Hi all,
Another wet weekend, whatever happened to February being our most stable month weather-wise?
A small meeting on Tuesday, with only 19 of us, but an inspiring speaker – amazing to see how much Maia has achieved in a few years and at such a young age – hard to believe she is still only 16. Her farther Kirk, who attended the meeting with her and along with her wider family, is a key part in making Maia’s Lazy Sneakers vision grow, dropped us a note thanking us for the opportunity to present at the meeting, and has also send a copy of Maia’s presentation, which I’ve attached for those who were unable to attend.
There doesn’t seem to be a collection point in our area – it would be great to see someone take up the challenge – perhaps our Rotaract club at Tawa College.
Upcoming meetings and format
This week was going to be a movie fundraiser night, but there was minimal interest, which is not really surprising given the increasing Omicron numbers.
We had a discussion at the Board meeting on Tuesday and are all in agreement that the last thing any of us would want is to be responsible for our members getting ill, or generating a cluster event.
For these reasons, we’re pausing all scheduled non-formal Rotary events for the next month or so. This will leave us with formal meetings only, every 2nd week.
At this stage, we have Ashleigh from New World scheduled to speak at our next meeting on 1 March, with speakers lined up for the subsequent fortnightly meetings
We’re looking at the options to move them all to Zoom meetings, and need to make the call over the next week. Things we need to consider are:
- Safety and comfort of our members and families – we have a number of members already standing down from meetings, and a wide mix of perspectives amongst our members – from those that are hunkering down, to those saying ‘bring it on’ – and those in between – all opinions are valid, and everyone needs to choose their own approach.
- Numbers for catering – 18 or below is not feasible for Elaine from a catering perspective
Anyone who has any comments to contribute, please let me know by Wednesday this week, via email on
karynmeade@icloud.com – it would be especially helpful to know if you intend to not attend in-person meetings for the near future, so we can look at the numbers from a catering perspective, as those numbers may make the decision for us.
The Board will make the decision this week on how we proceed, and will advise by the end of the week if/when we will move from in person to Zoom meetings.
Other business
- We were advised this week that Hutt Rotary have initiated a district raffle to raise funds for the Regional Children’s Hospital. As a club we were to be allocated 21 books of 10 tickets at $10 a ticket.
The Board feels that we as a club and our community have contributed significantly, and are ‘raffled out’. As such, we’ve advised that we don’t feel the 210 ticket allocation is reasonable, and have successfully requested that our allocation be reduced – we are now receiving 10 books of 10 tickets to sell.
Thanks to those that have already purchased, or agreed to sell a book – if anyone else is able to purchase tickets, or is happy to sell tickets, please contact me to arrange getting the tickets to you.
- Thanks also to those who attended or purchased tickets to the Tonga Fundraiser on Friday night. It sounds like it was a great night, and very successful in raising funds for Tonga in the aftermath of the recent issues, and another awesome initiative by Elaine, our Paul Harris Fellow caterer.
- Kevin, Jordyn and I had a video chat with Olivia from Canada, our last Exchange student, last weekend. She’s in her final year at university – completing a degree in Kinesiology. She’s currently doing a work placement semester at an occupational therapy clinic, and is still spending a lot of her spare time training and teaching aerial arts. Her father is transferring to Melbourne for work shortly for a year or two, so she’s hoping to be able to get over to see them, and then bring them over to NZ to see where she spent her year.
I see from some posts by the Westchester Rotary club in LA that hosts our outgoing NZ students on their way to their final destination, that the Youth Exchange programme is getting set up to restart, so possibly next year, we’ll be able to start considering whether we want to host or sponsor another student.
Have a great week everyone
Regards
Karyn
