eRotary does it Sewing, Writing and in the Loop

We continue to work on our development of the Rotary Community Corps, a Rotary International programme that allows us to get more involved in our communities through Service and with partners to make a difference in a world where more caring by us all is needed.

Swindon RCC now has 15 members set to make Swindon a Champion Town for Hearing Loops in the national campaign by Hearing Link to Let’s Loop the UK. Rotarian Dave King this weekend is speaking at a District Conference to encourage other Rotarians to get involved in this important work, whilst our RCC Team have been hitting the shops this week starting our audit.

RCC Volunteer Steve

Monday saw RCC Member Steve on the trail completing the audit form, RCC Members Lauren and Lin were out mid week and in heavy rain RCC Member Lynda was determined to ensure on Saturday she was doing her bit and it was encouraging to find that out of six locations visited, two had working Hearing Loops. What is apparent is that we need to create more demand from hearing aid wearers and more knowledge about what Hearing Loops are and how they work. You can help, please ask whether public buildings or shops have a Loop System and please help us share articles from our Let’s Loop Swindon Facebook Page. Plus we still need volunteers and opportunities to give talks about why we are dong this work.

Help us encourage those future Writers

Do visit the competition page for entry details at WorcesterLitFest, wouldn’t it be good if we had loads and loads of entries from our creative young people? please encourage schools, youth groups and individual young people to get involved.

Sewing In for Polio – yes RCC members and eRotarians continue to Get Tied up for Rotary, sewing those ties and being creative is the order of the day, plus plenty of chat, whilst helping to raise vital funds to End Polio Now

We are still looking for groups who would be interested in working with us on this project.

Making a Mug Rug now that’s a new design

We will supply the ties and patterns, you help with the sewing, sales of items on a 50/50 basis with our 50% going to the End Polio Now funds to close the gap.

eRotary wants to encourage everyone to keep Mentally Fit 

First of all help promote the need for open discussion about Mental Health and get people learning more about the issues and helping it to become a top topic like Physical Health is. You can find good articles on our Mental Health Facebook Page

Get people involved in different creative activities in their communities so that they can relax, share without the stress and be part of a caring community of people. We hope to encourage this on our day in Worcester at the Cafe Bliss, great food, a warm welcome and plenty to take part in, as we Celebrate together World Mental Health Day – see you there?

Finally

• Don’t forget to visit this week’s eClub programme from a very talented woman. Mary Cohen thinks Rotary is a Can Do Organisation, what she can help us do in the community could be quite exciting.
• Have you bought your tickets this year for our eDraw, a Win Win situation awaits you, 50% to Rotary Foundation which aids some really amazing causes and a chance for yourself to Win 50%.
• This week in Swindon we see the relaunch of Safe Places, Click for Action eRotary is supporting the work to re-establish this excellent scheme across Swindon.
• Please help eRotarian James promote the establishment of the Rotaract Hub, an initiative to get younger people 18 to 30 involved in online work with the Rotary Family.

Come and join us and do Rotary, as we can offer opportunities for busy people in the 21st Century…Opportunities to Join

 

Cheesed Off – Can eRotary give you a boost?

Have your heard about Let’s Loop Swindon?

Whilst so many people are on those much needed holidays, here at Click 4 Action eRotary we are excited to build our plans for the coming year. This week we have applied for our new charter for our Rotary Community Corps to help with our partnership project Let’s Loop Swindon.

We are pleased to be working with Rotarian Dave King who works with the national charity Hearing Link and partners Voluntary Action Swindon, Swindon Borough Council, Swindon Equality Coalition, Zurich Community Trust and developing links with the Great Western Hospital Audiology Department. Please help our new volunteers to promote this initiative and on Facebook as we are also trying to raise awareness, help by sharing the Let’s Loop Swindon posts.

Get Tied Up with Rotary continues during 2014/15 and we still continue to look for new sewers to help us turn over 1000 unused ties into glamour accessories. Calling all would be sewers, we are having a Sew In on Saturday 4th October, join Rotarians Janice Mason and Jill Harwood as we get creative and turn neckties into bags, necklaces, spectacle cases, pencil holders, a time for fun, chat and food.

Things planned in the pipeline

President Sinead and Rotarian Enda are soon to meet to get into place our plans for International Peace Day 21st September 2014. If ever the world needs encouragement for this, it is now.

