THE SALVOS TOY RUN TO TEMORA
Over the past few weeks our members have been buying toys for the Salvation Army’s Christmas Toy Run. On Saturday morning Grahame and Sharon Miles came to Ganmain and purchased toys to the value of $500 on behalf of the CRC. Sharon and Phil Walsh from the Ganmain newsagents would like to express their sincere thanks to our members for doing this. Thanks go to Grahame for the concept and for Sharon and Grahame for packing the toys from Ganmain and getting them to Temora. Thanks to all of our members who purchased a toy or two.
STOP PRESS
2.00pm Tuesday 3rd December: The toys have been delivered by Santa’s helpers to the Salvation Army in Temora. Caleb has a great smile on his face. Well done Sharon and Grahame, a wonderful result all round.
Coolamon Rotary Bulletin for Month of November 2024
Click on the links below for the weekly bulletins from November.
Bulletin for Monday 11/11/2024
Bulletin for Monday 18/11/2024
Bulletin for Monday 25/11/2024
Meeting of Monday 2nd December 2024
President Adrian Lindner welcomed 21 members and three guests including: Lorraine Hamilton and DGE Robert Shore and Judith Shore. {DGE or District Governor Elect 2025-2026 for District 9705}.
After dinner Garth Perkin introduced DGE Robert Shore.
DGE Robert’s talk was in two parts:
Part one on a book that Robert had written on the experiences of prisoners of war from WW2.
Rob was a teacher at the Marlborough High School when he heard about some experiences of PoWs in WW2. Rob decided to try and locate these men and to get their stories preserved in writing with the help of his wife Judith.
Rob recounted stories of three of these brave men. In brief:
Merv Alston form Tumut who enlisted at the age of 16 by lying about his age. In January 1942 Alf was sent to Malaya with the 8th Division. Merv was eventually captured and tied up with ropes for 20 days and was unable to move. Merev escaped and found himself on a beach with 2 shipwrecked sailors. They came across some British soldiers and ended up in Singapore just before it fell to the Japanese.
Merv ended up in Changi on the Burma railway and then in Japan working at a steel mill.
Another soldier was in Singapore when it fell ended up on the railway in 1943 and then was on a 190 mile forced march where many PoWs died from cholera sometimes as many as 20-30 in a single night. This soldier survived on eating raw onions they were supposed to plant, catching snails for the Japanese officers to feed to the chooks. They sold these snails at 10 cents each. They ended up eating dogs, cats and monkeys but not rats to survive.
Alf was his name the third soldier, who kept escaping by going over the wire. Eventually his captors had enough and executed him and buried him. His mates dug him up and found that he was still alive.
Rob has many more stories to tell however DGE Rob now spoke on his upcoming year as our District Governor.
One area that Rob spoke on was the Rotary Zone 8 Regionalisation pilot. This was first put to the Governors at the Zone 8 Christchurch Conference in 2019. Since then the pilot has been approved to be tested in Zone 8.
Rob is looking to do something different in his year as DG including not having a District Conference. Rob wants to bring clubs together on a regional basis i.e. our old area Group 3 and beyond.
Rob’s idea is to get clubs working together on larger projects to provide more hands on deck. Rob has set a target of increasing membership by 300 in 2025-2026. There is now a Facebook group for SE NSW Rotary Community Group.
There were several questions from the members present and Adrian thanked Rob for his talk.
Some general business included:
- Paul gave out details on the School presentations which included Marrar and the Coolamon Central School.
- Grahame spoke on the Salvation Army Toy run and that he and Sharon will be going to Temora today to deliver all the toys that have been donated.
- Friday the 13th our NYE Raffle will be in Ganmain.
- This Thursday and Friday the Driver Simulator is at the Coolamon Central School with Frank and Di Lincoln from the Young RC.
Adrian then opened the meeting to a discussion on New Years Eve catering and the Christmas Party. After much discussion; it was decided by the members to cater for NYE and to supply 600 free sausages for the children via the NYE show bag. Lions Coolamon and Rotary will do the cooking and serving from the CRC catering van and the Lions BBQ trailer.
The NYE raffle requires volunteers to sell tickets on NYE. NB the raffle is drawn at 9.00pm and we need to have all the tickets folded up and in the “barrel”, this takes a lot of time. Please contact Adrian to volunteer to sell the tickets.”
The members also agreed that the Christmas Party charges were to be $20 per head for members and their partners. Additional guests would be at $34 per person. We also decided to bring a sweet or dessert.
There was a brief fines session and the raffles were won by Grahame and Vicki.
All in all a productive and informative meeting.
DIARY
Wendy and Adrian’s property directions:
Monday 16th December LAST Meeting for 2024. Coolamon Sport Rec Club, 6.30 for 7.00 pm.
