President Roy Garrett welcomed everybody invited Chairman for the day Neville Taylor to lead the proceedings.

 

Grant Godina Chairman Rotaract Australia and Member Tullamarine Rotaract Club

Greg Hanley Strathmore Rotary Club

 

Visitor: Tony Fritsche

 

 

Highlights included:

 

President Roy advised:

 

Bernie Gerlinger advised that Tom Callander and John Barker were celebrating their birthdays and that it was the anniversary of Stuart Ellis of join the club.

Bernie then provided the meeting with one of his more humorous jokes.

 

 

 

 

Neville Taylor then introduced one of our newest members Stella Avramopoulos CEO Kildonan Uniting Care.

Stella related her families’ migration to Australia from Macedonia in the northern Greece. Their home in Australia became the meeting place for new arrivals and at times 40 people would be crowded into their home. It was said that her grandfather would find them somewhere to live and her grandmother would find them someone to marry.

 

Her father, a tailor by trade, commenced a men’s clothing business in Brunswick and, for the benefit of Neville Taylor, supplied many of police with suits.

 

Greek was her first language and was the only language spoken in the home.

 

Her father was obsessed with education and worked 6 days a week from 7am to 7pm so she could go a private school. It was his dream that she would join him in the business, but at 23 after obtaining a University Degree she became a criminologist and correctional officer at Barwon Prison, which of course upset her father. She then talked to her father about working in the not-for-profit sector helping needy and disadvantaged people – he said “this is what people should be doing”.

 

Stella considers Australia provides a world of opportunity and that boat people are not bad.

 

After her prison work experience she determined she wanted to prevent people from going to jail and joined Kildonan Uniting Care. Twelve years ago she became a team leader and for the last six years has been the CEO.

 

Also she mentioned that she has two children and is married to a Police Officer.

Her biggest management challenge to-date was the Black Saturday Bushfires in 2009, when for 30 days she worked from 7am to 10pm assisting people who had lost family members and/or their homes especially in the Kinglake area.  Kildonan was one of major service providers and because of their involvement in the fires their staff at that time increased by 30 people to a total of 90 people.

 

Today they have some 200 people with a budget of $18 million and in passing she mentioned Neville John’s great assistance as a board member.  Stella emphasised assisting people in need was her passion and that in the future she would like to be involved in coordinating the community sector response – she mentioned today there are some 1,600 community providers in Victoria.

 

She sees “rap around” community services fitting into the four categories:

Her desire for the future is to align Rotary activities to the local community sector and she looks forward to working with Rotary to achieve this alignment.

As a charter member, we are blessed to have such an inspirational community leader in our Rotary Club.

 

 

 

Neville then introduced Yanpu who has been wonderful hardworking member of our Rotary Club and has exposed many of us to the best Chinese Cuisine in Melbourne.

 

Yanpu entitled her life story as a “cross-cultural life journey with tripods” Her tripod which gives meaning to her life has as its foundations:

She provided an overview of her cross cultural life in the following dimensions:

Yanpu then related how she had enjoyed a privileged childhood in China up until 1966 and when the Great Cultural Revolution started her family was sent to the countryside for re-training in the new way of thinking in China. It was a very unsettling time as people would come in the middle of the night to see what the family was doing.

 

After three years of reform the family returned to the city where she immersed herself in learning music and the English language. She taught herself English using books her father would collect and the use of a gramophone player. She did not realise then that this would become her career.

Her family would have liked her to study medicine but she was afraid of “blood and dead bodies”.

 

In 1977 she sat for the National Entrance Examination and people were surprised when she achieved good marks and so began her career as an English teacher.

She enjoyed university life with a passion and she spent some 18 years at the Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences. [I was surprised with the name of the hospital so I did some research and found the following:

 

Yanpu enjoyed her English language studies and progressed from being a lecturer to the Deputy Head of the Department.  During this time she completed her master’s degree, but she continued to teach. She also won a number of scholarships including with the World Health Organisation [Ministry of Public Health] and one for a PhD through the Ministry of Higher Education.

 

At this time she developed her third tripod leg of being a practicing Christian.

 

In 1996 she came to La Trobe University where she completed her PhD research and in 2000 she migrated to Wellington New Zealand with her son. There she worked for the Victoria University of Wellington, the New Zealand Crown Agency and the New Zealand Department of Labour. Then in 2005 she moved back to Melbourne where she has worked at Victoria University, Deakin University and the Australian Council of Educational Research.

 

She ended her wonderful “life story of a cross cultural life journey with tripods” by referred back to the three legs of her tripod - work, Rotary and her church life.

 

We are indeed fortunate to have such a wonderful and clever person as member of our Rotary club.