BULLETIN November 10th, 2020 (Nov 06, 2020)

WHAT'S IN THIS BULLETIN

17th November 2020

NEXT MEETING (via ZOOM)
Meeting Report November 10th
Christmas Hamper Appeal
Fundraising During Lockdown
28th Annual Paul Harris and Business Breakfast
GALLERY

NEXT MEETING (virtual) - TUESDAY 17th November

Posted by Allan DRIVER

Suvam Ganguli: The Rotary Foundation’s 7^th Area of Focus, “Supporting the Environment”

On 25 June 2020, Rotary International President Mark Maloney announced, "The Rotary Foundation Trustees and Rotary International Board of Directors have both unanimously approved adding a new area of focus: supporting the environment.

District 9800 formed an Environmental Sustainability Committee with the key purpose of developing greater awareness of environmental sustainability solutions to restore ecosystems and contribute to a healthy environment. The committee supports clubs to identify new environmental sustainability projects and/or enhance existing ones.

With the support of the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG), the committee has access to a range of resources to assist clubs to achieve successful projects in this area.

Suvam Ganguli is Rotary Central Melbourne’s nominee to the D9800 committee. During this session, he will be facilitating three speakers from ESRAG.

Meeting Report November 10th

Report from Tuesday 10th November
By David Laurie

Chair: Gerard Hogan
Todays guests: Marli Watt,
Today’s speakers: Gabe Hau & Rana Ebrahimi

Gabe Hau is a past president of RC Southbank and Rotary E-Club of Melbourne as well as a past Assistant Governor for the Riverside Cluster. He is currently the D9800 Peacebuilding Committee Chair, a member of the D9800 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and an IEP Ambassador. Gabe is passionate about peace and his current club, the Rotary E-Club of Melbourne, is the first Peace-builder Club in Oceania.

Rana Ebrahimi is the community engagement manager at Cancer Council Victoria and the co-founder/director at Human Equity Consulting. She is a board member of the Australian Iranian Society of Victoria and Equal Employment Opportunity Network. Rana is the first Iranian woman to be Head of Office for the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Iran. Through 18+ years of working with UN agencies and international NGOs from various European and Asian countries, she has communicated and negotiated on positive peace and development with high-level government authorities and diplomats. In Australia since 2016, she has led several projects on human rights, multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion and multicultural community engagement. Rana holds a Masters in International Law with a thesis focusing on Afghan refugees’ predicament in Iran.

Gabe gave an insightful introduction with the idea that there are two types of peace; Positive peace and negative peace. Positive Peace refers to attitudes, structures and institutes that sustain peace where as the latter refers to such things as the absence of direct violence which I thought to be very interesting as it is something that I have never really considered before.

District 9800 is a peacebuilder district and there are many similarities between the Rotary’s areas of focus with the pillars of positive peace

Rotary	Peace
Promoting Peace	Well Functioning Government
Fighting Disease	Sound Business Environment
Providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene	Equitable distribution of resources
Saving mothers and children	Acceptance of the right of others
Supporting Education	Good relations with neighbours
Growing local economies	Free flow of information
	High Levels of human capital
	Low levels of corruption

The peacebuilder clubs are the E-Club of Melbourne, Melbourne, Kangaroo Flat, Brighton North, Carlton, and Caulfield.

You can see examples of peace poles at www.rotary100downunder.com/big-ideas/100-peace-poles.

Rana joined Rotary Central Melbourne three months after arriving in Australia in 2016.

Rana made an interesting point that DEI and peace building are two sides of the same coin.

What does DEI mean for rotarians – it means

1)   Diversity – rotary welcomes people of all backgrounds, cultures, experiences and identities,
2)   Equity – Rotary strives for the fair treatment, opportunity, and advancement of all Rotary participants.
3)   Inclusion – Rotary is working to create experiences where all people feel welcomed, respected, and valued.

Rana went in briefly go through the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion D9800 Strategic plan for 2020-2023 with the vision, purpose, and aims.

Final message: Let’s agree on a call to action for Peace Building & Let’s champion DEI and add it to our goals.

Paul Fraser moved a motion to the bylaws, Therese Robinson seconded.

