The President S Year in Review David Martin

The President’s Year in Review – David Martin

I would like to thank all of our club members and especially the club board members for their friendship, hard work and wonderful support over the last 12 months.

The role of president is both a demanding one and a satisfying one. It is certainly not a quiet year or a dull year. There are very enjoyable times and there are very intense times. However, I believe we have, as a club, achieved a lot during the year and in some small part made a difference to the lives of some people in our community.

We have had a bit of fun along the way and generally have had very lively and well attended meetings with some great speakers. The commitment from members to turn out for early starts, even in the depths of winter, has been exceptional. Our legal two up sessions have been fun and revealed some interesting data about how some members win regularly and others not at all.

We started the year with 20 members and were very fortunate to gain 4 wonderful new members during the year, as we did in the previous year. No pressure on the next president to continue the trend.

Sadly we will be losing Mike Hetherington and Maggie Alexander in a couple of days time. Mike and Maggie have contributed an enormous amount to the club in the 4 years they have been with us. We will miss them greatly and wish them all the best in the next stage of their lives, which I understand will involve a bit of travel. We will, therefore, finish the year with 22 members.

One of the things that is very satisfying is the current make up of our club. We are a club of 22 members, 10 of us are first generation migrants to Australia, born in 9 different countries from around the world. Of our members, 10 are female and 12 male. This means that our female representation in the club is 45.46%, compared with an average of 25% in the District and 19% worldwide. For the mathematicians amongst you, you will see that it will not take much to reach our target of equal female and male representation in the club. Surely it should not be too difficult to locate 2 new female members this coming year. It is one of the strong goals that came from our club visioning exercise, to have equal female and male representation. We all feel that having an even gender split makes us a more vibrant and stronger club.

Everyone in the club has worked incredibly hard to make it a successful year. We are always very busy as a club and do sometimes overstretch ourselves, but it means we get to do what we joined rotary for, and that is to make a difference in our community. We recognise in the club, that we all do what we can when we can and should not feel guilty when other aspects of our lives means that Rotary has to take a lower profile.

You will see a summary of what the club has been up to in the pages below. I will just comment on a few of the areas. Our major and most demanding activities of the year have been the Fun Run for Youth Mental Health in August and the Carols on the Common in December. Both of these events were very successful and turned out to be significant fund raisers and will be continued in the coming year. They generally involve all club members in some form or another, whether it be in the lead up work or actively helping on the day.

I must give a small plug for this year’s fun run which will be held on Sunday the 28th of August at Macquarie Sports Fields. We are still actively looking for sponsors and participants. Our aim is to build up participants to around 800. The event is currently contained within the Macquarie University Sports Fields, but we are looking at the possibility of moving the event to the Macquarie University campus and adding a 10km run. There is a corporate event prize again this year for those organisations with a competitive streak. Ray White Real Estate took the corporate perpetual trophy last year.

A particularly enjoyable part of this year was the three joint meetings we had with the Rotary Club of Eastwood. It was great for us to get out at night as a club and meet and get to know a great bunch of Rotarians at Eastwood.

The club decided to take part in the District Visioning programme. The purpose of the programme is to have the club sit down together and collectively work out what the club priorities are and what we want to achieve over the next 5 years. It is a planning process, looking at where we are now, where we want to be in 5 years time and how we are going to get there. We had an initial meeting in February and have followed it up with two club assemblies. Everyone committed to the process enthusiastically and we are well on the way to having a written 5 year plan. The visioning process will be revisited each year and adjustments made if they are required.

We have continued to pursue an active social agenda and try to have at least one social event each month. During the last year these included dinner at various local restaurants, the Opera in the Arboretum event at Pearl Beach including fantastic hospitality provided by Vicki and Ian Crawford at their home and later in the year a most enjoyable BBQ at Rob and Carolin Wilkinson’s home.

Once again thank you to this year’s board, all of our club members for their friendship, support, hard work and enthusiasm and to the local community for their generous support and assistance in many forms to our North Ryde Rotary Club. Community Service – Pat Perrin

In August 2015 we were visited by the Principals from Ryde Secondary College and the 5 primary schools in our area that we support with annual donations: Holy Spirit Catholic Primary School, Kent Road Public School, North Ryde Public School, Ryde East Public School and Truscott Street Public School. Each Principal gave a short talk about their school programmes and how the donation would be used.

Mid November saw the erection of our Tree of Joy at Cox’s Road Mall. Thanks go to Seb and Annette for providing essential storage space for all the gifts, which removes double handling and makes the job a lot easier.

As usual the North Ryde Community was very generous and donated over 2,000 gifts. Bendigo Bank donated $1,000 towards the purchase of gifts, which were donated to New Horizons Nursing Home, Macquarie Hospital and the Smith Family.

A sausage sizzle and a visit from Father Christmas completed the Tree of Joy programme. Many thanks to Lindsays Meats, Cox’s Road Fruit Market, Ritchies IGA Supa Market, Caffe Incontro, Cox’s Road Hardware, North Ryde Pharmacy and Nought to Five Early childhood Centre for all of their terrific generosity.

In mid December we sponsored the annual Christmas Party for the clients of North Ryde Community Aid. All hands were on deck to serve a scrumptious lunch cooked by North Ryde RSL Club. Lunch was followed by a few glasses of champagne and entertainment. All in all a most enjoyable time was had by all.

The Christmas Carols on the Common were as usual a combined effort with Macquarie Park Rotary club. It was once again a very successful event with a tremendous crowd and with everyone being in great Christmas spirit.

Our annual Trivia Night at the East Ryde Scout Hall was a most enjoyable night organised by Victoria and we had a successful fund raising outcome.

Our fund raising efforts continue tonight with our fantastic giant raffle. Please be generous and support a worthy cause.

