Last Thursday we enjoyed a relaxing social visit to the Red Shed Café on Black Mountain peninsula. The new building and café fit nicely into the rowing centres built along the penninsula and has excellent facilitities for functions and meetings like our own. The meal was a bit like the Golf Club- good to excellent***.

We spent the time chewing over a few important issues for the Club:

. Membership development. Warrick and Russell will be developing programmes in the near future but we also agreed that members introducing friends and colleagues to the Club have in the past had the best rate of success and those new members seemed to fit in well and stayed longer. Why don’t we  make a concerted effort to talk to our circles of friends and explore opportunities for new members?

. Donations. We discussed several likely recipients of our surplus Community account money. Watch this space! We feel we need to balance local needs with international and Rotary objectives in our plans. Certainly, the recipients need to have an association with us and be able to come to our meeting to explain what the funds might be used for. Local needs such as homelessness and Domestic violence programmes need priority, whilst we always need funds in reserve to meet emergency appeals overseas.

. New projects – many ideas were discussed. It is good to keep our eyes wide open for community needs and opportunities.

. Club administration – we feel the new meeting arrangements are bedding in satisfactorily and need to be give an opportunity to work before any further changes are looked at. Special care needs to be taken for visitors and speakers – we all have a duty to  make them welcome.

Thanks to all who came along and contributed. We should do it again soon. The next social meeting will be at the Regatta Point exhibition centre and cafe. 

I received an email from Astrida who is in Mongolia about Peace Bell and Youth projects. She is having a great time and will have many tales to tell. She hasn’t found Genghis Khan but is still looking. 

Next Thursday, back to the Golf Club for an interesting speaker and topical subject – Wattle.

 

Bill

 

 

 

 

The Candle Festival at Canberra Nara Peace Park is fast approaching on Saturday 25^th October. Make a note in your diary as we will need all hands-on deck to help with the sale of millions of Ninga Sausages, Beer, Wine and Sake, and Taiyaki pancakes from about 3.00pm to 9.30pm.