Lester Connock & Vocational Service Awards, Business Meeting, Doreen Maheru's Visit and the First Woman Rotary Club President.

Last Week

On the outside, Lester Connock Awardees Sizakele Hadebe & Shakiera Saallie.
On the inside, Vocational Service Awardees David Heritage & Josephine Mhlongo.
In the Middle, President Lyn Collocott

It was time for our annual Rotary Vocational Service Awards where we recognise people who work hard for the community but would never receive recognition and we also presented certificates to the Lester Connock Awardees who received a bursary each of R20 000 to assist them in their post graduate research at Wits University's Faculty of Nursing.

The Vocational Service Awardees receive a certificate and we make a donation to the charity of their choice.

David Heritage

David spoke to us at Rotary a couple of weeks ago and it was reported in The Ramble so there is no need to repeat the work he does as an ex prisoner in assisting prisoners on parole to ensure they do not re-offend.

Josephine Mhlongo

Josephine was involved in the squint correction project which the club undertook last year. During one of Josephine Mhlongo’s outreach projects visiting Pohopedi Primary to give out uniforms to children in need, she came across Agnes Moremi which lead to Rosebank Rotary Club engaging with Dr Vercueil to correct Agnes’ squint.

She did an Alpha course at the Bryanston Catholic Church and then went out to start the first Alpha course in Soweto. She has facilitated many courses extending /reaching other denominations in Soweto. She has even extended her work to work in prisons.

 In 2016 Josephine worked as a volunteer for six months at Johannesburg Prison Medium B.   She involved herself with the program of caring for ex-offenders. She strongly believes that by visiting those in Prison she can help them as well as visiting ex-offenders after prison to prevent them from re-offending

Josephine is actively involved in church matters and the Catholic Woman’s League since 1994. She was the vice president for 3years and currently is the treasurer. She takes responsibility every year to fundraise and uses this opportunity to empower others.

She supports all activities plus she initiates new programs and projects. She motivates people to get involved and to help themselves and their community.

She took an active part in starting the Sunday school at her church, Holy Rosary.

 She inspired her church to adopt the Wolmaraanstad Catholic Church. Josephine concerns herself with vulnerable children and pensioners in Wolmaraanstad. She attempted to get ZoZo tanks to establish a vegetable garden for the pensioners.

Each year Josephine finds and invites special ‘cases’ to the Christmas parties. With teachers’ help Josephine finds children who have never had a birthday party and who live in extreme poverty. These are the children that Josephine takes to a Christmas party.

 Josephine does not wait for hand outs and donations. Her fund raising events focus on family and community involvement. She will arrange a Sports Day for the community. Members of the community are invited to set up tables selling home crafts to raise funds. Her Mother’s Day tea party fund raiser is another hugely successful event.

Josephine is the person who makes it her business to take care of the children who have disabilities in her church. She used her initiative to help a mentally ill little girl Hadio Lebuso by taking her to the Mother Theresa Home in Yeoville. Her intervention did not stop. Josephine then opened a case of child abuse against the mother. The list of how she helps is endless..... ! One of her best contributions is her reliability and willingness to take responsibility for projects. She will dedicate her time to make sure that the projects are well organized and involve members to uplift their communities themselves.

In December 2006 she inspired a group of ladies from Bryanston, lead by Mrs Florence Banahan and Mrs Bernadette Winderley, to get involved in charity work in Soweto, very far from their comfort zone! They started a program of doing a Christmas party for the disadvantaged pensioners. Josephine said she started with 60 food parcels for the pensioners and annually it has increased. Now her group looks after 650 families. Josephine focuses on child headed families and pensioners from the poorest of the poor such as Protea South informal settlement, Orange Farm, Kliptown, Poortjie informal settlement and Wolmaraanstad in the North West. Josephine encourages involvement from volunteers to assist in the packaging and distribution food parcels to these extremely poor families.

As her sister is a teacher at Pohopedi Primary School in Poortjie, Josephine got involved with this group of children. Through her contacts she gets funding to buy school uniforms and blankets for pupils who come from struggling families. 

As keeping warm in winter is important to her, she was actively involved with an NGO called Knit-a -Square when it first started in 2009 by Ronda Lowrie. She also involves herself in a “Jersey drive” to get jerseys and jackets for pensioners, children, unemployed moms and unemployed men.

She is involved in providing sanitary towels for girls and counsels teenage pupils.

She is passionate about not forgetting the boys who get given a bag with toiletries, a pair of socks and underwear.

Josephine helped a young Wits University student who was unable to get accommodation in the first year of his studies. She assist Ishmael Motsweneng by paying for his accommodation until he managed to get NAFSAS support after which she only provided him with meals.

She helped a young man who was seriously injured in a car accident last June. He was sent home from hospital with wounds in a terrible state. By November he was  critical and unable to walk. Josephine called upon her contacts. getting the wounds dressed properly, rehab care and physio each day to teach him to walk again. Josephine arranged a wheel chair and a commode. Josephine’s insistence on care and treatment saved this young man’s life.

