Dear Fellow Rotarians,
I'm really pleased that Tuesday night's meeting went so well with 25 in attendance. We collected $125 for Australian Rotary Health from our 'Hat' contributions.
Despite a last minute change of room at the Dandenong Club it was a very successful night with lots of positive feedback. Many thanks to Val Bennett for organising our Guest Speaker Anne Burgess, Principal of James Cook Primary School; we are looking forward to becoming involved with the school.
Thank you to Margaret McDonald, Inger De Zylva and Janet Hinson for attending and welcome back Ken & Lynn Tam. Janet is very keen to become involved in our Community projects (she is coming along to St. James tomorrow to observe the meals program) and I will be asking her if she'd like to join our Club.
Our Bunnings Sausage Sizzle on Saturday was fantastic, thank you to all Rotarians who were rostered on and worked very hard. It's always great to work together and raise funds for the Community, it's very pleasing that we were able to raise $1200.
Our new members Lilani De Alwis and Babar Jamil enjoyed their shifts and it was lovely to have Ian Maxwell and Ghaith & Abraham Khalil helping out too.
Phillip Thurgood did a great job, as always, putting the roster together and John Peck, we appreciate the pack up, clean up and storage of all the equipment.
We have a great club with fantastic members who are always willing to help out and 'make a difference' to the lives of others, whilst working and enjoying fellowship.
This brings me to the reason I would really like to 'get together' on a more regular basis. Our formal Rotary Meetings are held on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month, however I believe we have more chance of increasing membership and retaining members if we have more options.
We have been seeing more people attending over the past few months than we have in quite some time.
COVID certainly made things difficult for everyone, we became somewhat disconnected and met on ZOOM; we are finally getting back to some normality.
We are all extremely busy and it's not alway possible to attend on the designated 'Rotary' meeting nights.
I'd like to trial more regular Rotary nights over the next couple of months, which will include informal or social meetings and project meetings. This would provide more flexibility and help to keep us all connected.
The informal meeting we had a couple of weeks ago provided us with the opportunity to see some of our members who hadn't been able to attend for some time and also gave people a chance to offer suggestions and feedback in a more relaxed environment.
If this trial is successful, I will survey all members and if the response is positive, it will be taken to the Board to propose a change to our 'By-laws'.
I will be away for a couple of weeks from next Sunday for a 7 day holiday in Khao Lak, Thailand and then I'll be attending the Zone 8 Conference in Canberra, where Colin will begin his District Governor Nominee training.
I have asked Vice President Martin Pater to take my place during this time.
I hope to see many of you at the 'Caulfield Cup Calcutta' on Thursday night, 13th October.
Kind Regards,
Leanne
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