Visitors Shaneen Ahsan (RC Chabiganj Bangladesh) Armitpal Singh (RC Southbank) Krystle Mitchell (prospective RC Docklands) David Petersen, guest speaker Morgan Potter, accompanying the guest speaker.
Announcements Mary Voice encouraged member participation in the coming social golf event on Friday 29th March 2019. President Neville Taylor highlighted the current tour group in India, which we can follow on Facebook, noting that the sister club relationship with RC Rabindra Sarobar has been formalized. He considered that our club members should feel part of the recognition awarded to our sister club by way of a plaque presented at their District Conference. President Neville reminded us of the many coming activities, particularly: Victorian Multi District Conference 15-17th February Opera on the Yarra on 2nd March, now open on trybooking.com Peninsular Barbeque on 17th March
Guest Speaker – David Petersen Before speaking on “Team Rubicon – Australian Veterans making a difference”, David gave some background to what led here. After graduating from the Royal Military College Duntroon as a Lieutenant in 2007 he held a variety of Artillery postings covering Air Defence, Surveillance Target Acquisition, and Field Artillery. This included being deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 for 9-months as the Battery Captain of Counter-Rocket, Artillery & Mortar. David went on to explore the image of who veterans are, which is generally that it is older white men and that those of his generation do not look like veterans. He illustrated this by treatment charts showing peaks in older age groups that follow decades after various conflicts, with the largest peak being in the 90+ age group. He also noted the rapidly declining RSL membership resulting from this support organisation being orientated to this old image. In 2017 David was medically discharged as a direct result of his operational service in Afghanistan. Being at a loss as to what he could do, David went to work alone on a cattle station. He became involved in disaster response because he could see a use for his skills and felt comfortable working in disaster situations that were often not unlike war zones. He first illustrated this with the Haiti disaster where Afghanistan Veterans went in on day one and set up a hospital while aide and doctors were held back at the airport because “it was not safe”. Team Rubicon Australia unites the skills and experience of military veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency teams in the wake of natural disasters across the globe. Disasters are our business, Veterans are our passion. Team Rubicon has 90,000 members in the USA where it started and now has 1500 members in Australia. David is actively involved in the leadership of Team Rubicon Australia as part of the Melbourne Disaster Response Team. He is also active in the Camberwell City RSL and since 2018 has been the President. His “day job” is at Beyond Blue as a Project Manager for a new and innovative suicide prevention program for veterans. His hope is that he can put himself out of a job through the work of Team Rubicon, which is saving lives both in the communities assisted and among the Veteran volunteers, and by making RSL more relevant to younger veterans, which would give a place to share experience with those who understand. |