Our Penultimate Meeting............

At the time of writing I don't know who our speaker is for this week so it will be a surprise! A big thank you to Jonathan Erikson for last week's talk. It's not very often that someone talks about the ups and downs of what they do and I'm sure many of us could identify with some of the things he had to say.

Next week is our last meeting before the Festive Seasonal Break. Graham Donet has laid on a special Breakfast to mark the event so please confirm your attendance with him by Monday 7th December at the latest.

There is a Board Meeting on Monday 7th and much to my surprise, there are lots of things we need to discuss. This may mean that we will have to inject a bit of business into our last meeting.

The Friends of New Dawn

We have had a positive response for establishing the Friends particularly from members who are leaving at the end the year who would like to maintain contact with the Club and rejoin if circumstances change. I don't think there needs to be any criterion for being a Friend so just forward to me the email address of anyone you know who would like to be included.

I tried to upload pictures of our two musicians last week but in big black letters I got Your Image is Corrupt. So instead I decided to include a picture of the Zion Sausage Queen who probably is corrupt and is no doubt in her 90's now!

What a fascinating talk we had last week. A big thank you to the Reverend Priscilla Everson and Marcelle Arnold for such an interesting presentation and Magi Fletcher for bringing the Sholene and Sholan Francis to play for us. What I particularly liked was the use of the arts to build up the ability to concentrate. So many children that I meet through the Scout Movement are unable to listen to anything for longer than about 10 seconds. I'm sure that the Uthingo Community Arts Centre is something we will certainly bear in mind in future planning.

I forwarded to Paul Kasango an interesting email from Shirley Downie. We are great distributors of food so from our Club's point of view it is tremendous that she has achieved this breakthrough!

Agency 6	Blackheath
	Johannesburg New Dawn
	Sandown
	Johannesburg North Central

Dear Presidents

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Food Bank of South Africa has approved 10 Food agencies for Rotary D9300. The Food Bank does not normally allow more than two agencies from anyone organisation but following a meeting with their senior management, it was agreed that Rotary International D9300 would be allowed 10 agencies. They also agreed for us to allow the agencies to include a few clubs rather than just one club. Clubs have been put into clusters and our liaison at the Food Bank has now formally sent a message to his senior administrator to accept the conditions and the attached application form. (see below)

In order for as many clubs to benefit from this wonderful opportunity for free food, the Food Bank has also agreed to different terms and conditions that I proposed, rather than accept the terms that they have for their agencies.

Attached is the agency application form and the criteria and terms.

Below are a few suggestions – however, you can create your own strategy and plans amongst yourselves:

ü I suggest that representatives from each club meet as soon as possible and decide who/what/how you will manage the collection and administration of this project.

ü You decide on the beneficiaries of the food stuffs.

ü I suggest that you submit several identity documents when you submit your registration form. Only people that have submitted their ID documents will be recognised as the official representatives to collect the food to avoid fraudulent folks from saying that they are from your club or Rotary International.

ü Please also include an excel spreadsheet with the names, contact details, email addresses etc of everyone that will be involved with this project one way or another and submit this to the Food Bank with the application as well as distribute this amongst yourselves.

ü If you get a third party to collect the foodstuffs on behalf of your club(s), that is permissible, but then you need to obtain that person’s ID document and contact details etc and submit this on the form and include it on the excel spreadsheet as well.

Please send me as many photos as possible of the recipients of the foodstuffs and copy ‘thank you’ letters as I would like to send these to the Food Bank. They may put these on their website. We will certainly put these on our website. We would also like to submit an article to Rotary Africa with loads of photos and captions in the new year.

This project will only be successful if we stick to the rules! Normally, you should be collecting every day! However, I did mention to Jan that this may not be possible with many clubs and would they consider reducing the number of collection days and they agreed to this (Say a min. of two collections per week).

Jan also mentioned to me that he would soon be receiving loads of mielie meal. Once he advises me, I will let all the clubs know about this.

I wish you all the best of luck with this project. If there is a club that is not able to participate for any reason, please let me know. It will be treated with confidence.

Best wishes

Shirley

PDG Shirley Downie

District 9300: 2007/2008

Reach Out to Africa: 2008/2010: Sub-committee

WASRAG: PR & Communications for

South and East Africa

D9300 Chairperson: PR & Communications Committee

D9300 Chairperson: Health & Hunger Committee

Cel +27 083 308 0042

Fax 086 694 9072

Seminars Last Weekend & Things

I attended the Membership Seminar which was really refreshing. First of all we had a presentation on what actual membership figures were by Zone, internationally and it is interesting that our Club is smack on the average membership for South Africa! We then split into groups and discussed various issues in a session run by Rais Pearson of Benoni Aurora. The questions we were asked were relevant...Why do so few Black People join Rotary?....Why so few Young Members? I'm not going to report back on this as we will get a breakdown of the discussions in the future.

