP Rod McDougall.

• Under the leadership of our International Service (click) Director PP Roy Ellis, we have already submitted our first Global Grant Project with our sister club, the Rotary Club of Colombo South to rehabilitate and equip a rural base hospital in northern Sri Lanka.

• PP Arie Pappas Club Service Director (click) and our Program Chair Gulian Vaccari are doing a tremendous job with some remarkable guest speakers with an average attendance of nearly 30 Rotarians weekly at each meeting in the recent past. With a focus on Membership month we are also having many guests attending our meetings. We also have our social media campaign supporting vaccination.

I have expanded upon these projects in our Bulletin (click)

 
The power of Rotary comes from club membership. Rotarians contribute time and expertise to make a difference- helping those who need it and encouraging youth to reach their potential.

"Only a life lived in the service of others is worth living."     Albert Einstein

Yours in Rotary,

Thaya Ponnia