President Rhonda... Welcome
Visitors: Nathan Capper, Roy Dykes.
Visiting Rotarians: Elizabeth Wright (Te Awamutu)
Conference Hastings 21-23rd May – The Wisbys will be attending and are recruiting like minded folks to trial the Wine Country Motel, Neville and Lyn’s new venture in Havelock North. Sounds dangerous. Early bird conference registration before 8 March will save you $50 www.9930conference.org
Board Meeting Update
Looking for a new Trust Treasurer now Neville has left us in the lurch. Application forms are available from Rhonda. Trust A/C now has $95K even after giving $25K away last year.
Treasured Art – a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the Art Gallery. All set for May with a promise “It will be Fabulous”. Still looking for a principal sponsor if you know of potential suitors.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – looking at dates in either April or May
RYLA – Two candidates have been nominated.
Waterboy – recent donation of $1200 made.
Waitangi Day Funds – $2K split between Kiwi Can, ROMAC and Merivale Community Centre.
Friday Five’s – has been and gone. Couple of beers, bit of a chit chat.
Bob’s Barbie – will have been and gone by publication. Good thing it hasn’t proven overly popular with the muster still under 100.
Car Rally – From here to Whakatane 10-11th April. Dinner at the Whakatane Golf Club with an option to overnight. Details to follow.
Guest Speaker: Interplast District Chair Elizabeth Wright gave some background about Interplast and some of their recent initiatives.
Interplast was established in 1983 and is a partnership between Rotary and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Australian and NZ Teams provide corrective surgery to patients in Asia Pacific region who would not normally be able to access those services. Covid19 has of course, severely interrupted their programmes, with activities reduced to providing specialist equ
ipment and virtual mentoring for people on the ground.
Elizabeth ran us through some case histories of patients who had received these life changing procedures. A catalogue of severe burns, mouth cancers via the dreaded betel nut, ulcerations etc are dealt with. Surgical teams deliver skin grafts, micro-surgery and training programmes to upskill local medical personnel.
All child patients wake up to a teddy bear. D9930 is raffling a family of Teddy Bears – the Hope family. Tickets are just $2 each with the winner drawn at Conference. Tickets available from eliz.j.wright@gmail.com
Sergeant Session: Ken White on his most recent specialist topic: “Divorce” Not that he is bitter at all, but some salient quotes came to light…
Don't divorce, stay together through anger and hatred and festering misery, just like God intended. Lenny Clarke
Divorces are made in heaven Oscar Wilde
Don't marry for money. Divorce for money!
Etc…..you get the flavour.
The Raffle was won by Wayne
Parting Thought: Steve Read
“Social Media is like herpes. If you let it in it can be very difficult to get rid of.”
Martin Devlin
