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A Note from the President
The Rotary Foundation, our very
own charity, have always provided grants to Rotary clubs, including
District Simplified Grants, Multi-Year and Cultural Ambassadorial
Scholarships; Rotary Grants for University Teachers; Health, Hunger
and Humanity (3-H) Grants; Volunteer Service Grants; and Disaster
Recovery Grants, just to name a few.
The Foundation is considering streamlining the grants process and is
putting in place a Future Vision Plan. In short, the Future Vision
Plan is a pilot project to combine all Foundation grants into 2
categories: Rotary Foundation District Grants and Rotary Foundation
Global Grants. A 3 year pilot program will be conducted starting
from 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2013. After the pilot, the Future Vision
Plan will be implemented worldwide.
100 Rotary Districts out of the 529 Rotary Districts worldwide is
selected to participate in the pilot. At the March 2009 Launceston
D9800 District Conference, D9800 clubs unanimously voted to apply to
participate in the pilot program. The reasoning is simple. Whether
our district participates or not, the Future Vision Plan will apply
to us from 1 July 2013. If we do participate, we have the
opportunity to better understand it as well as the opportunity to
influence its final form.
I am happy to report to the club that out of the 277 districts that
has applied to participate in the pilot, our District 9800 has been
successful and is now one of the 100 Future Vision Districts. As
District 9800 Foundation Chair's Representative for a number of
clubs (including Southbank), I will be keeping Southbank up to date
with developments and further promote the Foundation within Rotary.
You can find out more from
http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNews/News/Pages/090522_news_futurevision.aspx
or go to the Rotary website.
Yours in Rotary,
Gabe
Last Week's Meeting
At last week's meeting members and guests Clinton,
Aurora and Judy had the chance to listen to Barbara Harrison's
adventures with meerkats in the Kalahari desert.
 Looking
at beautiful photographs (hard to believe that they where taken with
a "cheap camera") featuring these funny animals and the breathtaking
landscape we all could get a taste of what it must be like to be an
Earthwatch Volunteer Traveller. Barbara seemed to have blended in so
well with her environment that meerkats even used her as a lookout
poste showing no sign of fear of humans invading their space.
Barbara currently prepares for her next trip to see the Leatherbed
Turtles in Trinidad and we have asked her to come to back and report
on this trip after her return.
If you are interested in Earthwatch and would like to know more
about their travels check out their website.
http://www.earthwatch.org.au
After the technical malfunctions that prevented
Barbara's presentation at her first visit in 2008 we were all
pleased that it went smooth this time.....although Tracey tried to
stir up things a bit by "just switching off lights"....well, she
managed to switch off the microphones instead! Some guests may have
taken that as an (unsuccessful) attempt to prevent the Sergeant
Session...
Well, Crown staff got it fixed in time to enable us to participate
in a very strange competition between Nick and Carl about their
amount of hair. Given the location, betting is normal activity but
this was an unusual attempt to raise money indeed.
Announcements at this meeting included a brief report from the Kids
Foundations Turning Scars into Stars Charity Ball that Gabe, Aurora
and Bettina attended.
Philip asked all members to reconsider attending the District
Assembly if they hadn't registered yet.
At last current and incoming presidents Gabe and Philip encouraged
all members to book their seats for the upcoming 10th Anniversary
and Changeover Celebrations as soon as possible.
The meeting finished at 7:25 pm with President
Gabe's two quotes of the week.
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