What did you say? a Business Meeting & a Bit of Axe Throwing.

Last Week

Varsha Sewpersad spoke to us on 'Hearing Health' and everything that can affect your hearing.  In the case of many people 'Age Related Hearing Loss' is an issue that they prefer to ignore but she warned that hearing loss and the resulting lack of brain activity is often a contributory factor for the onset of dementia.  If you don't use it, it atrophies! 
She said that everyone over 65 should have their hearing tested once a year.  Interesting as we don't think twice about regular visits to the optician but would never think about our hearing.

This Week
It's a business meeting.  We are more than half way through the year and this is President Lyn's gallop to the finishing line so we must make sure she ends her year in style.

Vocational and Lester Connock Awards 16th February
We hope to be able to organise a lunch at the Wanderers Golf Club like last year.  The idea is also to include the LC Awards if the recipients are available.

Visit of Doreen Muheru  Friday 9th March
This lunch we will also try and organise at the Wanderers Golf Club.

Well, Here's an Idea for a Fund Raising Event!

Aprille Weron, right, and her friend Brooke Williams raised funds with an axe-throwing tournament.

Aprille Weron grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia; it was, she recalls, “a very privileged life.” That’s why, when she heard about Philadelphia’s New Day Center – a Salvation Army-sponsored drop-in center that helps women and girls being trafficked for sex – she was shocked to learn that many of the people who come to the center are from that same area.

We think that trafficking is something that’s far away,” says Weron, a member of the Rotary Club of King of Prussia, Pa. “But some of these girls went to the same schools that you and your friends went to.”

Weron and her friend Brooke Williams, a member of the Rotary Club of Philadelphia Happy Hour, decided to help raise funds for the center through an unusual activity: axe throwing. Held on 14 October, the Salvation Army’s Axe of Kindness 2017 Axe Throwing Tournament saw more than 40 community members – including Weron and Williams, who competed as The Rotaraxers – hurling 1.5-pound hatchets at a target.

“We threw a lot of axes that day,” Weron says. As with darts, the goal in axe throwing is to get as close as possible to the bull’s-eye. But the real goal, of course, was to raise funds for the New Day Center – which the event did, to the tune of $6,800.

Not only that, but the “Did you say axe throwing?” factor got others interested in the cause, Williams says: “Doing events like this is a fun way to raise money, but it also is a great way to advertise what we’re doing. It’s a little more attention-getting.”

The proof? When the Philadelphia Happy Hour club heard about the event, members decided to organize a second axe-throwing fundraiser for the New Day Center in December, with the aid of the Rotary clubs of Conshohocken-Plymouth-Whitemarsh and Philadelphia.