There was a swop of speakers that ended up not being a swop so we had no speaker last week but we had a very pleasant meeting chatting away anyway!
It is good to see that James and Charlotte Croswell attended the Rotary Leadership Institute Course on Saturday. I hope that more members of our club avail themselves of the opportunity.
Rotary Art Expo
These are actually a series of Rotary Days that give us the opportunity to promote Rotary and our club in particular. We may pride ourselves on how successful our club is and how we have been able to maintain our membership which means that we are one of the larger clubs in District 9400 but just add 10 years to our ages and that's what we have to worry about. It's important that our younger members really do there best to promote Rotary at the Art Expo.
This Week
I am going to repeat what I said last week.....
Our speaker is Peter Cleaton-Jones who will be talking to us on health issues. He is a qualified dentist, medical practitioner and scientist.
His main academic career was in dental research and anaesthesia; from 1977 to 2006 he was Professor of Experimental Odontology Director of the Dental Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand which was a joint Medical Research Council / University research entity between 1977 and 2004.
On retiring in 2006 he was appointed a Professor Emeritus for life. Peter has been active in training researchers shown by 95 successfully supervised master and doctoral degrees and as co-presenter (with Prof E Grossman) of a 50 hour research training course which was attended by 1834 participants between 1978 and 2010.
He has spent time in research entities in Denmark, England and Switzerland; in England he was a visiting professor in the Department of Paediatric Dentistry at the University of Leeds 2004-2010. Since 1974 he has served continuously on the Wits’ Human Research Ethics Committee (Medical), on the Medical Research Council’s Ethics Committee (1990-2002, Chair 1998-2002) and the Human Sciences Research Council Ethics Committee (2003-present, on request from the HSRC he formed the committee in 2003 and was Chair until 2005).
From 2006-2014 he was an Honorary Adjunct Professor in the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics; in 2015 his title was changed to Honorary Professor.
Secondhand Treasures Book Sale raises $95,000
When five trucks arrived at a secondary school in the city of Venlo in the Netherlands, members of the Rotary Club of Venlo-Maas en Peel were ready.
The trucks were filled with items to be sold at the club’s 33rd annual book and record sale. The seven-day event in early January raised $95,000 that will go toward projects that improve the lives of children in Brazil, Malawi, Peru, and Sri Lanka.
In partnership with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the club mustered about 200 volunteers, including people who are not Rotary members, who made sure the event went off without a hitch. About 10,000 book and record aficionados from throughout the Netherlands, and from other countries including Germany and Belgium, attended the sale and took home 60,000 books and 15,000 records.
The club members work throughout the year to organize the fair. The club has drop-off points for book and record donations, and volunteers sort through them twice a week.
The items are categorized by genre, and a coordinator responsible for each category makes the final decision on what will be included in the sale. Most books sell for between 50 cents and $2.50, but those that are new or special can cost between $3 and $50.
Sometimes the club receives a donation of something unique. A few years ago, a dossier of documents related to the history of the city of Papendrecht brought in $8,000. The oldest of the documents, which the city bought, dated to 1328.
“The city of Papendrecht organized a special exhibition with these documents,” says club member Peter Elbers, noting that the documents contained previously unknown information about the city’s history.
After 33 years, Elbers has some tips on how to organize a successful book and record fair. Most important, he says, is to plan from the start to make it an annual event.
“Don’t try to organize such a fair only once,” he says. “When people recognize the quality of what you are selling, they will come back.”
A reliable volunteer workforce is also a must. Club member Jaap Verhofstad brought his children to help set up and break down the fair. “My children have had a few hours of fun helping out at the fair during the sale,” he says. “Our 11-year-old twins are too young for the heavy work — but in a few years we will have two more strong men.”
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