Bulletin No.29 - 9th February 2010

Bulletin No. 29 - 9 February 2010

Duty Roster

Today’s Attendance -  Ed Gutsche

Make-Ups

Trevor Wells                                                       East Coast Bays (New Zealand)                 18 and 25 January

Terry Baker                                                         Sunrise                                                                 29 January

Jeff  Isley                                                             Priory Interact                                                   Date not provided

Des  Willis                                                             District Training                                                                ”

Pam  Ellis                                                              Fellowship                                                                          ”

Roy  Jones                                                           Sunrise                                                                                 ”

Fred  Roberts                                                      Sunrise                                                                                5 February

Peter Long, Terry Baker, Gavin Gilmer, Roy Calder, Richard Stephenson, George Tzemis, John Rauch, Trevor Long, Colin Fox                                                                  Projects Meeting                                             2 February

Attendance with Make-Ups 100% plus

Visiting Rotarians

Phil Gutsche                                       P.E.

Non- Rotarian Visitors

Di-Anne Qoto   (Speaker)  and Manon Baelden  (Exchange Scholar)

President Ian’s Announcements

1. Bev Radue was welcomed back after his stay with family in New Zealand
2. Alf Levinthal was looking very perky with his two new knees
3. Lunch on 2 March will be at Vistarus. To avoid unnecessary expense an attendance list will be circulated shortly.  Booking is essential
4. Julia Webber, our Ambassadorial Scholar of a few years back, will attend lunch next week
5. The Christmas Party shortfall of R5280 was caused by cost of band (R3000 which was approved by the Board), dinner for the band (R780), decor (R540), corkage (R320) and R640 extra charged by the German Club because we did not have the expected 80 people present that evening

Our Speaker - Di-Anne Qoto (Miss P.E.)

This eloquent, elegant and bright 24 year-old matriculated from Linkside High and then graduated LLB from NMMU. She  is presently a Candidate Attorney at Boqwana, Loon and Connelan in PE.

Di-Anne proved to be an outstanding ambassador for P.E. and her charity of choice during her reign has been the remarkably successful Reach for a Dream, where the wishes of children with life-threatening diseases are heard and catered for.

Recently she has been fully involved in the decorating and equipping a desperately needed children’s room at the Dora Nginza hospital and, in the future, plans to get involved in the development of women in South Africa which she perceives as an area of critical importance.

Di-Anne plans to specialise in Marine Law, a relatively new discipline,  in the future.

Her talk was well-received and generated a number of questions by Rotarians.

Forthcoming Events for your Diary

16  February       Dr Piet Naude from NMMU                                                                                        Lunch Venue

23 February        Ismail Mahomed      Festival Director: National Arts Festival                          Lunch venue

2 March                Lunch will be held at Vistarus .  BOOKING ESSENTIAL                                    Details later

16 March            Prof Leanna Uys  (vice Chancellor of the University of University of KZN)  Lunch venue

16 April                Quarterly Dinner                                                                                                               TBA

29 June                Induction Dinner                                                                                                               Humewood Golf Club

Other Matters

1. Trevor Long reports that the Alpha Primary School Matching Grant worth about R100 000 has been approved.  Donors are  a)  The Rotary Club of Istanbul-Karakoy in Turkey who will provide R5 550

b)  Ron Ferrill from  D7570 DDF R59 200

c)   our club will provide R28 268

Again, many thanks to Trevor for his hard work is finalising this MG, particularly in these tough economic times.

1. CORRECTION.  John Rauch has asked me to correct a statement I made in Bulletin No. 28. The Trust funds (both capital and/or interest) may be used for club projects, not just the interest.

Sergeant -  Des Willis

Des congratulated those celebrating birthdays in the forthcoming week. They are Lindsay Kobus and Moira Theodosiou ( 10^th), Jill Harris (11^th), Rosemary Browne and Shena Wilmot (13^th), John Rauch (14^th) and Michelle Brussouw (15^th)

Both Michael and Sherine Howell (11^th) and Godfrey and Jenny van Graan (15^th) celebrate wedding anniversaries this week.

Special mention must be made of the van Graan’s who celebrate their 56^th wedding anniversary! A wonderful milestone!

To ensure the Fellowship Box moves along Des has invited all Rotarians to the Eastern Cape Philharmonic Orchestra’s Concert in the Park next Sunday. Details later.

To end off he used some out-of-the-mouths-of-babes type quotes including

a) A  little girl was asked when is it OK to kiss .  She replied,  ”When they are rich”

b) And a young boy was asked, ” What do you do to make marriages work?”. His reply ” Tell her she is pretty, even though she looks like she has been hit by a truck!”

Vocational Readings -  Steven Theodosiou

Unfortunately both the humorous story and the moral did not arrive an d therefore cannot be included

ShelterBox

You will recall that both the Club and Herbert Hurd Primary have donated a ShelterBox to the devastated people of Haiti.

Attached is a page from the latest issue of Time magazine which outlines both the history of this Rotary project, the impact it has had and the contents of a ShelterBox.

From small beginnings …………………………………

In 1999 I watched a disaster unfold on the evening news. As aid workers threw loaves of bread on the ground and people scrambled after them, I asked my wife, “Why can’t they hand the bread to those people? They’ve lost everything. Why should they lose their self-respect too?” It was as if someone hit me over the head with a cricket bat. I got out a piece of paper and wrote down what I would need after a natural disaster: shelter, warmth, comfort, dignity. (See video of Shelter Boxes being delivered and used in Haiti.)

I approached my local Rotary Club with the idea to give survivors sturdy boxes that contained a 10-person tent, blankets, pans, utensils and a stove that could burn anything from diesel to old paint. Since 2001, we’ve raised enough money to send 75,000 boxes to more than 100 disaster zones in places like India, Congo and El Salvador.

On Jan. 12, the alert system at our warehouse went off; within an hour we were mobilizing for Haiti. Our warehouse is like a Walmart for disasters. We tailor the box contents to each crisis. A summer flood in Sudan requires more mosquito nets than a winter earthquake in Nepal. Haiti is tropical, so we put in fewer blankets and added extra water-purification tablets.

By Jan. 30, we had delivered 5,000 boxes to Haiti, and we are packing 5,000 more. All told, at least 100,000 people will benefit. The first tents that arrived in Port-au-Prince were used to house patients at a field hospital.

Our boxes don’t just create tent cities. They build communities. Within an hour of the tents’ going up, a mother starts hanging laundry lines and someone else sets up a minishop. Kids like the crayons and coloring books, which bring back a degree of normality.

In Haiti, people are turning the green ShelterBoxes into makeshift cribs, tables and wheelbarrows. Imagination is one resource that isn’t in short supply.

Gimme Shelter

See what life is like in a ShelterBox tent in Haiti at time.com/haiti_tents

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1960259,00.html#ixzz0fJ5Js0rN

Malcom Andrew