Closer to Home and a Change of Scene this Week

Catching up with past work colleagues,
Wellington

We visited New Zealand’s founding Rotary Club, Wellington.  This club will celebrate its 100 year anniversary in 2021 and is the home of our DGN, Anthony Scott.  This is our District's largest club with 160 members.  They have a successful programme of introducing new members as Associate Members and run a buddy system for these new members.  This is a very vibrant club that is run in a very professional manner with most of the members being business people in the Wellington area.   They follow some long standing traditions, for example 80 year ago when Paul Harris visited they started a fine for those in the club traveling or returning from overseas as part of the Sergeants session – this tradition still carries on today.  We had an enjoyable meeting and look forward to returning to the club in the future.

DG and President Dawn,
Wainuiomata

Recognizing 25 years of service by
two Wainuiomata Rotarians

Tuesday saw Chris and I returning to the area we first lived after we were married, Wainuiomata.  The Rotary Club of Wainuiomata meets in the local fire station.  The club is very active and focuses on working on local community projects.   During the evening we helped celebrate the 25^th Rotary anniversary for two members with a beautifully decorated chocolate cake.  It was a fun night and fortunately there were no fire call outs during the meeting!

Megha being awarded her
RLI Certificate

Next morning it was an early start to attend the breakfast club of Port Nicholson.  With a strong membership of 70, this club is very active  in raising funds through a number of projects and distributing funds to a number of worthy causes.  They got into the spirit of my Antarctica interests with a fun sergeants session that challenged our knowledge of some old Antarctic explorers.  The club was awarded a Centurion Club certificate in recognition of their support to the Rotary Foundation.  Megha Raghu,  the youngest member of the club, has also completed the Rotary Leadership course and was awarded a RLI Certificate and pin, well done!  I would particularly like to thank the club for agreeing to take on and run RYLA from 2014.

The week finished by visiting our only club to meet on a Friday – the Rotary Club of Courtenay Place.  This club is very active with their local school, Mt Cook.  They run a very community focused project, the Big Dig.  I was particularly interested to hear of a new project they are starting in association with the Wellington City Council, cleaning up graffiti across Wellington.  We hope this might be a pilot for a District wide project.   At the lunchtime meeting we were entertained by two young talented singers from the Whitireia School of Preforming Arts.  

And so ended another busy week.