President's Desk 20-05-13

From the President's Desk

Good Afternoon Fellow Rotarians, e-Club Members and Friends,

Rotary Clubs are made up of many different people with varying amounts of experience, knowledge and time to share. If I could thank each and every one of you individually I would as it is because of you, I have had the best year as Charter President.

It has been a year of growing, ups and downs, turmoil, fun and fellowship with amazing people. Thank you for the time and effort you have put into our e-Club, as the song goes, "From Little Things Big Things Grow. I am proud to say I am a small part of that.

Last week, Melissa Mellor quickly stood in and spoke to us about the Cheerful Hearts Foundation. It was an enlightening and inspiring story of young people fixing up the Nali International School in Ghana.   Although this sounds like an impressive school by its name, the facilities were far from that and the years of neglect showed. Melissa and Lucien are now raising money for a couple of projects the main one being fresh drinking water for the students. Please check out the video.

Thursday's 'Think Tank' nutted out some finer points of the trip some of our e-Club Members will be taking to Birdsville to raise money for the Royal Flying Doctors Service Qld Section late August. Anyone interested in coming along, please fill out the form, and we will contact you.

The Board Meeting was directly afterwards and we have some exciting news; the Board has approved Debbie Beths to be a Member of the e-Club.  Debbie has already been joining us for Forums and we have enjoyed her input into the group decisions.

I am also very proud to announce that Gary Wachter of the Southport Rotary Club was approved as an Honorary Member with thanks for all the work and effort he has put into helping us with the Ause-safares and our other Service ventures.

Jane Loxton has donated her first $11 000 to Australian Rotary Health for 2013 Ian Loxton Pancreatic Cancer PhD Scholarship and visiting many Rotary Clubs along the way. Jane has sold over 200 copies of "Hip, Hip Hooray" a book about her and Ian's sailing adventures. If anyone would like a copy please message her on our e-Club Facebook group.

After taking over the role of webmaster from Chris who did an awesome job setting up the website from scratch, Tara Little needs a huge thank you for keeping it bright and up-to-date. Nothing is ever a problem to her.

To all the other Members that I may not have mentioned over the year, you are still awesome and I do appreciate the help you have given to the e-Club in one way or another.

Geoff Baldwin, our incoming President, went to Mullumbimby on the weekend for the second District Assembly and he has many fantastic and exciting ideas to bring to the Club.

Look forward to seeing you at this week's Forum on Tuesday night, we have also got a quickly re-organized Guest Speaker (thank you heaps Mary Pearse). It is Jyllie Jackson CEO/Creative Director of the Lismore Lantern Parade. LightnUp is a not for profit community arts organisation and is responsible for the delivery of the Lismore Lantern Parade and 35 other festivals and events held each year throughout Australia. Log into the meeting at 8pm HERE.

Yours in Rotary,
Rick Jewson
(President for only a couple more weeks!)