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BeyondWater and Rotary clubs across Australia have partnered together since 2007 to give 240,000 people (and counting) clean water and sanitation facilities EVERY DAY to East Africans. 

What began with our founders Pete & Sharon Crean (RC Pohutukawa Coast, NZ) to give one child clean water has expanded to schools, medical clinics and remote communities across seven countries. Our leadership program, The Girl Project, now operates in four locations in Kenya and Rwanda.

With the generosity of Rotary, Interact and Rotaract Clubs thousands of students now have good toilets and somewhere to wash their hands.

Club members recently donated school supplies for Timor Leste at the meeting on Feb 2nd. Maria loaded all the donations into Suzanne Zammit's car a boot for delivery to DIK awaiting shipment in due course.

A tree planting was held on 2nd September at Doug Mills Reserve on the banks of the Maribyrnong. Organised by Fred Maddern and Nada Stojkovski this activirty was conducted in conjunction with Council and Footscray City Secondary College.

Catrione, daughter of PP Jamie Robertson and Suong Nguyen is well known to many of our members who have watched her grow up. Her first official connection with Rotary was when our club sponsored her to the National Youth Science Forum around 10 years ago and since then her career in Science has been outstanding and extensive. One area that she is focussing on is Science Communication – helping the general population to understand scientific information necessary for everyday life. The COVID pandemic showed how important this area is in providing accessible information and in helping to counteract pseudo-science. Her communication skills are outstanding and engaging. 

District Governor Amanda Wendt pictured at DIK with Jama Farah and some of the more than 1000 medical text-books that were donated. These books will find homes in universities, hospitals and medical practices in African Countries. This generous donation from McGraw Hill will improve the health outcomes for many people.

Our Speaker on Thursday 1^st December was Claire Jones who is a practising lawyer. Her topic was “Mediation the Harvard Way”. Claire had just been to the Cambridge Massachusetts with her husband and baby daughter. She took part in a course on mediation at Harvard University.,

The Rotary Club of Footscray Foundation Scholarship was presented to Sophia a Year 10 student at Footscray High School. The scholarship spans the two VCE years with $1000 to be used for costs involved in Year 11 and another $1000 for the costs involved in Year 12. Sophia was surprised and very excited to be awarded the scholarship. She thought it would help with the purchase of an expensive calculator she needed to buy for Year 11. We give thanks to the teachers for their help in choosing a deserving recipient of the Scholarship.

Our speakers on October 6th were Dr Denise Clarke and Graham Richardson from the Yarraville Tennis Club. This a community organisation with over 100 years of service to its community and currently flourishing with over 400 members. What lessons do they have for us? The tennis club has had its ups and downs over time and staying the course through tough times has allowed the club to survive to take advantage of better times.

Western Health Foundation is excited to announce that registration is officially open for the 2022 WalkWest Virtual Landmarks Challenge

The virtual event will run from Wednesday 9 November through to Wednesday 30 November and best of all - it's completely free to register!

You'll have 21 days to get out and explore Melbourne's west! We're encouraging you to challenge yourself to a marathon effort of walking 42km in 21 days - the distance between Flemington Racecourse and Werribee Zoo.

At our meeting on Oct 20th Darcy Brennan gave a wonderful talk on the history of the Melbourne Cup, the horses, trainers and the jockeys. His love for the sport of racing was evident and he brought along photos showing the famous horses that captured people’s imaginations and hearts.

A request for help from PDG Ross Butterworth to help WERN with flood relief. WERN is a charity changing lives every day for those marginalised in our society or suffering trauma threough emergency situations. WERN is made up from people and organisations wanting to make a difference.

Victoria has been hit by significant storms and flooding throughout the state. Our neighbours need our help, with cash, furniture and our time.

Can you help?

Our first meeting for the month was the Cluster Meeting with the DG which was held at the Yarraville Club on November 10^th. From the five clubs in the cluster we had 53 people attending with 16 bookings from our club. Our main speaker for the night was DG Amanda Wendt who spoke about attracting younger members to Rotary and the ability of clubs to change and meet their needs one way of doing this was to form Satellite Clubs.

At our meeting on Nov 17th we heard details of current activities and projects.

Elizabeth Drozd updated us about the Western Region Aged Care Fund.

Suzanne Zammit spoke about the Footscray Art Prize. Applications are now open and the main prize has been increased to $20 000. Our club will again sponsor the prizes for the primary and secondary students.

Jama Farah informed us of a project currently in development. He and I met with a representative from the Austin Hospital to discuss their donation of  six recently superseded dialysis machines which will to be sent to Africa.

