Dear Rotarians of District 9680,
Again it has been another very busy two weeks with six club visits, PDG and DAC meetings etc.
I also attended the funerals of PDG Ken Nicholls ( Grumpy for DIK ) and PDG Roy Parnell from Dee-Why Warringah. Both these funerals were very well attended by Rotarians.
Last Sunday I attended the BBQ for the incoming Youth Exchange Students at Dural. This was a great day and congratulations to Glenhaven club for organising the event again this year. We certainly seem to have a very nice group of students with our clubs again this year. I am sure they are a very talented group too - even though their effort at Aussie Rules were a little un-coordinated.
Thanks too, to the Rotaractors who attended the BBQ and organised some of the activities. It is very pleasing to see Rotaractors involved at so many Rotary events. Jeremy also assures me we are going to have a record Rotaractor attendance at our Conference next March.
Talking about Rotaract, I am very impressed with the way in which the Chatswood Rotaract club is progressing and I hear that a club starting on the beaches is not all that far away!
Congratulations to Dee Why Warringah with their involvement helping the University students with their Community Service projects. What a wonderful group of young students they had at my DG visit there last week! - and when I talked to them about joining Rotaract, they were all keen. WOW!
Yours in Rotary
Tony Castley
District Governor
DG Club Visits
The past two weeks Sandra and I have enjoyed great visits to Frenchs Forest, Lane Cove, Pittwater, Manly, Dee Why Warringah, and Chatswood. All the photos taken at these visits are now available to view. See the photos
New Rouse Hill Club
Congratulations to the Glenhaven and Norwest Sunrise on their combined efforts in working on a new club for Rouse Hill. There was a great article in the Rouse Hill Times and they have produced a superb brochure to distribute shortly. I also hear that several potential members for the new Rouse Hill Breakfast Club are already known and the publicity from this new club will surely help other clubs in the area to grow their membership as well. Well done! See the brochure
NGE is an Australian First
The New Generations Exchange programme is a Rotary International initiative to involve young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 years to foster goodwill and understanding through better cultural education and exposure. We are delighted to welcome the incoming Swiss team from District 1990 who arrived on 29 September and will be with us until 17 October. Full details of their program are available on the "Map & Activities" area of the team's Blog site at www.newgenexch.blogspot.com Also see more details of the team on the District website at this link.
DGE John Cameron says: “I brought this idea back from Switzerland with me after my 2006 GSE to Sweden and Russia. My friend PP Peter Bieri, the source of the idea is here with me for two of the three weeks of the exchange and would be an interesting Rotarian to interview. He hails from the Rotary Club of Augst-Raurica that is right next door to a very interesting and extensive Roman ‘dig’ where the head archaeologist (in charge of some 70 archaeologists) is a South Australian, and a Rotarian to boot.”
Check out the blog and have a look around under the "Maps and Zone Activities" link
Interplast
Interplast is another Australian multi-district Rotary project which consists of doctors from the Royal Australian College of Surgeons, who travel overseas regularly in a team to perform a series of difficult operations in third World countries. They also have a high focus on training the local doctors in every country that they work. Interplast and ROMAC work closely together and ROMAC often brings to Australia those cases which are so complicated that cannot be done in the third World countries by Interplast. Download October's Rotarian News
Popular Classifications for Rotarians
I have found that as a result of my visit to so many clubs in the district, there are some classifications that nearly all clubs have members for. So much so, that if a club doesn’t have these classifications filled, I would suggest it would be very easy to recruit them. There are five very popular ones in nearly every club - click here and I will share them with you!
Free PR in Hornsby Advocate & other local papers
Berowra, Hornsby, Waitara, Thornleigh, Wahroonga, Pennant Hills, Galston, Turramurra, clubs please note: The Hornsby Advocate local newspaper has a free “Community Calendar” each week! I note listing there for Probus clubs, View clubs, Apex clubs, Toastmaster, etc – but not one Rotary Club is listed!!!!!
To list your Rotary Club meeting, you can do it online at http://www.hornsbyadvocate.com.au I suspect other local papers have a similar feature- why don’t you check it out!
STOP PRESS - Dee Why Warringah just told me they have four new members as a direct result of their listing in the Community Diary of their local paper. How hard is membership - really!
