From the Pen of the President....
Dear fellow Rotarians and friends,
Hot off the Press!! Announced today!! 2023-24 presidential theme, Create Hope in the World. Looking forward to that – but let’s spend the next 6 month’s Imagining Rotary!!
January is Vocational Service month – Vocational Service focuses on:
- Adherence to and promotion of the highest ethical standards in all occupations, including fair treatment of employers, employees, associates, competitors, and the public.
- The recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, not just those that are pursued by Rotarians.
- The contribution of your vocational talents to solving the problems of society and meeting the needs of the community.
Our Exchange Student Emma leaves for Germany this week and we wish her safe travels, wonderful experiences and happy times. We look forward to hearing from her.
We got the sad news of James Byrne’s passing this week and we will be honouring his memory at our meeting on 20th January.
Hope 2023 is a great year for all of you – let’s get back to work and get our projects back on track.
Have a good week and do not give up on those resolutions too soon!!
Ann Hope-Bailie
Last Friday....
... was the first club meeting for 2023, and as a number of members are still not back from their well-deserved breaks it was a very relaxed social meeting where those members attending where given the opportunity to share what they had gotten up to during the Rotary break.
The Ramble editor-at-large attended the meeting via Zoom from Stanford in the Cape. Sybille has relocated to the Cape, and will in future be participating remotely.
It was quite interesting to take part from a distance, particularly because it was a social meeting without a fixed agenda where everyone was just shooting the breeze and most of the time it was fairly easy to follow the conversations in the room.
Sybille gave a brief account of her 13 day, 2000 km road trip that she undertook with her niece, which took her to Gaberone in Botswana to Kimberley, then Aliwal North, visiting with friend on her beautifully green farm in the Karoo, finally down to the sea at St. Francis Bay, on to Barrydale via the Outeniqua Pass, Oudtshoorn and Route 62 and arriving in Stanford at her nephew's lodge in time for Christmas.
On the other side of the world Lorenzo spent a cold and snowy Christmas in Denmark. A few days before Christmas both his daughters contracted Covid and had to isolate, so it was the first time in many years that Lorenzo spent Christmas alone with his wife.
Mike and Louise Honnet recently returned from a trip Down Under to visit their children in Brisbane, who they had not seen in three years. He reports that the Brisbane CBD is very compact alongside a river (or creek as it is called in Australia) but that the rest of the city is very spread out; most houses are built of wood on stilts because of occasional floods and also for airflow as it gets hot and humid there. They spent a few days at he lovely beach resort of Noosa which is a 2 hour drive north of Brisbane.
Mike was amazed at the weird and wonderful birdlife all around them, like the kookaburra.
President Ann and John spent Christmas with her children in the Cape and spent 4 luxurious days at the Frog Mountain Getaway in Swellendam, and her highlight there was a woodfired hot tub.
Pam Donaldson went fly fishing in KZN with her brother but remarked that they had torrential rains and temperatures that did not go much above 12 degrees.
Lyn Collocott had much better weather in Kenton-on-Sea and told us that the Rotary Club there had managed to raise R500 000 for the NSRI with a very successful fundraising event.
Les Short was only a hop, skip and a jump from there in Cannon Rocks and also commented on sunny skies.
Tutty and his wife went bundu-bashing through the Eastern Cape to accompany their grandson who was taking part in a rowing competition on the Cowie River.
Two members who had clearly not gone away were Charmaine Leesman and Anne Padmore. They both work in Pretoria and are only ever able to attend meetings online, so it was a huge pleasure to have them attend Friday's meeting in person. For their efforts they were rewarded with cup cakes that Ann had brought to celebrate her birthday.
This Friday....
...we welcome guest speaker Mark Fruhauf, CEO of Upcycle Foundation.
The Upcycle Foundation focuses on the upliftment of the youth and the impoverished. Through their programs they help turn the people they engage with into entrepreneurs, who help us clean up our planet by working with "waste" generated by business an individuals alike.
At Upcycle they believe in the inherent value of all humans and things.
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