Josephine  assist families to access grants if they are eligible and she finds proof of birth for many so that they can become eligible for an ID document  Sometimes this info requires Josephine  to visit farms and travel far afield to visit families in order to get the documentation that is necessary.  One is filled with admiration as she runs to and fro often at her own personal cost.

Josephine is driven to improve the lot of others and to empower them to help themselves. This is what Josephine uniquely brings to the table of humanity.

Lester Connock Awards to:

Shakiera Saallie

for her ongoing contribution to the understanding of cross infection within a hospital environment

with a view to ongoing training and the resultant saving of lives.

Sizakele Hadebe

for her ongoing contribution to the nursing of cancer patients within a hospital environment

with a view to ongoing training in the development of a sympathetic understanding of the needs of patients and their families.

This Week

It's back to normality and a Business Meeting.

Cafe Dolci

Doreen Maheru's Visit to audit the Baragwanath Palliative Care Project 

She will be addressing the club at a special lunch at Old Edwardians on Friday 9th March at R120 per head and James Croswell has sent out invitations to all club members and special guests...if you are not yet a member get in touch with him as you wouldn't have received anything.

In addition there will be a dinner to which anybody at Dolci Cafe, Clarence Rd Craighall Park on Tuesday 6th March, 7:00 for 7:30pm.

 The menu is Italian and includes Arancini which no-one guessed in the picture quiz.

We'll choose from the menu so you can spend as much or as little as you like.  Please book with me.

Picture Quiz

Last week's vegetable was Chou Chou.  Only Lyn Collocott got it right.  The Chinese call it Chow Chow and it is terribly boring. See if you recognise this week's breed of dog.

Women in Rotary - How it all began.

Sylvia Whitlock became the first female Rotary president after her right to membership went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The mandate that Rotarians welcome women to their ranks came down 30 years ago. She asked for arms in the air: Who was a Rotarian 30 years ago? A handful went up and she nodded. Someone shouted, “All men.”

Her club, in Duarte, was small. The president looked at the community and saw women in leadership roles, and invited some.

“This didn’t start as a women’s issue, but as a simple attempt to recruit more members into Rotary,” she said.

It was 1976. She had never even heard of Rotary.

Whitlock accepted the invitation and in 1982 she became a member of the club. She was ready to be a part of the good Rotarians do.

At the time, Rotary had more work to do to eradicate polio. (Today, she pointed out, there is just one place polio still endures: Afghanistan.)

The Rotary district governor told the club president it was OK to invite women, but, he said, don’t send their names to Rotary International; just send initials. Whitlock pulled a face of disdain and mentioned this was not in line with our Four-Way Test of the things we think, say and do. The first filter is truth.

So there they were with women in the club, thriving, for years.

Then they got caught and were told they had to ask the women to leave, or the club could be declared “not a real Rotary.” The club held firm and lost its charter.

It went to appeal to the board of directors, but only real Rotary clubs could address that board, which they were decidedly not, what with all those members in skirts.

So it appealed to the Council on Legislation and the ousting was confirmed.

“It was not an issue of whether women could be in, but whether Duarte had violated the bylaws by inviting them, which of course they had,” she said.

The California Superior Court sided for exclusivity too.

But then the California Appellate Court reversed the ruling and said the Duarte club could be both inclusive and officially Rotary.

This was the year she was president-elect of what they had renamed the “ExRotary” club, and she was sent to the annual conference for incoming leaders. She, like the other participants, was reminded in advance to take her jacket and tie, “so I took my jacket and tie and went,” she said.

“I was one woman out of 290 men,” she said. “The most interesting part was during restroom breaks ….” Everyone started laughing and she was cut off. “I never get to finish that line.”

At the event, her club’s incoming governor announced that the fight to remove the rogue Duarte club was not over: “Rotary International will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and I have every reason to believe we will win.” Forthwith Whitlock had a banner made that read “Rotary Club of Duarte, the mouse that roared — equal opportunity for all.” And she heard somebody say, “They’re forcing us to take everyone in, just like a hotel.”

The court was determining whether the group had a First Amendment right to exclude, and it was looking like it did not.

Judge Sandra Day O’Connor didn’t vote, because her husband was a Rotarian, but the judges found for the Duarte club. It was 1987.

The judges’ statement was progressive: “Even if there were a slight encroachment on the rights of Rotarians to associate, that minimal infringement would be justified since it serves the state’s compelling interest in ending sexual discrimination.”

As of that moment, all clubs in the nation had to welcome women. If a club did not, it would lose its charter.

Whitlock was on her way to work as the principal of an elementary school when the news was announced.

“Twenty minutes after the announcement all the media in California descended on the school,” she said.

She went into a room to give interviews, and for hours gave intelligent, researched responses to their questions. Then one reporter asked, “How did you get chosen to be president?”

She shrugged  and said, “What do good Rotarians say? ‘Oh, I don’t know, I must’ve missed a meeting.’ ”