It's All About the Fellowship

So much of Rotary is about fellowship and it has been interesting of late to meet some fine fellows who arrived at our meetings unannounced, but of course very welcome.
     Last week Patric Muentener of the Rotary Club of Flawil in Switzerland came to the meeting.
     Patric is an airline pilot for Swissair and was on his first visit to Johannesburg in about six months. He looked New Dawn up on the Internet and decided to pay us a visit before jetting off to Europe again later in the day.

President Carol Stier accepts a banner from Patric Muentener from RC Flawil in Switzerland

     Each one of these visitors creates a potential link between clubs on different continents, an important consideration when it comes to joint projects and global grants.
     Patric told the club he originally trained and began pracitising as a paediatrician before starting a new career as a pilot. He still practises as a paediatrician in his spare time.

Judy Symons, Frayne Mathijs and Debbie Smith at the meeting

     He said Flawil is a town east of Zurich in German speaking Switzerland. His club will be celebrating 50 years as a Rotary club soon, having been inducted into Rotary in August 1968.
     Patric says he speaks Italian, French, German and of course English. He has a wife, Linda, and four children, aged from 22 down to 16.
     He was previously a member of the Rotary Club of Chicago, the founding Rotary Club of Paul Harris and co.
     We'll have more visitors next week in the form of a speaker and two delegates from Arts on Main. The latter two will be attending a meeting with President Carol Stier, Ian Widdop, Julian Nagy, Linda Vink and myself to discuss the upcoming Arts fundraiser set for 14 September 2018.
     This is a very important date, so please diarise it.

Jarrod Cronje, the speaker for this week

     The speaker this week is Jarrod Cronje of The Foundation Clinic, who will be talking about the impact of emotional problems on childrens' ability to learn, which promises to be very interesting, so be there.
     We'll be discussing the Arts on Main fundraiser at 8am just after the meeting, so do join if you can.
     Ian Widdop reports that there are some very exciting plans for this event, where children will be able to give wings to their creative instincts under the watchful eye of professional artists.
     The following Wednesday, 18 April, will be the big handover when the club will be presenting a symbolic cheque of R100000 to Tim Bashell and Megan Maynard of The Link Literacy Project, representing our club contribution to this very worthwhile project.

The Jozi Book Fair will be in its 10th year

     Another date to diarise is 30 August, the start of the 10th Jozi Book Fair in Mary Fitzgerald Square in Johannesburg. It'll be spread over four days again and the theme this year is Literature and Working People.
     Our champion at the JBF, Frayne Mathijs, will be the speaker on 25th April. She'll be speaking on the topic of the national health care system and not about books.
     A few weeks ago, Nikiwe Bam, an old friend of the club, wrote to Amina Frense asking for a wheelchair for a women who lives in Berea and looks after her 82-year old mother, with whom she shares a wheelchair.
     We were able to source two wheelchairs through the Rotary Club of Northcliff's Wheelchair Project. The second wheelchair will be used to get older people to mobile clinics in Vlakfontein, south of Johannesburg, Orange Farm and Soweto. They are affiliated to the Adopt an Elder Foundation, Nikiwe's organisation.
     Thanks are due to Amina and Lucille Blumberg for expediting this.
     A Thought for the Week: A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason. - Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)