Firstly I would like to thank Neroli for leading the club so well through unusual times. Zoom meetings and socially distanced chats were easily embraced by club members and so I feel that we have remained a strong and vibrant club through it all.
And we have had a great begining to the new Rotary year! Our first gathering at the Bowling Club for changeover was a buzz of the delighted chatter of members and friends talking face to face again. It was topped off with superb food from Moorish Kitchen, and entertainment from the talented young duo of Julia Anderson and Cameron Miller, who I expect we will hear much more from in the future.
It was excellent to be able to honour dedicated rotary service with the awarding of three well-desrved PHF awards, see more about that in the stories below.
Then I was totally side-swiped to be this years recipient of the Mary and Lindsay McIntyre Award. Thank you for the honour however I feel incredibly grateful to be surrounded by so many good people who exhibit the spirit of Rotary in so many ways :)
We followed on from that with our first meeting of the year at the Town & Country Club. It was great to be welcomed back there by familiar faces and to host Rhys Smith the manager of the Cromwell Youth Trust as our speaker. The trust is to be the receipient of funding from the book sale held over the past weekend. Rhys spoke to us about his experience, plans for the youth centre and issues facing young people in our community. It was a great lead up to meeting the young people in person when they came to help us with the set up of the book sale. What a great support their energy and enthusiasm was to that task.
The annual book sale, postponed because of COVID, was again a success both as a fundraiser and as a service which our community seems to thoroughly enjoy. So many comments were received from people who were thrilled we made it happen this year. Thank you very much to all the volunteers who contributed time, energy and equipment to the event, we expect to be able to contribute at least $12000 towards the purchase of a van for Youth Centre Trust.
The directors for the 2020-2021 year held their first meeting on 12th July. Welcome to new incoming directors; Grant-Membership, Alan C-Foundation, Paula-Administration, Neroli-secretary and Richard B-Treasurer.
First item on the agenda was a training session on Dropbox and Clubrunner for directors, then recommendations were made to the trust to contribute $3000 to the Lend a Hand Foundation, expenses of up to $1200 for the book sale.
This year 's theme is Rotary Opens Opportunities and so I am looking forward to many opportunities opening up for us to grow awareness of Rotary values and service while supporting our community and the environment to be a better place for us all.
Warm wishes
Pam
