CRC Bulletin September 22nd. 2025

COOLAMON ROTARY CLUB MEETING September 22nd. 2025

We all welcomed President Mary back from her trip and recent marathon in Tasmania.  Mary welcomed 16 members and the following guests DG Robert Shore and a former member of our club Sarah Collins, Bondy’s daughter.  It  was good to catch up with Sarah and her plans in Victoria.  Our intrepid traveller Garth Perkin has returned from the 5 Stans visit.  Welcome home Garth!

We did some business as follows:

• Mary reminded all members to pre order their dinner for next Monday’s joint social evening meeting with teh Junee RC.  In Mary’s notes in this bulletin there is a full description of what we have to do to order on-line.
• Anne thanked all of the 10 Rotarians and 5 non-Rotarians who gave up there time volunteering for the three day Australian Cycle event at Wantabadgery last week over three days. Thanks Anne for all the hard work that you put in to support this event and have so many volunteers putting their hands up to help.
• Anne then reminded all of us that we have the making of the Anzac biscuits for Gears & Beers this Saturday 27th we need volunteers to help at the Coolamon Central School from 9.00am.  Please contact Anne, thanks.
• Anne is looking for members for Gears and Beers on Sunday 5th October and a roster is being prepared all we need are your names please again send them to Anne.
• Grahame said that we need an Editor for the Coolamon Community Chronicle.  Please  give your ideas for this position to Grahame.
• Mary is looking for members to form the Canola Fun Run committee, again names to Mary please.
• Wagga Wagga Sunrise RC is conducting a Food Safety Course on Tuesday 7th October at the Botanic Gardens restaurant from 6.30am for a 7.00am start.  Again names to Mary please.
• Mary would like us to wear our silly hats in aid of Mental Health Awareness on Mad Hat Day.  We also need some ideas on how to raise funds on the night.
• Henk spoke briefly on the school breakfast project with the attendance of the local police who played touch football with the recipients.
• Grahame is in need of a list of the members on the Garden Viewing Committee remembering that Albert is not the Chair.  This is important for the future of this project.

District Governor Robert Shore

DG Robert Shore is a members of the RC of  Batemans Bay and was once a member of the Parkes RC in our old D9700. This is our second visit by DG Robert as he did visit us when he was DG Elect.  Welcome back DG!

The DG opened up his talk with news of how some of the positions up the tree have unfortunately had resignations.  The current 2025-26 Rotary International President is Francesco Arezzo from the Rotary Club of Ragusa ITALY. Francesco’s appointment came swiftly and unexpectedly due to the resignation of Rotary International President-elect Mário César Martins de Camargo.

A Nigerian is to become second African to lead Rotary International; Olayinka Hakeem Babalola will serve as president of the global membership organization in 2026-27 due to the unfortunate death of RIPE 26-27 Sang Koo Yun, a consummate Rotary leader and businessman who had been selected to be Rotary International’s president for 2026-27, died on 5 September, after months of treatment for pancreatic cancer. A member of the Rotary Club of Sae Hanyang, Seoul, Korea, Yun resigned as president-elect in August to focus on his medical treatment.

RIPE Sang Koo Yun

As DG pointed out there has been a fair bit of upheaval at the top of RI. Including our own regionalisation with two positions vacant i.e. the Regional Council Chair and the Deputy Chair.  There is even a possibility that NSW will become one district!

DG said it all comes back to each individual club to make a decision on membership which is the lifeblood of our clubs.  This was the main theme of DG Robert’s talk tonight and included many good pointers as to what can be done to increase membership.  DG pointed out that it is a numbers game or is it?  Is it a good thing to have a club of 20 members or less that do many small and effective projects?