Tuesday 31st December NYE. Catering with Lions Coolamon includes the 600 sausages donated by the CRC for the children. The NYE street raffle will be drawn at 9.00pm.
Monday 20th January Board Meeting 5.00pm at Coolamon Sport Rec Club.
*Monday 20th January FIRST Meeting for 2025. PP Garth Perkin on ShelterBox. Coolamon Sport Rec Club, 6.30 for 7.00 pm.
Monday 26th January. NO MEETING. Australia Day.
*Guests welcome bring your partners and friends.
All of the above images were obtained from Facebook.
ROTARY NEWS.
1. END POLIO NOW
Together, We End Polio
The Rotary Monthly theme for December is Disease Prevention and Treatment Month.
One area that Rotary has excelled in and continues to do. Our flag ship is without a doubt the End Polio Campaign.
With your help, we can end polio for good. It will be only the second disease to have been wiped out by mankind in history, the first being Smallpox.
Poliomyelitis is a highly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5.
Most know it as poliovirus. The virus is spread person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can attack the nervous system, and in some instances, lead to paralysis. Although there is no cure, there is a safe and effective vaccine – one which Rotary and our partners use to immunize over 2.5 billion children worldwide.
What is Polio?
The number of wild polio cases for 2024 as of November 13, 2024 is 71. There were 48 in Pakistan and 23 in Afghanistan.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is a public/private partnership led by national governments with six partners – the World Health Organization(WHO), Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Its goal is to eradicate polio worldwide.
GPEI Website
Rotary is the main private sector donor to polio eradication as Rotary members have contributed more than $2.7 billion dollars and countless volunteer hours to the fight to end polio. In November 2007, Rotary International entered in a unique partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Since the GPEI’s launch in 1988, over US$ 20 billion has been invested through WHO and UNICEF in support of polio eradication activities carried out in over 70 countries.
Your donation helps Rotary and its partners reach every child with the polio vaccine. Thanks to the Gates Foundation, your contribution will be tripled. Together, we end polio. The offer of the $2 from Bill and Melinda Gates to every $1 you donate is still in place. That is every $ we donate to End Polio in effect becomes $3.
Our club has been very active in supporting the End Polio campaign. When we donate to our Foundation and we earmark Polio Plus as to where our donation goes we get Rotary Foundation points for use in recognition of worthy recipients for the Paul Harris Fellow awards.
History of Rotary & Polio Eradication
Rotary brings together leaders who step up to take on the world’s toughest challenges, locally and globally. The eradication of polio is one of our longest standing and most significant efforts. Along with our partners, we have helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries. We have reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide and we won’t stop until we end the disease for good.
In early 1979, on a flight home from the Philippines, Renouf read a magazine story about the eradication of smallpox. He wondered if Rotary’s new Health, Hunger and Humanities (3-H) Grants could be used to eliminate another disease. They, for the first time, allowed Rotary projects to be taken on by more than just one club or district.
Renouf consulted with a friend, John Sever, who was a district governor in Maryland, USA, and chief of infectious diseases at the United States National Institutes of Health. Sever happened to be friends with Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, who developed polio vaccines in the 1950s and 1960s. After doing some research, Sever said that polio would be the best disease for Rotary to work on. Full story below:
Australia’s Sir Clem Renouf RI President
Some Pictorial News of End Polio:
Editor’s note I contracted poliomyelitis at school in Nairobi when I was 6-7 years old. The boy in the bed next to me lived in an iron lung until he died when he reached 35 years old. My mother nursed me and I survived.
2. SHELTERBOX NEWS
Trek For Shelter
Garth Perkin in a new role with ShelterBox Australia has sent me the following November ShelterBox Newsletter:
ShelterBox News November 2024
The following video is another area where you can learn about ShelterBox.
DECEMBER IS DISEASE PREVENTION & TREATMENT MONTH
Graphics by PP Debbie Vance from BC CANADA
ROTARY CLUB OF COOLAMON Inc. 2024-25
Chartered March 3rd, 1971; Sponsoring Club Narrandera Rotary Club
- President: Adrian Lindner
- President-Elect 2025-2026: Mary Potts
- Secretary: Paul Weston
- Treasurer: Mary Potts
- Rotary Foundation Director: Gary Truscott
- Membership Director: Brian Pattison
- Service Projects Director: Anne Rzeszkowski
- Youth Services Director: Vacant
- Club Admin Director: Ian Jennings
- Public Image Director: Grahame Miles
- Sergeant @ Arms: Albert Suidgeest
- Club Environment Representative: Adrian Lindner
- Immediate Past President and Vice-President: John Bond
- Bulletin Editors: Paul Weston and John Glassford
- Webmaster: John Glassford