Meeting of April 24, 2012

The Rotary Club of Oak Bay Bulletin for April 24, 2012                          

Reported by Lynne Murray

The meeting was called to order at 1215 by President Joan Peggs.

Joan’s comment of the day concerned March being Magazine Month. Our monthly magazine, The Rotarian is available in electronic format. Perhaps we should consider receiving the magazine electronically.

Our national anthem was led by Tom Lidkea who we are happy to have back.

The Johnny Appleseed invocation was sung to us by Jim Force. That was a nice change.

Visiting Rotarians and our guests led us to the delicious Greek style buffet.

Peter Lawrie introduced the visiting Rotarian, Bruce Hooker from the Saanich Club and the guest of Anne Sims, Wendy Townsend.

Eugen Bannerman announced that David Philip is back in the Royal Jubilee Hospital. He also told us that he will be off to Switzerland for the month of May. Tom Croft will act as the Sergeant  at Arms during that time.

Jacqueline Mealing took a few minutes to tell and show us about some of the work she did while in Guatemala.  Besides helping with the dental work,  she was involved in  the  health, nutrition and hygiene  education  of 150 new mothers. She is needing to raise an additional $1000 to buy an industrial sewing machine for the women’s centre to enable production of marketable items for  sustainability. $1000 has already been raised. She had a lot of bags on show that had been woven by the Guatemalan women. The sale of the bags will add to the $1000 needed. Another project was the opening of  the new women’s centre. There are a lot of classes on family planning. Enough money was raised to purchase 120 energy efficient stoves. This will be an ongoing project for ten years. In the future it is planned to build a simple latrine for the women’s centre.

Jim Force reminded us of the April Club in the Pub, this Thursday at the Penny Farthing at 5pm. He needs help this weekend to take the 5,000 books to the Victoria Curling Club for the Times Colonist Book drive.

Lorna Curtis gave us the final reminder about our Springtime in Tuscany event on 4/28. There are still 20 tickets to sell. She then told us she is leaving on Sunday to finish her Asian trip. She will be going to Hong Kong, Thailand (for the RI Convention), Taiwan, China, then once again to Australia and the USA.

Peter Lawrie announced that Oak Bay High’s Interact  Club is holding two fundraisers on May 5^th. The first will be the 1^st Annual Hunger Games starting at 10:30. Their event is called Wild Games. The proceeds will go to Rabbits for Rwanda. The second event is Interact at the Movies. The movie being shown is UP. Those proceeds are going to the Malawi School for Girls.

Tav Macpherson told us of the upcoming Golf Tournament to be held during the District Conference. Those proceeds will go to Polio Plus. The tournament will be at Highland Pacific  Golf Club at 2:30 pm on June 21^st.

Next up was our favourite fines master for April – Dallas Chapple. She was able to extract quite a few dollars from most of us! Tom and Wolf paid for scooting. She was sorry Phil was ill but he didn’t arrange someone to set the meeting up. She fined  all those who did not donate books,  who did not bring in an auction item or bottle of wine and who are not attending this Saturday’s fundraiser. Last week was Ted Chambers and Tricia Timmermans' birthday. Today is Bateya Westler's birthday so we sung our rendition of Happy B’day to her. Renate Gibbs gave 2 happy $$ because she is off to India for 2 months with 14 Nursing Students. Heather Ached gave 2 happy/sad $$ since Vancouver has finished its NHL season. Eugen Bannerman also paid happy $$ because he’s off to Switzerland. Tom Lidkea. is always happy to spend time with his grand daughter.

Peter Lawrie won the 50/50 but drew the black alley – better luck next time!

The speaker today, our own John Edgell was introduced  by Jerry McLean. John very graciously stood in with 20 minutes notice - for our intended speaker who had to cancel his talk. John’s presentation was about the La Jola Kindergarten Project in La Penita Mexico. Last Rotary year, this project was one of our International projects that benefited from a matching grant. Because our Club had already received matching grants for two other  international projects, Royal Oak Centennial Club decided to get a matching grant to continue the good work started by John last year. The project was to build a fenced, walled play area, a proper latrine facility with 2 separate toilets and sinks with a water tank installed on the roof plus storage space. The talk was interspersed with lots of photos of the project underway. There was a celebration at the end of the project. Pictures showed the happy faces of students, families and very pleased Rotarians. John was thanked by Lori McLeod.

There being nothing further for the good of Rotary the meeting was adjourned after the singing of God Save the Queen.