Quick Pick-Up “Make Dreams Real” Projects
Pam Hudson our International Chair has just returned with her team from their fascinating trip to China, Mongolia and Siberia where they visited Orphanages, Hospitals, Rotary Clubs, remote cultural communities, Universities etc and obviously had a fantastic experience. Pam will no doubt place a report on their trip on the website later on, however, in the meantime, she has brought back from Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia, some great little international water and sanitation projects which would cost a club only $3,500 each. These could be done individually or several clubs could join together to do five or 10 of these and thus make it into a Matching Grant project. Club members may also be interested to join our Northern China, Mongolian tour next year and actually visit these projects. See some of the projects
China-Mongolian Rotary Tour - April 2009
The itinerary for the China Goodwill tour for 2009 will now be changed slightly to include Mongolia. Not only is Mongolia a most interesting place to visit, but there are also several clubs in our district that have projects there now and these are most interesting to visit. If you are interested in joining the 2009 China Goodwill visit (see page 217 of the directory), please let Pam or I know asap.
RYDA Newsletter
Below is a link to the latest RYDA Newsletter – the newsletter is produced each quarter and reports on the activities of Rotary Clubs across Australia who are assisting in delivering a valued road safety education program to Year 11 high school students. The RYDA Program is currently conducted in more than half the Rotary Districts in Australia and to date over 75,000 students have attended this professionally presented program. View the RYDA newsletter
Our District 9680 RYDA program will re-commence in November at St. Ives, however clubs please remember to financially support RYDA as we can only produce this program with your financial help. This is new - Please send your financial support by cheque in favour of “District 9680 Rotary Youth Driver Awareness” to the Rotary 9680 District Office, 3/7 Sefton Road, Thornleigh 2120.
GSE Wheelchair Team to Arizona
Our all wheelchair GSE team to District 5490 Arizona has been finalised after PDG Harold Sharp interviewed some 30 prospective applicants. The team of Jenny Kapp ( leader from Crows Nest Rotary,) Andrew Longhurst, Denise Beckwith and Ainslie Whitburn had their first get together this week. These young people who are all in wheelchairs are going to make an amazing GSE team. Read more about the team
GSE Team Leader for Germany
Congratulations too to PP Mark Anderson of Beecroft Rotary who has been chosen as Leader for our other GSE team going to District 1900 in Germany in May next year. Applications have closed for team members and selection will take place October 18th.
PR Update
Regretfully, our PR Consultant Julia Sheather tendered her resignation stating that the workload was too much for the amount of money we had available to spend on this project. So we will now re-evaluate this PR consultancy and see where we go from here. If you need PR assistance in the meantime, please call our PR Adviser, Steve Hopwood.
We have successfully completed the RI PR grant application for our District Magazine, and ‘Mr PR’ - Bob Aitken of RDU - kindly said “this is one of the most significant public relations grant applications I have yet encountered”.
The District Magazine project is certainly very exciting (see more details here), but please it relies entirely on clubs submitting good quality photographs and project stories to our District Editor, George Richards between now and the end of November. And clubs have plenty of good photos and stories - I received a couple of DVD’s and photos from Toukley last week on their projects. These DVDs were just so professional! Very well done Toukley - but please get these photos and stories to George for our magazine asap.
Our Website gets the “Royal Seal”
Recently our Website team received this great letter from the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd to which someone wisely commented “it was like giving our website the Royal Seal”. Our website is just going from strength to strength and guys you really are doing us proud!
There are now many new clubs and districts around Australia that have signed up to our website and our promoter Robert Keast is off down to Goulburn next week to show the Rotarians in 9710 what they are missing out on.
How about our members … are they all signed up yet? – no, there is still about 400 Rotarians in this district that do not have their email listed on their club page of the District Website and hence they don’t receive this e-news. Please give them a hand to get listed!
USA Financial Turmoil
Recently Ed Futa, RI’s General Secretary, addressed the impact of the US financial crisis. The statement makes very interesting reading:
"Given the troubling news from Wall Street over the past several weeks, we have received many inquiries about the impact these events will have on Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation. Although our investments have lost value in the short term, we believe they will recover when the financial markets stabilize. In addition, Rotary maintains a diversified portfolio that includes investments outside of the markets that were adversely impacted by recent events. Rotary's investment policies have proven to be sound through past down markets. This prudent management should allow our programs and projects to continue as planned.”
"Many Rotarians have asked specifically about our investment holdings, insurance coverage, and reserves ..."
Read the full statement
World Youth Day
We have finally received the cheque for the Rotary Foundation from the WYD organisation for all the 39 BBQs that our clubs held on 16 July. Wow! This has got to be one of our most successful district projects! Congratulations again to all the clubs who participated and especially to Theo and his team for making it all happen!
We will have a special summary and presentation on this project at our next Presidents’ meeting, 17 October.