Some Things to Consider:

• Play the game as costs are on the rise in everyday life including Rotary membership and as numbers are dropping, this means that the remaining members on a district such as ours pick up the slack.
• Look at doing joint projects with clubs in our area such as Junee and Temora, our closest clubs. (Editor’s Note the CRC has run a joint project with the RC of Wagga Wagga Sunrise).
• We need to maintain our numbers and to do this we need to make it interesting to our members and their partners and friends.
• The DG’s goal for D9705 is a net increase of 300+ new members for 25-26.  Crookwell RC recently inducted 5 new members.  Parkes RC 18 new members in 18months and Batemans Bay RC with 12 new members.
• D9705 and DG Robert are looking at a new type of membership entitled Blue & Gold members. Membership entitles them to full membership with no vote and no fees.  members of teh Blue & Gold could come form many areas of our community such as former RYLA, RYPAN and Exchange Students and or the parents of these youth participants.  All they need is an invitation to a meeting with a good guest speaker. Elect them as Hon. Members.
• DG Robert suggested that a clip board survey of people who buy a raffle ticket at one of our raffles or other events.  This would entail a few questions to the buyer of the ticket or steak sandwich etc.; questions to garner their interest in Rotary.  This is a great idea.
• Subsidies of the annual fees to recruit new members once they know what the annual costs are for being a members of our club.  One way to do this is via sponsorships and does warrant further investigation.
• Retention is our biggest challenge and need constant vigil to ensure that our members are happy, if not fix the problem!

All in all a lot of food for thought and action to maintain our membership at the current level and it was pointed out to DG Robert that we are a very active club with plenty of projects that need our help and support.

Garth thanked DG Robert for the visit and said that we look forward to his return one day.

S@A Garth then had the raffle drawn by our guest and past member Sarah and the winner was Alex AGAIN!  This was followed by an excellent fines session by S@A Garth and Cpl. Mark.

Another excellent night at the CRC ended at 8.45pm.

PRESIDENT MARY’S NOTES

We had a great night last night.

DG Rob is keen for all clubs to increase membership which is  a challenge however he did have a few ideas and it appears that we can use some of our  fundraising income to cover some admin costs which could help reduce membership fees and possibly attract new members. Something for us to consider. There is a new level of membership. Blue and Gold members

Also, DG Rob mentioned that we have a few more joint activities with other local clubs he mentioned Temora and Junee, the idea is that when we have an event or project that requires additional help we could work together. This appears to be part of putting clubs into Clusters which hasn’t been that successful as the clusters covered such a large area, however could work well with Junee and Temora.

With Monday night at the pub I’ll send out a link to the menu for those attending and if they could select their meals by Friday and get back to me.

If anyone has any ideas for a quick fundraiser for our silly hat day please let us know

Thanks Mary

P.S. & N.B.

With Monday night, people will just order and pay on the night. They will just reduce the menu options slightly to save time.

 Vegetarians and special orders will be looked after!

OUT AND ABOUT WANTABADGERY

Above some photos of the Australian Cycle Event at Wantabadgery over the past few days.  Thanks go to Anne for all the hard work that Anne put into supporting the event. There were 10 Rotarians and % Non-Rotarians who Anne thanked for their time.  Thanks to Anne and Grahame for the photos.

DIARY

JUST FOR LAUGHS

All of the above photos were obtained from Facebook.  Credit to the owners.

ROTARY NEWS and ITEMS OF INTEREST

1. RAWCS – Rotary Australia World Community Service

Watch the 7NEWS story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEKIrGjpqsY&t=1s

PS There is a link to Dick and Pip Smith and our club in the photo below:

2.  THE REV. SCOTT MUDD 

Happy Birthday Scott!

Gisborne Parish yesterday afternoon, our Vicar was interviewed & photographed with his cat, Preditacat ahead of our upcoming spring fair. On of our op shop volunteers managed to grab this photo of them being wrangled into position. Don’t forget, the fair is coming up on October 4th, complete with Pet Blessings at 11 am!

3.  BLAYNEY ROTARY TOY LIBRARY

Blayney Rotary Toy Library is celebrating their first birthday! come along and join in the fun!!

I love this idea and we could do it here in the Coolamon Shire.

BLAYNEY RC FACEBOOK PAGE.

SEPTEMBER IS ROTARY’S BASIC EDUCATION AND LITERACY  MONTH

Artwork by Rtn. Debbie Vance from Canada

ROTARY CLUB OF COOLAMON Inc. 2025-2026