Vocational Service – Brian Powell

As has been the case in the last few years, our two main events were the IT Week for country students and our presenting of Pride of Workmanship awards.

The IT Week ran from Sunday, 15 May to Friday, 20 May. In cooperation with the Rotary Clubs of Inverell, Forbes and West Wyalong, we brought students to Sydney from five different rural schools (Ashford, Bundarra, Forbes, Ungarie and West Wyalong) and provided them with a concentrated program of learning about IT training and careers at eleven different locations. The technology based companies that the students are taken to range from the true IT company like Microsoft, Google, IBM and Cisco to companies like Optus and Coles that are extensive users of technology, and to learning institutions like Macquarie University and UTS which get the students involved in designing, making and programming robots.

The students are hosted by Rotarian members of the club, who also take them out on a social excursion one evening during the week. Student participants included Jack from Ungarie, who came in a wheelchair accompanied by his carer. Jack participated fully, and was like all the other students in getting a great deal out of the experience.

The Pride of Workmanship awards are designed to allow an employer to reward one of their employees for exceptional contributions to the employer company. The awards are part of tonight’s Changeover Dinner, and you will meet this year’s two awardees during the dinner.

Youth – Pam Bennett

This year we welcomed Damien Demaret from Belgium as our Youth Exchange Student. After a very successful year in Australia he returned to Belgium on 4th June to take an exam for entry into Military College

In January we welcomed back Stephanie Lin who we sponsored to go on Exchange for a year in Belgium. Stephanie gave us a presentation on her year at a combined meeting with Eastwood Rotary Club. Stephanie had a very successful year and came back speaking excellent French. While in Belgium, Stephanie was chosen to feature in a TV program on the life of exchange students. She did this extremely well, speaking in French.

The Youth Exchange Program is a program to promote peace and understanding throughout the world and Rotary exchanges approx 8000 students to 82 countries around the world. Unfortunately we had no student who applied to outbound on this program for 2016.

In January we were able to send two students to the RYLA program (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards Program). This is a training program for students who show qualities of leadership in the community. The students this year were Tylah McConnell and Mitchell Stubbs. Both students gained a lot from this week and came back to give us a very enthusiastic presentation. They are both now very active members of the Macquarie University Rotaract Club.

We had budgeted for two students to attend the RYPEN Program, Rotary Youth Program of Enrichment. This program is for students who show qualities of leadership but do not have the confidence to achieve this. We could not find students who were suitable to attend this year so the money will carry over until the next financial year and we will send students next January. International - Liane Corbett

The club chose to take a fairly low key approach with International this year, to try and reduce our overall workload and concentrate on the local community, where there may be more opportunities for membership appeal.

We did continue with our strong support for ROMAC (Rotary Oceania Medical Aid for Children) through a significant donation from funds raised at the Christmas Carols on the common and through additional donations from our club at our end of year disbursements. We also contributed $15 to ROMAC, on behalf of each guest speaker we had during the year.

Our club has always been a strong supporter of ROMAC through our club members being involved in management and support roles within ROMAC. These roles have included past members Steve Perrin and Phill Isaacs as Eastern Region and District Chairs respectively and current member Rob Wilkinson as Deputy Chairman for the last 2 years. Rob has recently been appointed to the prestigious role of Board Chairman for the next 3 years. My role for a number of years has been to facilitate and support the patients and their families when they come to Sydney. It has been a very rewarding task.

We have, as a club, always had a strong interest in helping countries that have been engulfed in natural disasters as and when they arise. Club manpower is always a consideration when fund raising quickly to meet a need. This year we have been able to donate sufficient funds for 2 Shelter Boxes. We donated one shelter box straight away at the time of the Fiji disaster and another one again later in the year.

The shelter box contains a tent for up to 10 people, plus all the other equipment a family would need to cook and purify water, when their homes have been destroyed.

Club Service – Maggie Alexander

The club continued to enjoy the breakfast meeting venue at Dunmore Lang College and the hospitality provided by them. The venue is convenient for members and the friendly assistance provided by Dunmore Lang personnel is greatly appreciated.

Regular meetings and social events were organised throughout the year, bringing the Club together to discuss and learn about important topics as well as to have fun and get to know each other.

There were 7 social events run and 2 Club Assemblies held, as well as monthly Board Meetings and 3 club meetings most months. There were 14 external speakers on a range of topics from Safety to Finance, 3 exchange students talking about their experiences and 4 club members talking about their life stories. Treasurer – Mike Hetherington

Fund Raising

With a huge thank you to the generosity of local families and businesses, the majority of our net charitable income was derived from:

Proceeds from the North Ryde Fun Run for Youth Mental Health $13,374

Proceeds from Christmas Carols on the Common $13,400

Sundry Donations (sale of watches etc) $ 3,827

Trivia Night $ 2,339

Member Donations $ 1,260

Grants $ 1,000

Sausage Sizzle $ 321

Total $35,521

Donations

Rotary Programmes (Australian Rotary Health, Shelter Box, Rotary Foundation Rotary Oceania Medical Aid for Children) $14,425

Youth Programmes (Rotary Exchange students, Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, Rotary Youth Driver Awareness and NRRC Country NSW IT student tour) $ 4,559

Local Education Institutions (5 Local Primary schools, Local Secondary School, Dunmore Lang College Scholarship $ 6,000

Community Donations (Centre for Emotional Health, North Ryde Community Aid, New Horizons Aged Care, Polio Australia, St Michael Mission and The Smith Family) $ 6,328

Total $31,312

NB In addition to these amounts, a further $12,373.25 was donated to ROMAC jointly by our club and Macquarie Park Rotary Club from the Christmas Carols proceeds.