The conference opened with a series of welcomes: Welcome to Country by a Ngunnawal Elder; welcome to Canberra by Rachel Stephen-Smith, Minister of the ACT Legislative Assembly; and welcome to the conference by RI Director Jessie Harman.
The RI President’s message was delivered by RI President Elect, Gordon McInally, a Scottish dentist who gave a very engaging presentation – looks like he might be a lot of fun! [As an aside, Gordon and his wife, Heather, went bowling with the Rotaractors, where he was dubbed ‘Gordo’]
The highlight of the opening was a conversation between conference joint MC, Gary Newton, a polio survivor, and Ken Hutt, a climber, who made an attempt on Mt Everest to raise funds for End Polio Now. The plan was for Ken to climb the mountain and parasail back to base camp. Unfortunately, he became unwell, most likely with COVID, and was not able to finish the climb. Nevertheless, significant funds were raised.
D9800 was well represented at the conference. There were 40 people at the District social dinner, including most of the Essendon club and partners.
Day three opened with a panel discussion on Rotaract and #elevaterotaract. Discussion centred around the opportunities presented by the recognition of Rotaract clubs as distinct bodies, rather than a project of a Rotary club, and the removal of age limits. Did you know that you can belong to both Rotary and Rotaract? At least one Rotaract club has set their age limit at 98.
RICon 23 was promoted with a stirring presentation by Mary Berry, dressed in bright green. On a serious note: registration costs go up by $US100 in mid-December, so REGISTER NOW. IN addition, volunteer registration numbers are very low, so even if you are not planning to attend the conference, you can be involved, and you are needed.
Peace Fellow, Eric Yague from the Philippines, an extremely impressive young woman, who is working on a Ph D at University of Queensland focused on youth peace and security, spoke of her journey from a poor background, to a local councillor at age 16, on to the UN, and now working as a consultant while studying.
Larry Lumsden, Rotary Foundation Trustee spoke about the impact the Rotary Foundation is having across the world. An interesting statistic he gave was that last year there were 391 million polio vaccines given at a cost of $AUD0.20 each. The message was positive that, while we need to keep our focus, there is hope that we are nearing the end of the End Polio campaign, especially as the Taliban has now agreed to allow house to house vaccinations.
The final presentation was about the rescue of the Wild Boars soccer team from the flooded cave in Thailand. We did not stay for this, but went to the nearby village of Hall, where we were taken on a walk around the village that is the first ‘bee friendly village’ in Australia. The community came together to plant pollinator friendly plants in the streets and almost every house has a ‘Bee Friendly Garden’ plaque outside.