A Great Evening Meeting, the Spinathon Part 2, Interact and Rotary Aid for Japan.

What a great outing it was to District 6.  The food was wonderful and the company even better.  Thanks, Allan Beuthin for organising such a good evening and it was a brilliant idea putting your wedding photos on the wall we really enjoyed looking at them.  Steve Du Plessis (top left) announced the prize winners from the Spinathon which was a great success for number one - here's what he had to say about it:

Our first Indoor Cycling event is done and we did well considering the timeframe we used to get it going. We raised R5, 800.00 in total with the help

of people like Barry Geldenhuis (Owner of the gym, House of Fitness) who graciously offered his gym, equipment and time to us at no cost. Those of

you who were there also got a waterbottel for free, and if you took the time to read the flyer inside, you would have noticed that Barry extended

his “new year special” (two for the price of one) to all participants of the event.

To all the participants and their friends, a very warm Thank You!!. Your participation does make a difference in someone’s life, and that is what it’s all about,

making a difference and helping people.

Attached is the flyer of our next event,(Beneficiary will be the Five C’s) please circulate this amongst your friends, colleagues and everyone you can think of. The event will be shorter (30 min)

to accommodate the not so fit people, but you can always take 2 seats and keep on going for an hour (or more) . Let us see how creative you can get

as the flyer explain it all.......... hehehehehe...I will see you there and this will be more fun than exercise!!!!!!  “POWER TO THE LEGS!!!!!”

Here is the next one so let's hope we can raise even more money as we have plenty of time to recruit cyclists and donors.

Tuesday sees the Induction of the new Office Bearers for the Dominican Convent School Interact Club.  The details are in the Side Bar in the Interact Section.  If you are able to attend please go along and give them support.  It won't be long before our second Interact Club is up and running.

I'm sure you don't need to be reminded that this week's meeting is a Business Meeting.  

The first video in the Video Bar is a complete performance of Verdi's Requiem for those of you who like to watch these things.

Rotarians respond to Japan earthquake, tsunami

By Ryan Hyland and Dan Nixon 
Rotary International News -- 25 March 2011 

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Rotary International on Facebook

The Rotaract Club of Tokyo is encouraging Rotaractors around the world to post messages of support on Twitter for survivors of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Photo courtesy of Rotaract Club of Tokyo

Rotarians have been finding a number of ways to help victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan that killed thousands and left hundreds of thousands more homeless.

In response to the disasters, The Rotary Foundation established the Rotary Japan Disaster Recovery Fund , which will support long-term recovery projects in the affected areas. More than US$500,000 has been donated since the fund opened on 11 March.

“It is encouraging to know that our overseas Rotary friends care about us,” says Yuzaburo Mogi, president of the Rotary Club of Tokyo. “I am confident that the people of Japan will overcome this great disaster, and we are hopeful that we can get over the various difficulties soon.”

District governors in Japan are running a fundraising campaign to send money to the governors in affected areas. Mogi says that Rotarians who wish to help Japan should contribute to the Foundation's recovery fund . (Rotarians and non-Rotarians can donate online )

The first Matching Grant project to receive support from the fund was approved a week after the disaster. Clubs in districts 3350 (Cambodia and Thailand) and 2820 (Japan) are using a total of $65,650 to help provide food and drinking water for 15,000 people at an evacuation center in Ibaraki.

Other responses have included:

• Three Rotary districts in Japan are using district funds to help. District 2610 (Ishikawa and Toyama) has developed an emergency relief project to support people evacuated from the disaster areas. District 2840 (Gunma) shortened its presidents-elect training seminars from two days to half a day and donated the remaining funds earmarked for the seminars to relief efforts. And District 2680 (Hyogo) set up a contribution box during its district conference, raising about $7,500 for recovery efforts. 
• The Rotaract Club of Tokyo launched the Cheer Tohoku project to rally the support of Rotaractors around the world, asking them to use Twitter to send messages of support to survivors in northeast Japan. The club is also using Twitter to post photos of Rotaractors holding up short messages they’ve written. "We thought we could make use of the worldwide Rotaract network to show people in the stricken area that we care," says club president Ai Takahashi.  
• The Rotary Club of Akashi, Hyogo, sent a private airplane carrying a load of medical supplies to the Rotary Club of Sukagawa, Fukushima, which delivered them to a hospital near Fukushima Airport. The governor of District 2640 (Wakayama and parts of Osaka) and six Rotarians also brought 1,000 blankets to Rotarians in the Fukushima region.