Jamie Robertson, began the Vietnam Dental Project in 1992. He visited Vietnam earlier this year to organise the visit for 2023.

The Footscray Art Prize will be held from July 15th-Seprtember 17th. Applications are now open and the main prize has been increased to $20 000. Maribyrnong Council has an acquisitive prize for a person living the one of surrounding LGAs. The Footscray Art Prize dinner will be held on August 5th at St Augustine’s Hall in Yarraville. Our club will again sponsor the prizes for the primary and secondary students.

Jama Farah has begun developing a further project to assist medical care in the Horn of Africa. He and Maria have met with a representative from the Austin Hospital to discuss their donation of six recently superseded dialysis machines.

Members may remember Tommy speaking to us during one of our "lockdown" Zoom meetings before he embarked on his Australian 4 Points Challenge.

A stroke survivor at age 12, Tommy suffered from a car running him over while on his epic ride in SA – 12 months later Tommy has learned to walk all over again and is now amazingly ready to resume his 9000km bike ride to raise funds for Stroke awareness in Youth.   He has completed one third (riding to and from Western most point of mainland Aust) and is now ready to take on the road to the Southern, Eastern and Northern most points of Australia and return.  (hence Australian 4 points challenge name).   His financial goal is to raise $1m and you support him here.    

Daryl Mills was our speaker. Daryl is well known to many club members as he was a member for many years. He now lives in Mt Evelyn and we very much appreciate his long trek to Footscray.  Daryl had a long connection with Rotary and spent many years in Timor Leste where he had to overcome many problems.....

We were asked to run a BBQ at the Stony Creek Music Festival so that families would have a more affordable alternative to the usual food trucks. The weather was windy and at times wet but people who attended really enjoyed themselves. There were lots of children and their dogs. It was a most enjoyable BBQ to run with the music as a background. Again thanks to Rodney, Ron and Elia for their organisation and to everyone else who turned up to help on the day.

When Catrione spoke last month she had a slide in her presentation that showed her wide range of experiences in science. At the end of year 11 Catrione was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Footscray to attend the National Youth Science Forum. If you have ever wondered why we sponsor young people to attend the NYSF have a look at the following slides.

Students from Kensington Primary School held fund raisers to buy stationery items for students in a remote area of Timor Leste. The school is Liaruca Elementary and Junior High school. What a journey it has been. Timor Leste is only 686kms from Darwin.The supplies were packaged up before Christmas and dropped off at DIK to be included in the next container going to Dili. The container left Australia on the 28th February and was expected around the 28th March and on the 5th April it was in harbour awaiting release.

The Rotary Club of Footscray hosted the 2023 Footscray Art Prize Dinner Dance on August 5^th, at Croatia House following the exhibition of the artists’ entries at Footscray Arts Community and a review of the exhibition by Bernadette Fitzgerald, Senior Producer at Footscray Community Arts. Daniel Santangeli, Artistic Director & Co-CEO was our after dinner speaker

Both of these events were very well attended and the Club should be complemented for hosting to such a high standard during this biannual event.

Apart from the financial return for the club, as facilitator of an important community event the club gains much in the community.

The Rotary Club of Footscray club is supporting this project, which will involve the installation of a Hellenic themed mural, celebrating the Greek influence in Footscray.  

For details of the project click here.

Rotarians are invited to attend the inauguration ceremony at 12.30pm on Sat 9^th September at The Line, Yewers Footscray. Details below.

Two interesting presentation at our August meetings. Our fellow Rotarian, PP Jamie Robertson spoke on August 3^rd about his recent trip to Scotland. At the meeting on August 17^th Rotarian Catherine Eagleson spoke about her work as a “wordsmith” creating word puzzles.

The tall ship 'The Enterprize" arrived back at 2 North Wharf on Monday 26th September just before 1pm. 
8 happy students slowly disembarked and reluctantly farewelled the friends that they had made I've the last 4 days.
The students were supported by the following clubs Footscray, Collingwood, Altona City, Brighton, Brighton North and Keilor East. 

Speaker 7th September: Robert Irvine

Robert spoke of the work of the Friends of Organ Pipes National Park which varies with the seasons to include planting and maintaining native flora,monitoring wildlife and removing invasive plants and litter

Speaker 21st September: Dr Lloyn O'Brien (pictured)

Lloyd spoke about the work of "Somebody's Daughter"- a project which has grown from an in-prison activity to improve the self-esteem and vocabulary of female prisoners in Victoria, to one of supporting women on their release from prison and to coaching vulnerable youth in life-skills to try to prevent them falling into crime and the Justice system.