Last Friday night I
attended the District Governor’s monthly President’s meeting at Penrith
Panthers together with Lillian. This was the last President’s meeting for
this year and last one (hopefully) to be held at Panthers. The next
meeting will be 20 February 2004 and will be held at the new buildings of
the Northcott Society.
Terry Davies from the Rotary
Foundation gave another excellent presentation on the work of the
Foundation. He also provided information of how we can get involved with
some matching grant projects in the Philippines, such as anti-
tuberculosis vaccinations for new born babies, computers for I elementary
school, hepatitis “B” vaccinations and development of a water system.
A team of members for the
GSE team to travel to Houston Texas has been selected. As the team to
travel consists of only 3 members, a meeting this weekend, just past, was
to decide on who will be the final team members and who will be a reserve
member. The candidates are from the following clubs, Hawkesbury, Padstow,
Parramatta City, Springwood and Prospect.
The incoming GSE team from
Houston arrives in Sydney on 4 March 2004 and will attend the District
Conference at Gosford.
While talking about the
District Conference there are now 2 members of our club of 60 who have
registered for the Conference, Kevin Beltrame and myself. To assist the
Rotary Club of Holroyd, the organising club, with their planning and
budgeting, I would urge members to register early.
There was also a
presentation about the Rotarians Against Malaria (RAM) program and are
willing and able to attend our club to tell us more about the program. A
startling statistic from the presentation was that someone in the world
dies every 20 seconds as a result of malaria.
Duncan Berriman from the
Springwood Club spoke about the benefits of the Student Exchange program.
He also reminded us that the exchange students in the district are
generally available to attend as guest speakers at any time to provide an
insight into experiences of living attending school in a foreign country.
John Heels the District
Child Protection Officer provided more details of pending child protection
Legislation intended to cover volunteers working with children. As advised
previously, District 9690 along with 3 other volunteer organisations have
agreed to trial the program conducted by the Commission for Children and
Young People. This means that as from 28 November 2003 all Rotarians and
people associated with Rotary working with young people under the age of
18 MUST complete the new documentation. This program is not retrospective.
The Children’s Commission does not require the participating organisations
to submit the new documentation prior to 28 November 2003.
I will be passing the
new child protection guidelines to our President Elect Keith Byrn and also
to Youth Services Director Kevin Beltrame for implementation.
Last Saturday we had
another attempt to raise funds for charity by holding a sausage sizzle at
Dan Murphy’s, Enfield. Whilst the day was financially positive this time
it could have been better. I wish to thank Shirley once again for
coordinating the event, Brian Johnson, Grahame True and Steve for giving
up their time for “service above self”. Many thanks to George Helou for
positioning the trailer to Enfield and also to Grahame for allowing me to
use his van to tow the trailer back to Mrs. Macs.
Reminder, Christmas
Carols this Saturday 6 December.
Have a good week