At our last meeting on Tuesday 26th March speaker was Tracy Robinson of Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) is a worldwide charity. In New Zealand RMHC supports a continuum of care and support to families with children having medical treatment across New Zealand. This includes specialised accommodation close to all major hospitals to ensure families are supported in safe, nurturing environments allowing them to focus on their family’s wellbeing and help relieve some of the everyday stresses they face. Each house in run by volunteers who treat visitors like family and they treat the home like their family home.
Across NZ each year there are some 4,300 families hosted in 154 rooms providing 43,200 free night accommodation, the equivalent cost saving to the families of $11 million a year. The criteria for staying at a RMHC home is that the patient needs to be under 21km and live more than 100km from the hospital providing support. They also provide accommodation to support Rotary's ROMAC (Rotary Oceania Medical Aid for Children) programme with patients from the Pacific.
The Club 3-minute speaker was new member Fiona Houghton who told us a little about herself. Fiona grew up in Dannevirke and trained for nursing in Hastings. Moved with family to Wellington a position of charge ward nurse at Wellington Hospital. Now she has the position of Social Director for Wellington Hospital for which her prime role is to ensure that there is good nursing patient care. Her two children are now living and working in London in the fields of tourism and IT. Fiona joined Rotary after living in Tawa for some years but realised that she didn't really know a lot of locals and was also interested in supporting the local community. A project that she is interested in supporting is the supply of children's children clothes for the Solomon Islands.
Ian Munro gave the club members about how the club is using FaceBook to promote the clubs image to the community and spread the word about Rotary's values and projects. You can help by also "liking" the Rotary Club of Tawa FaceBook page and "liking" and sharing to your own "friends" group items posted on the Rotary FaceBook page.