Our rotary week started well with a birthday shout from Stuart Armstrong who was 88 years young on 10th August. Stuart has been a long time member of our club and has worked to make the world a better place. Stuart thank you for sharing your celebrations and even more importantly for all your service. Well done.
This week we had two speakers from Shelterbox who are both Rotarians from Nelson. Charles Lambert who is an ambassador for the cause and Jimmy Griffith who is a member of the response team. Shelterbox is another fantastic program developed when some Rotarians identified a need and decided to do something about it. Have a look on
www.shelterbox.org to understand the extent of the Shelterbox program. Charles spoke to us about the need and what Shelterbox needs to perform its mission.
David Owen and Dave Wylie with our guest speakers
We then listened to Jimmy who spoke to us about his service as part of the response team on the ground in these critical situations. We saw pictures from Kenya and Bangladesh where Jimmy has worked with the Rohinga refugees from Myanmar. 850,000 people on 1,000 acres of land in a delta with the monsoon imminent. An unimaginable prospect for all concerned. Jimmy himself is a remarkable man, he presented in a factual manner that was hard to ignore. He had arrived back from Kenya the day before and will take 21/2 weeks to get home to Nelson while he visits Rotary clubs to make us all aware of the monumental needs. He became a member of the response team 3 ½ years ago and has been involved in 10 deployments in that time. An amazing commitment from a volunteer. If ever you wanted to meet someone who exhibited “Service before self” Jimmy is the one.
Two items of good news from Howick Rotary
Bookarama is underway with book sorting at Howick RSA 9:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays please give our band of hardworking members all the support you can. It is after all our major source of funds for our charitable work.
Work is underway on both our website
www.howickrotary.org.nz with the initial focus on Bookarama and our Facebook page which is publicising that and our other activities. Well done to everyone involved.
Already we are seeing results from these efforts with the following story being published
https://www.rotaryoceania.zone/Stories/time-for-change-enough-of-those-plastic-bags As part of the publicity surrounding Bookarama and our commitment to making Bookarama plastic bag free Jeannette and I will be giving away 500 of these bags at Howick Market on Saturday 8
th September and we would like some help. Please let me know if you are able to help and talk to the public about Bookarama and Howick Rotary while we hand out the bags.
And lastly some member news! Bill Charkow is off to the spare parts department to get a new hip fitted on Saturday, Colin Monk and Ian Fox and their respective management teams are off to Canada for a month while Rob Mouncey heads for Montenegro. It’s enough to make one feel left out. All the best Bill. Travellers, we expect regular photos and snippets for Keyway.
Enjoy your weekend. I’m off to Eden Park!
Dave