Amy Read was our guest again today – good to see you Amy. Lara Manning was also welcomed as our guest speaker.
Thanks to Phil Harris for making another trip to the Pratt Foundation to collect more knitting for East Timor.
Paul Kirkpatrick reminded members about the working bee at Camp Get away to rect the steel beams for the new kitchen.
Paul Henderson spoke to the questionnaire emailed out Monday night regarding the RI Flexible and Innovative Clubs project. He will collate the responses and present a final proposal to the members next week. We will need 100% of the members voting on the proposal.
Report from Board meeting 16th March 2015
The Board approved the following donations:
- $2500 to help fund a container of knitting to East Timor
- $4000 towards the Walk for a Wheelchair appeal to support The Hindsight Club
- $350 to help with transporting the Rotary Friendship Exchange team while they are in Bendigo.
- Purchase of Nitro Pro software for the Secretary computer
Approval was also given to support 2 students to the RYPEN camp this month.
In recognition of the support provided at Australia Day, payments were approved for the following 2 clubs:
Inner Wheel - $1000
RC Bendigo South - $1200
Graeme Lynas, with support from Adrian Schoo, has put forward a proposal to develop a Schoolies in Central Australia as an alternative for students who go overseas to do projects and also to incorporate some Vocational Service opportunities.
The Board approved the further development of this proposal.
The Audit, Risk & Governance Committee want to know if there were any issues that needed to be reviewed. Any members, who feel there are areas of risk that would benefit from a review, please contact Geoff via the secretary email.
Paul Henderson presented the outcome of the Innovative & Flexible Rotary Club discussion had last week and presented the options to be presented to the members for voting on. If the initial vote indicates support to proceed with applying to do the project, the agreed option will be developed for members to vote on next week.
Any members interested in reading the reports for the meeting will find them on Clubrunner in:
View Club documents – Secretary – 2015-15 – Board meeting agendas – March 2015.
Our guest speaker this week was Lara Manning. Lara has spent the past 12 months in a remote community in Tanzania. She initially travelled there as a self-funded volunteer. Lara has approached our club for some sponsorship and we agreed to pay her a regular allowance over the 12 months. She also did fundraising herself.
When Lara got to the community she was employed as an English teacher. She contacted the club and asked if she could use the money allocated to her to purchase supplies for the school and wider community – this was approved.
Lara’s talk today was to inform the club of her experiences and how she used the funds.
Lara worked for the Tanzanian Children’s Fund. Some of the things managed by this organization were the orphanage, schools (pre-school, primary and they were commencing a high school), medical clinic and microfinance projects.
Why the need? The community mainly relied on picking coffee. This was only for a short period of time, so there was a lot of time where there was no occupation.
There was a lack of education, high unemployment, alcoholism and very little money. There is also a lack of access to education and medical care.
Child labour is prominent and there is a culture of deliberate failure. If a child wants to go past primary school they have to leave the community to be able to attend high school – they were therefore discouraged to succeed. The Fund has started a high school to try to keep the children in the community and encourage achievement.
There are many preventable problems in the community.
The school Lara worked at was called Gyetighi Primary School.
There are 476 students. They are provided with a free lunch and snack. These meals were high calorie as often they were the only food they had for the day.
They were also given free health checks and daily vitamins.
The students were provided with uniforms.
There were 21 teachers as well as student teachers. Lara’s job was to teach the teachers English. During her time there they had a 100% pass rate for Standard 7 students.
Lara’s role in Tanzania:
Standard 4 English teacher
weekly teacher classes
helping with exam preparation
pre form 1 English program
volunteer program planner
Where the money went:
- Art/craft supplies
- Books for the newly established Oldeani Secondary School
- Sweaters for some of the students
- Vitamins for the primary school
- Books and resources for the teachers English classes – dictionaries/ novels
- grammer pages
- memory card English
language programs
- Secondary School savings program. Lara tried to teach and encourage the parents to save for their children’s education by providing $1.00 for a defined amount deposited by the parents.
- Girl’s Centre books
Lara’s highlights of the year:
- Experience of another culture
- Working with the children
- Improved teacher participation during her time there
- Increased results on tests
- Living in such a remote community - a life changing experience
Thank you Lara for sharing your experience with the members and well done on your initiative and what you achieved.
Have a great week everyone and see you all next week. Cathie
How come women get longer string(for measuring waistline)