Motions put forward.
1st moved by Paul Fraser, seconded by Gerard Hogan. All in favour.
2nd moved by Warwick Cavell, seconded by Anne King. All in favour.
3rd moved by Elias Lebbos, seconded by Therese Robinson. All in favour.
4th moved by Elias Lebbos, seconded by Kevin Love. All in favour.
5th moved by Roy Garrett, seconded by David Jones. All in favour.

Member Birthdays:
Trevor Dymond 11/11

Partner Birthdays Alan Crawford, Michelle’s partner 10/11 Veronica Love, Kevin’s partner 10/11 Laura Soros, Rob’s partner 11/11 Angela Ma, Daniel Lim’s partner 12/11

Wedding Anniversaries Nil

Date Joined Rotary Nil

Announcements:

Neville Taylor: Paul Harris and Business Breakfast: 24th November 2020. Book online at Trybooking

2. Rohan Williams/Alison Chan: Christmas Hamper Appeal

3. Rob Hines: Paul Harris Breakfast Silent Auction. See sent out email for all the info.

Congratulations to Warwick Cavell and all those involved with Outcome.life for WINNING. Huge congratulations to the hard work that was put into the competition.

Christmas Hamper Appeal

Posted by Alison CHAN

To assist the Rotary Club of Central Melbourne to mark the Festive Season, we ask members and friends to make up Christmas Hampers for the less fortunate people in our community. We will be providing hampers for two groups of disadvantaged people:

the homeless and youth through Steps Outreach Service
refugee families through Lentara Uniting Asylum Seeker Project

We will supply red hamper bags for Steps Outreach Service recipients and red bags with green ribbons for the Lentara recipients. The following lists are suggestions of non-perishable food and other items for your hamper bag donations.

Please let Alison Chan (alisonchan100@hotmail.com, 0415-525-678) how many hamper bags that you would like to donate by Tuesday 1^st December.

A member of the Community Service Team will then contact you to arrange a time to deliver empty bag(s) to your house and collect your donation prior to Monday 14^th December.

Thank you in advance for your donations and have a great festive season.

Trivia goes Digital

Rob Hines automates Trivia: A tech triumph Our IT guru Rob somehow converted our hallowed fortnightly trivia nights to a feast of technology last Thursday Nov 5. This is all a breakthrough akin to the investion of the steam engine and the laser beam. We downloaded the Kahoots app to our phones and ran Zoom and Kahoots simultaneously through 50 questions. The fun element was that speed of response counted as well as accuracy, and the leader board updated in real time, with added info like who’d won three questions in a row and how each player was faring. We were also delighted that RCM members en masse finally got their act together and joined the fun. The roll-up was RCM 18, Bearbrass 3, Sunrise 0 and WAGs 3. Through the half hour we followed the battle for the top spot which made the US election seem pretty tame. Winner in the end was Bearbrass Probus’s member Mike Sparkes, better known as “Lost Lamb” because the club lost track of him for three months, leaving him in limbo. We guess that Rotarians are so busy doing good in the world that they have no energy left over to memorise the capital of Ecuador and what baby lobsters are called. The only casualty of the night was Coral-lee and Russ Keep from Sunrise Probus, whose iPhone played up and kept them out of the game. Next quiz on Nov 19 will be run by Mike Lost Lamb himself.

Colour Your World Project

Dear Members,
As part of Rotary Central Melbourne's response to the 7th area of focus "Supporting the Environment", please participate in the Colour Your World project by planting Bee friendly flowers in your garden, take some photos and forward the photos to me at suvamg@gmail.com.

You can find more details of the Bee friendly flowers on https://rotariansforbees.org/ website."

Please let me know if you need any further information.

Kind regards,
Suvam

Suvam Ganguli
Co-Founder, Urth
www.consulturth.com

Fundraising during Lockdown

Voluntary contributions

To everyone that’s made or intends to make a donations towards club projects, thank you!

If you are in a position to make a donation or even a series of weekly donations then please arrange to transfer those funds to the club bank account with the reference “Donation”.

Bank Account Details:

BSB 033-000

Account number: 791085

Thank you for your support!

Regards,

Rob Hines

Director, Fundraising