Dear Members

On Thursday morning we held our first Business Breakfast for the year with Julian Riekert speaking on employment law. It was a very successful event with 44 attendees, and it was great to have the support from those members who attended and brought guests along. Thanks also to Narina, Tracey and Charles for your valuable assistance.  A number of the corporate attendees found the breakfast informative at a business level and it was for many their first Rotary experience, they were keen to learn more about our community activities.  A number of them have indicated their interest in the second Business Breakfast, which will be held on Thursday 17 September.  Our guest speaker will be Peter Court, the Founder and CEO of Streetscope.  His topic will be Corporate and Business Social Responsibility.   

We have our second Board meeting on Monday which means that Tuesday’s Club meeting will see the Board members present details of our current projects and their objectives for the coming months.  I am sure we will all look forward to hearing from them and their project champions about the numerous activities on which we are embarking. Your contribution and involvement is encouraged.

Whilst as a Club we are undertaking a lot, and this may seem daunting, I would like to reinforce that our participation in Rotary can constantly evolve and change as our circumstances allow.  So, please feel comfortable about either increasing or decreasing your level of participation.  Rotary is after all, a volunteer organisation and should be a rewarding experience that complements our working lives.  It’s therefore up to each of us to make sure we keep it interesting, personally relevant and be able to contribute our ideas freely.

Philip Archer
Club President 2009-2010

President Philip's Quote of the Week

 “The foolish person seeks happiness in the distance, the wise one grows it under his feet.”
       - James Oppenheim

Last Week's Meeting

(Thank you to Narina for these cool scribe notes)

Scribe Notes Meeting Tuesday 14 July

Assistant Governor Bob Batrouney (Batman Cluster) visited our club and wished us well for our year ahead in our goals for the club.  As a conduit between our club and the Batman Cluster and District 9800, he said we were an energetic, vibrant and innovative club despite our comparatively small size.  He encouraged growth in membership and was happy to see the number of visitors on the night.

Sergeant Chris managed to bring out one of his new fining techniques: the Excessive Enjoyment Levy.  He also fined a number of members for their Google search results, including Barbara for her superhero photo, Narina for her Pixies posting and footy tipping, Steven with his acting history, President Philip for his professional golfing, Tracey for her solo album release in 2003, amongst others.

Barbara presented her Member's Moment for the week on removing clutter from our lives, using the de-cluttering of a house as a metaphor for de-cluttering your life.  She introduced us to the stages of de-cluttering such as the "how did this happen" stage, the "that's it" stage, the "nothing is safe" stage, as well as the final "this feels so good, I'm never going to let it happen again" stage.  Barbara encouraged us to de-clutter by removing any white noise from our every day by removing any negativity.  She recommended de-cluttering our homes, our garages, our minds and life in general. Rhys also reminded us to think of the Steps program when we're de-cluttering and getting rid of any useful material possessions ...

Guest Speaker Scott Bocskay, Country Director for the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) discussed the program, which was founded by former President Bill Clinton of the USA launched through the William J. Clinton Foundation.  The organisation started off with a small number of offices in the US, and is now in over 40 countries (C40) with a handful of programs including a HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, Making Buildings Green, and various other projects.  CCI's mission is to make a difference in the fight against climate change in practical, measurable, and significant ways.  They work with corporates and government with the philosophy of "think big, act fast" and creating partnerships to achieve results.  They focus on cities, clean energy, and forests.  With clean energy the work on carbon capture and storage as well as large scale solar and thermal power projects.  On forests their work focuses on equatorial belts across the world, against deforestation with the move to sustainable foresting.  Scott stated that the time to act is now, and the fundamental basis is to measure the change made.  They also work on building retrofit projects on existing, partnering with C40 cities, both public and private building owners, major financial institutions and suppliers of eco products.  The reason they focus on existing buildings is that existing buildings contribute 50-70% of GHG (green house gas) emissions in urban areas, and have excess energy and savings available. The benefits of working on these projects is the ability to capture wasted energy and money. CCI's Climate+ program is for reinventing large-scale urban communities to reduce greenhouse gasses and redefine cities and urban landscapes. They have worked on projects in Melbourne including Docklands and VicUrban's Officer.