Our cluster Changeover season is about to start. First to announce their event is Rochester Rotary Club, to be held on Saturday, 6th July. It will be run in conjunction with their 60th anniversary of service to their community – a wonderful achievement for them, and indeed, for any service club. The invitation to our club to attend is included elsewhere in this bulletin. It would be a good thing if we could support Rochester and celebrate with them with a meaningful number of our members being there on the day.
Our changeover will be held at Camp Getaway on Sunday, 7th July, with a 12 noon for 12.30 pm start. This year, the event will be catered for by Goldfields Catering, a company whose pleasant services we have used successfully in the past. Our current District Governor, Ron and his wife Deb, will be in attendance representing the then-current District Governor, Michael Lapina. We look forward to welcoming Ron and Deb as they start to unwind from what will have been a very busy previous 12 months for them.
Visit to Donations In Kind, at their Open Day on Saturday, 10th August. Please put this date in your diary if you think there is a chance you would like to visit the DIK storage and dispatch factory at Footscray on the day. It is a superb facility, packed with all sorts of goods that can be offered to our clubs to assist people and organizations in need, both here in Australia and overseas. DIK volunteers will be providing food for attendees on the day.
Rochester Rotary Club has their 24-seater bus available on the day, complete with one of their members who is a qualified driver. If there are sufficient numbers of Bendigo Rotarians, not just from our club, who wish to take the bus to the DIK storage facility, the charge would be $20 per person. This seems like very good value, and a good fellowship opportunity. It’s early days yet, but think about having a most interesting tour of the facility, with a free meal and a fair few laughs on the day thrown in.
Volunteer Recognition Day at the Bendigo RSL, was held on Friday, to coincide with National Volunteers Week. Our club had received an invitation to attend, and so Stan, Ian, Toni and Ray represented RCoBS at this celebratory function. There were around 150 guests of the RSL on the day. The RSL presented awards to a number of their particularly hard-working and dedicated volunteers, some of whom were quite overcome with their unexpected recognition. The main awards were to supporters of the RSL’s focus on ongoing provision of assistance, advice and welfare for ex-servicemen and women and their family members. Awards were also given to people who had worked very hard in fund-raising to enable this valued assistance, as well as the team of volunteers who year-round staff the Memorial Hall in Pall Mall.
It was good that some of us were able to represent RCoBS on the day; we know the RSL is very appreciative of our efforts each year when cooking at the Anzac Day Gunfire breakfast – hence the invitation.
Club Forum is the highlight of next weeks’ meeting. An email has gone out from Club Service Director Cathie, setting out the agenda for the day. We look forward to members’ constructive suggestions and ideas on how we may operate in the short to medium term. Longer-term, it will be interesting to see how the regionalization project trial unfolds; for a start, Assistant District Governors will not exist from 1st July – they will effectively be replaced by the Community Group Leaders.
*Note the latest Rotary Donations in Kind newsletter is available on their website at rotarydik.org
Co-presidents Ray Carrington and Adrian Schoo
