Changeover season is almost over, with Camberwell Rotary Club’s changeover being the last in our district on 9 July. Each changeover has been a very different affair, some quite sedate and others, like ours, being an evening of glitz and glamour! Elizabeth (P1) summarized the event beautifully in the last episode of the BUZZ. The District changeover in Altona on 5 July was a 4 hour megafest of music, singing and award presentations to welcome in the new District Governor Peter Shepheard. Life will now become much quieter until next year!
At the 7 July meeting, we had a presentation by our medical mission attendee, Justine Paragreen, and Camberwell Rotary’s next president Vijay Susarla. They are actively involved with the Timor Consortium, a multigroup organization that travels to Timor Leste frequently to aid in the construction of toilets and hand washing facilities, and insertion of water tanks. This process involves raising significant funds as each tank costs $3000, and a toilet block will cost $7500., manual labour, with the villagers providing much of this as proof of ownership of the project, and assessing suitability of villages and sites.
Hygiene facilities in many villages, especially in the mountains, are nonexistent, with washing and drinking water merging with sewerage. Malnutrition and disease are rife. Water often needs to be carried long distances, and the responsibility often falls on young children, especially girls, and this leads to low school attendance. Therefore the building of toilets and handwashing facilities in the villages, close to the schools, overcomes many of the health and educational problems being experienced.
Next week we will have a discussion about “weatherproofing your home” and on the 21 July we will head off to the Harp Hotel in East Kew for a Trivia night, which should be great fun.
Please remember to let Alan know if you will not be attending a member, as at present the payment is coming out of our club’s precious funds.
Club member Steve Clarke spoke to members seeking feedback about a possible project to provide food for needy members of the community. A similar model is up and running at the Surrey Hills Neighbourhood Centre where usually non-perishable food is provided to pensioners, single mums and those doing it tuff.
Some of the food is sourced from local supermarkets and food outlets.
Steve asked members to provide any comments back to him about the suggested project.
Justine Paragreen, a former member of the Camberwell RC and Vijay Susarla, the incoming 2025-26 President at the Camberwell RC, joined us to speak about the Timor Leste Rotary Consortium. Justine is well known to Canterbury RC members as she has participated in trips to the Philippines and been involved with FORaMEAL events.
The consortium, as the name implies, in made up of a number of rotary clubs that provide funds and hands-on assistance with water tanks and toilet facilities in Timor Leste.
The project, which is a great example of rotary assisting our nearly neighbours, commenced with a pilot project in 2017. Since then the project has received two global grants and three District grants to help finance the facilities.
Generally there have been two visits a year, with the exception of the Covid years, mainly in the Baucau area which is a very remote part of Timor Leste. Often there is no tank or water supply and sanitation is a significant issue.
Each project has involved consulting with the local residents and training them to use and maintain the equipment.
To-date, 92 water tanks and 12 toilet blocks have been established.
This is a significant achievement by the consortium.
Very kindly, Justine and Vijay presented Club Co-President Jill Woinarski and Doug Hawley with scarfs as a token of appreciation for the Club providing funds as a member of the Consortium.
Our presenters next week will be Carolyn Ingvarson and Lindy and Frank Boyd and they will be speaking about the healthy electric homes program.
They are from Electrify Boroondara will talk about how to be more comfortable, have a healthier home, save money on energy bills, and how they can help.
Carolyn has a background as a secondary school biology teacher, and as a public servant with the Victorian Government, in equal opportunity education, then state training, occupational health and safety, and finally with the freight and logistics industry, where she received the Australian Freight Industry Personality of the Year in 2003.
She has always worked in her local community, in the 1990s as a local government councillor for Camberwell, and then chairing the Board of Women’s Information Referral Exchange (WIRE ) for 7 years in the early 2000s.
In 2006 she founded and ran Lighter Footprints, a community climate action group in the municipality of Boroondara. In 2020, she stepped aside from convening Lighter Footprints, but remains active in community work as deputy Chair of the Electrify BoroondaraAlliance.
In 2003 she was awarded an Order of Australia medal for her work in Conservation and for services to the Boroondara community.
The humanitarian food packing FORaMEAL (FAM) project has again had a very busy program throughout the 2024-2025 year. This means that we have now packed over 2.1 million meals since the project commenced in 2016. This year a total of 317,300 meals were packed in a collective of 42 hours, by close to 1,300 participants. The participants came from 13 schools, the Hararian community, students from Melbourne University Rotaract and RMIT with support from the Rotary Club of Melbourne and the Rotary Club of Camberwell.
We have distributed over 600 thousand meals this year, these have been provided to the Australian Federation of Ukrainian organisations with two shipments of our meals to the needy in Ukraine and are currently gathering the supplies for our next shipment to Somaliland in addition to the one sent earlier in the year. Our supply bank to the Philippines has experienced some customs issues and to date has not been released despite many hours by Doug and his legal team. We remain hopeful that these issues will be resolved soon, and the product has not been spoiled. Another 200 thousand has been distributed to Food Bank Victoria for distribution to food banks/support services for the needy throughout Victoria.
The planning and activities take many hours behind the scenes – the raw product supplies ordering and splitting for easier weight management, general supplies, cleaning of the kits and the reloading /unloading and maintenance of our truck is all completed. Storage of all our supplies, packed product awaiting shipment is all located at Dandenong.
The FAM team of Doug, Nora, Val and Jill thank all the Rotary members, friends and supporters for their ongoing support. No event can happen without your ongoing support and contributions. Your willingness to readily give of your time and energy is always appreciated and especially when you rejuggle your schedules in response to the grovel hour!
The usual stall warts of Alan Stevens, David Zrna, Rob Simpson, Kyle Wightman, Bill Granger, Kate and Gerry Cross, Ant Balocca, Helen Hartnett, Pat Little and Neil Williams and Margaret Hamilton. And when their studies enable, Tahlia Vosnakis and Liam Howard. And of course, Patrick Cunniffe when he and Val are back in Melbourne.
We acknowledge and appreciate the ongoing support of Pam, Marg and Celina who are supported by Australasia Pty Ltd to complete community support projects and to Andrew, Catherine, Tim and Richard of the Rotary Club of Maroondah who readily support the Yarra Valley Grammar events and assist them financially every year.
We again extend a warm welcome and thanks to our new members to the team. Namely: Craig Smith, John Vosnakis, John Wormsley, Lester Gerhard, Anne-Maree Downes, Julie-Anne McLean and Kylie McQualter.
It is with sadness that I acknowledge the death of our late Rotary member, David Shave. A true supporter and contributor to our Project. I really miss his frequent phone calls just enquiring how the team was going and was the event planning on track! Vale David.
With much appreciation and thanks to the Board, especially John Braine, the Treasurer, general members and our philanthropic supporters we are again ready to meet the demands of another anticipated busy year ahead in 2025-2026. We have even more schools wanting to have an event, our previous successes have created more challenges for us to meet the demands and expectations of everyone.
The Canterbury Rotary Club lunch usually meets bi-weekly at 12.30 for a meal and some fun.
David Zrna looks after the reservations for the lunch group. Please contact David at david.zrna@canterburyrotary.org or on 0467033092 to advise that you will be coming to a lunch.
Most of us are familiar with the reference to the “Twelve Days of Christmas” but did you know about the “Twelve Months of Rotary”?
Rotary has identified a theme for each month. July is the first month of the Rotary year and is when the annual theme kicks in. It is also the month when new leadership takes over at Clubs, Districts and at Rotary International. July’s theme is “Maternal and Child Health”.
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