Thank you to all who turned out for my inaugural meeting as President of your Club. It was a good night to settle in and get behind us and it may take a week for Ken and I get the flow right but we gave it a good go and have broken the ice now and should be out of the blocks at least. John and Brian had a good show going last year so a hard act to follow.  

 

During the week we have had the resignation of Sean Brady and it is with some regret that we see Sean leave us. On a positive note though it was nice to induct our newest member to the Club Eric Hillerton and his wife Kate. Eric gave us a bit of background about his life and seemed quite comfortable joining our Club. Congratulations to Eric and Kate and welcome to our Club. 

 

We also had a guest Yannik from the Yamba Rotary Club in NSW. Yannik was in our area visiting her daughter who lives in Tamahere and she looked us up and found Ken and made contact. Thanks Ken for taking the time to follow through with inviting Yannik to our meeting and we hope to see her pop in again in the future and feel our Cambridge Rotary Club could be a good place to visit each time she is over. I visit the Rotary Club of Port Phillip in Melbourne as often as I can and I think it is a good thing for all concerned, the visitor and the welcoming Club. 

 

I ran through a high level overview of my plans for the year, nothing drastic but just getting back to basics and having some fun. We have a busy year ahead with some additional things in this year such as hosting the District Governor and Assistant Governor, hosting an Exchange Student from Austria and our District Conference in May which will be big for all of us. 

 

I made 2 mistakes in my State of the Nation. I mentioned that LesleyAnn is the Sponsor for Marie Witzel our Exchange Student, but that was wrong..LesleyAnn is the Counsellor. 

 

I also overlooked highlighting our strongest Club Project in our Club which is Urban Miners. Urban Miners is our flagship Community Service Project that supports environment and sustainability efforts in our Community and helps raise the profile of our Rotary Club in our Community. I would like to recognise the efforts of our Club Members that give up a lot of their time to help Urban Miners on an ongoing basis. 

 

We are also getting a lot of support from the Rotary Club of Te Awamutu in helping with collections and this is a good thing working together with other Clubs in our area. 

 

Mark Hanlon – Management Committee

David Blewden – Arnold Street Operations and Management Committee

Brian Palmer – Cambridge E waste Collection Events and Management Committee.

Andy Newman – Urban Miners Financial Management, Management Committee and back up to Mark when required.

Alan van Niekerk – Urban Miners device sales at Lions Market.

Kim Pritchard - Alan’s back up person for the above role.

Arnold Street volunteers who attend as and when they are able: Gavin Levesque, Bill Wilson, Richard Johnstone. Ian Grant provides a supply of heat pumps from his business.

Cambridge Collection Event volunteers who attend as and when they are available: Andrew Bateman, Shona Devoy, John Windle, Bill Wilson, Don Wilson.

Te Awamutu Collection Event drivers who are available from time to time are: Nigel Salter, Gavin Levesque, Andy Newman. 

 

Thanks to all of you for your dedication to Urban Miners and to the Rotary Club of Cambridge. I will do my best to come along to the odd processing and collection event in my year… 

 

We will be welcoming our District Governor next Thursday and we will arrange for Bill to meet with our new Board either before or after the Club meeting. 

 

I am off to the Matamata Rotary Club on Tuesday night to be their Guest Speaker and keen to take anyone else across who might be interested in spreading their wings and have a look over the fence. 

 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and see you all next week. Cheers Pres David