As membership is so important there will be a bit of a Board reshuffle that will come into operation in the New Year. Allan Beuthin will be taking over Membership and staying on the Board whilst Joan Donet will join the Board to take over his Admin Portfolio. Linda Vink will also join the Board. Having PR outside the Board hasn't really worked and I'm sure that having Linda there will make a big difference. At our last Board Meeting of the year on the 7th December we will discuss changes to the Committees, where necessary, as Membership is probably too small and Ian Widdop has lost Joan from New Generations. Just give this some thought as we will discuss this at the Business Meeting on the 9th December.

Mike Vink attended the Foundation Seminar and I don't know what happened there as he said it was quite complicated. He'll give a short report back on Wednesday.

Dominic Moss's talk on African Zoos - the way forward, was fascinating and it was particularly interesting to hear how the Johannesburg Zoo is so well recognised internationally and how it continues to make progress in terms of research and mentorship for the benefit of our continent.

I'm really looking forward to our guest speakers this week. It is always a pleasure to have young people to entertain us. The suggestion came from a former colleague of mine who was a music compiler at the SABC Maggie Fletcher.

Dominic.....again!

I know you will believe this! Dominic Moss has had is picture on the blog more than anyone else! Here he is again.

Last week's business meeting showed that we are making progress where projects are concerned and Allan Beuthin's suggested possibility for a Sports Event was really encouraging from a fund-raising point of view.

Eleanor Hough is having a knee replacement operation this week. Good Luck, Eleanor.

I had a phone call from Jeremy Webb of the Rotary Humanitarian yesterday. He said that Graham & Joan Donet had disposed of

R50 000's worth of books last Saturday morning and how much he appreciated what they had done and thanked New Dawn for continuing with manning the Centre on the first Saturday of the month. Thanks to everyone who has put their name on the Humanitarian Centre list.

Ian Widdop has firmed up our involvement with the North Indian GSE Team and here is the programme so far. We still don't know the vocations or names of our visitors but he will hopefully know that after the next meeting. The Clubs hosting have changed a bit and we will be receiving them from Vereeniging Club.

SCHEDULE 4

India D 3050 Interest/Cultural Programme

Rotary Club: Johannesburg New Dawn Club Coordinator: Ian Widdop Cell: 082 552 1305

Date	Time	Activity	Venue	Organiser
Mar 2	9 am	Take transfer from Vereeniging Rotary Club	Ver Road	PJS & IW
Mar 2	10 am	Deliver to hosts’ homes, laundry	Various	Hosts
Mar 2	1 pm	Visit Circa Art Gallery, Rosebank	Rosebank	PJS & IW
Mar 2	5 pm	Preparation for presentation to New Dawn	IW’s house	IW
Mar 2	EVE	Club social event, braai/supper for GSE group	Donet’s house	GD
Mar 3	7 am	Attend Jhb New Dawn meeting & presentation	SHT, UJ
Mar 3	9 am	Tour of Constitutional Hill	Parktown	IW
Mar 3	Lunch	Lunch at Mike’s Kitchen	Parktown	IW
Mar 3	PM	Talk by Tom Wheeler, SA Instit. Intl. Affairs	Wits	IW
Mar 3	EVE	Individual evening events with Hosts	Hosts’ Discretion	Hosts
Mar 4	AM+PM	Vocational visits	Various	IW
Mar 4	EVE	Free OR theatre visit	?	?
Mar 5	AM	At leisure in Rosebank	Various	Various
Mar 5	12 pm	Deliver GSE group to JCC, Auckland Park	-	IW/Hosts

The Gap Chat & Business Meeting

Ian Widdop argued very persuasively for the Club to take on the "Gap" concept as a project. He represents Project Trust, a Scottish based organisation that has placed post school students from the UK in a community service situation for one year in developing countries for the last 40 years. There are approximately 40 of these students in South Africa at the moment. What Ian would like to see is effectively a franchise for South Africans using the existing network established by Project Trust. It will take a couple of years to establish Project Trust here. The meeting seemed enthusiastic about the concept. The Business Meeting on Wednesday will discuss it. Click on the link to see the Project Trust Website.

In the meantime I think it's about time we showed off our Breakfast Main Course...we have a three-course breakfast....and it is different every week!

It is served by delightful young hotel school

students and if you look behind the screen during Ian's presentation you can see the wine cellar. We haven't used it for breakfast yet!

Several Board Members will be attending the CCCCC AGM on Monday after the Board Meeting to find out more about our Soccer Team and CCCCC itself. They will reveal all on Wednesday morning!

Enjoy Pavarotti in the Video Bar. He's in Montreal in 1978 at the peak of his powers.