Message from the Club President
The COVID pandemic continues to play havoc with Rotary meetings. As I wrote previously, the Plough meeting for August 5 was programmed, the speaker primed and the menu orders placed when the evening collapsed due to the start of lockdown 6 at 8pm. Faster than a speeding bullet, Secretary Rodney arranged a Zoom meeting.
There we were, having successfully negotiated from The Plough to The Zoom with a Gateway cluster President’s Zoom meeting thrown in for good measure, waiting for the end of a short sharp shutdown and clear blue skies and a tropical Footscray welcome for the District Governor’s visit on August 19. But Dan wrote the script, not me. It was meant to be a seven-day lockdown but, as they say, “what’s the worst thing about a seven-day lockdown? The first six weeks!” I had hoped to have an all-singing, all-dancing meeting for the DG’s visit and two new members were lined up for induction.
At least we were forewarned that an in-person meeting was impossible; so, we Zoomed again. Happily, we had an excellent substitute speaker in Lesley McCarthy, President of Flemington/Kensington Rotary. Lesley has successfully guided environmental projects and was willing to share information and be open to the possibility of a collaborative project with her club. A major discovery of the evening was that one of our “almost-members”, Nada Stojkovic, told us that she is a horticulturist and has already directed community garden projects. This is a very promising start.
Countless years ago, I was a District Governor’s Representative and had a group of six clubs to visit. Since then, nomenclature has changed, to Assistant DG, and now we have clusters of geographically matched clubs. This makes good sense as it allows the possibility of combined efforts to reach a common goal or shared wisdom to reach our goals individually. This too is a welcome change as I remember too well a general feeling of, “let them do their thing and we’ll do ours” whenever a flyer came from a club asking for help or cooperation. Frankly, we don’t have the workforce to do large scale projects. There will be times when we need help from other agencies or other Rotary clubs to achieve ambitious goals – and I don’t want our ambition to shrink back.
This brings me to our speaker for a Zoom meeting next Thursday, September 2. She is Dr Thu-Trang Tran, CEO of Volunteers West. After completing a Law degree in Sydney, TT moved to Melbourne and taught at Melbourne Law School while completing a PhD. She has run her own online business and has worked in her present position for two years. She is a family friend, hence my reference to TT. There is the possibility of synergy of effort. We may not want military boots on the ground but we could certainly use gum boots on the ground.
And now a sad sports report. After raising my hopes with two early season wins, Partick Thistle has dashed them down again with successive losses. Sic transit gloria…
Jamie