Club Night - 30th April 2019

On Tuesday 30th April we heard from Adrienne Murray, Assistant Governor, for the Wellington 3 club cluster (which includes the Johnsonville, Tawa, Porirua and Plimmerton Clubs).   Adrienne has been a member of the Rotary Club of Plimmerton since moving to Wellington, having initially joined Rotary in Auckland in the 1990s.   Last year she was also the District 9940 Bulletin editor and chair of the 9940 Foundation District Grants Committee.

Adrienne has worked as an HR professional for 30 years and built up an exceptional reputation within New Zealand’s HR community.   She has worked internationally, in multi-site organisations and as a consultant to a wide range of organisations from start-ups to mature multi-nationals.   She has worked with and for leading New Zealand companies in the financial, science, private and public sectors, including the Tertiary Education Commission, PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Correspondence School, NIWA, the State Services Commission and Johnson & Johnson.   In 2006 Adrienne was presented by the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand (HRINZ) with both the coveted HRINZ HR Person of the Year award, and the HRINZ HR Initiative of the Year award for the 2005 year.

 

Adrienne spoke to us about some of our goals (our gems) that arose from our visioning workshop.   It is right that periodically are goals should be polished and reviewed, and not be left to languish and tarnish.   Adrienne also spoke about the role of an AG.   The local Club president has a direct line to the Rotary International President and the purpose of all the district roles is to support their clubs and the club presidents.

 

Adrienne also highlighted the wonderful online resources that are available to club members to learn about every aspect of Rotary how to fulfill their roles.     From https://rotary.org you can login to the members area by clicking on MyRotary.   Create an account using your Rotary registered email address.   Note that this login is not synchronised with the your ClubRunner login.    From MyRotary you can access a huge amount of material about Rotary including the following Rotary Online Tools :

Adrienne, and earlier Martin, had also mentioned Rotarian Action Groups and Rotary Fellowships.    For a reference to these and a list of these click on  Read more --->

 

 

We also heard from Russell Smith who provided a 3-minute talk about his ancestral connections with Tawa.   On his wife's side his father-in-law was Eldon Armstrong, Charter President of the Rotary Club of Tawa for the 1969-70 year and first Paul Harris Fellow recipient for Tawa.   On his side of the family Russell talked about his connection with James Taylor, an early settler of Tawa Flat.   James was born on the 17th of August, 1823, at Turnbridge, Wells, England, and came to Port Nicholson with his father, William and two brothers, per “Martha Ridgway”, in 1840.   By 1849 he had become a pioneer settler in Tawa Flat, then a dense forest.   His farm consisting of 276 acres of freehold and 112 acres of leasehold in the area of Taylor Terrace named after him.   In the early days Mr. Taylor represented Porirua district for eight years on the Wellington Provincial Council, and was for twelve years afterwards a member of the Hutt County Council.   For many years was also a member of the Tawa Flat School Committee, a JP, a captain of the local militia, and established a Sunday School of the Primitive Methodists.   He married in 1844 to Miss Hook, of Wellington, and had seven children, and fifty-four grandchildren.

 

The evening ended in the conclusion of the AGM, with the nomination of Richard Hutchinson as the president nominee for the first 6 mths of the 2020-21 year, and announcement of one change to the previously announced Board for next year, being Don Rushworth as Vocational Director.

Rotary Fellowships  see https://www.rotary.org/en/our-programs/more-fellowships  which can be found in MyRotary under the tab Take Action -> Empower Leaders.