Incoming President - Bob Newman
May I start by paying tribute to Maria Silber for the sterling job she has done over the last year as Club President and also as Club Secretary over the past few months after the tragic loss of Dianne Mc Grath. She has also agreed to carry on as Secretary in the new Rotary year.
The team is in place for the new year with no new faces, as yet we do not have a President Elect for 2024 -25 which is a major concern for the ongoing viability of the club.
Our flagship project for the year will be The Horn of Africa Project led by Jama Farah which provides medical equipment such as dialysis machines and cardiac monitors to under resourced hospitals in this part of Africa. Jama has been able to source this preloved equipment from several large Melbourne hospitals and with the help of DIK we hope to fund shipment of containers to East Africa.
Our Youth programme will again be active led by Suzanne Zammit .We would hope to sponsor young students to attend RYLA and RYPEN programmes .
The Rotary Youth Exchange Programme may also restart in 2024 and we plan to sponsor an outbound student . Incoming students may also arrive in January or July next year although our ability to host students is a problem due to the age demographic of our club.
Foundation: we will again commit to an annual donation to Rotary Foundation of $3000 and a contribution to Polio Plus of $1000. We hope to continue the Year 11/12 Scholarship for a student at Footscray High School. We hope to apply to District for a grant to help fund the Horn of Africa Project via DIK.
Vocation Service: we plan to continue the Evan Phillips Scholarship for a trainee apprentice and also support Manboran Awards for Disability Service.
Challenges: the major challenge remains membership which has fallen by more than 30% over the past 10 years for us like most clubs in the District and across the Western World.
Fundraising: we hope to again stage a Golf Day in the first quarter of the year as our major fundraising event.
R W Newman