President Elect Mary, Rotarians Martin and Polly are soon to meet to start working on preparations for World Mental Health Day 10th October, 2014 with the theme ‘Living with Schizophrenia’. We want to encourage everyone to talk openly about Mental Health and encouraging people to keep their’s fit.

Rotarian Polly is looking for members of Click 4 Action eRotary to act as judges in our Young Writers competition to be run in the Autumn and to help promote it through libraries and schools.

Our Youth Officer Pa Modou needs your help in the Song for Water. Have you read our programme for week commencing 7th August?

Plans are well in hand for the Malmesbury & District Food Bank to launch in September and the first every Rotary Community Corps in RIBI is helping with these developments along with Flood Defences. District Governor Martyn Harwood is to visit this team lead by Rotarian Ray Sanderson on 20th August, so it was good to see a great article in the August edition of Rotary Today edited by our own Rotarian Allan Berry.

Rotarian David Pratt is still working on the District 1100 plan to send a Vocational Training Team to develop a Social Enterprise Model in Bulgaria working with the Foundation for Social Change and Inclusion and linked to a Rotary Foundation Global Grant. So don’t forget everyone to help promote our monthly online eDraw. Rotarians David, Kate and Margaret are really keeping this going and need all our members and friends to help promote and sell, just £12 a year and you could be one of those lucky winners, plus help us to contribute to the Rotary Foundation.

Rotaract Hub is now under way again with one of our newest members, Rotarian James Lovatt using all his enthusiasm and knowledge to develop this online opportunity for younger people 18 to 30 years, who haven’t got a Rotaract Club they can join. New website can be found at Rotaract Hub.

Cheese, Wine and Bidding all to help Enterprise

Following up last month’s article, plans are well in hand for our Online Auction and we are still seeking items, so please continue to ask around and look out any items that can help us raise funds for Enterprise in the two charities Human & Hope Association in Cambodia and the Uplands Educational Trust in Swindon. Rotarian Maria who visited the project in Cambodia is working on a Ploughmans and Wine Tasting which will help celebrate and raise more funds for these worthy causes to be held in early October.So Click 4 Action eRotary is always seeking new people to get involved in our Menu of  Opportunities and join us in the Magic of Rotary. No need to be cheesed off, come and get involved in all our different activities that are done on and off line.

 

eRotary People, Partnerships and Projects

At the beginning of the Rotary Year 2013/14 Rotary International President Ron Burton challenged us to Engage Rotary and Change Lives, our Rotarians have done this over the year online, offline and sometimes in their pyjamas.  They’ve had fun, introduced new ideas and showed that people who are busy can achieve great projects.

A quick resume of what we’ve achieved in order to celebrate, before moving onto another exciting year.

July to September we welcomed Rotarian Ed Cox, who works for Disaster Aid International, as a member of Click 4 Action eRotary and we presented him with a cheque for a Disaster Box to be used when needed. We visited the Trussell Trust in Salisbury, which set us on a course to get involved with Foodbanks and a Vocational Training Team in Bulgaria. We got excited about our new project Get Tied Up with Rotary to help raise funds for End Polio Now. September engaged members in the International Peace Day, our Rotaractors ran a fantastic Peace Photographic Competition.

October to December we enjoyed again packing Christmas Shoe Boxes for Eastern Europe, launched our eDraw to raise funds for The Rotary Foundation and highlighted the need to discuss Mental Wellbeing openly and keep your personal mental health fit. Our involvement in World Mental Health Day took the shape of a workshop in Worcester and a Facebook page. And that was just October! November saw us meeting the District Governor, inducting more new members and running a Young Writer’s Competition. For Christmas we were able to send 10 Roll Out the Barrels to the Philippines, to help communities affected by the national disaster.

 

January to March Rotarians got stuffed at Jimmy’s in Bath as part of their post Christmas get together, yes some of us do meet face to face. We started getting plans in place to set up the Malmesbury and District Foodbank. In February our Uplands Interact Club joined in with the World’s Greatest Meal to help End Polio and raised £63. Flying again across the internet were our virtual balloons as our Balloon Race raised funds for the British Heart Foundation and The Rotary Foundation. We launched our new pilot to attract families into Rotary with a Family Membership offer and held a President’s Event in London to share fellowship, where it was great to see some of our members meeting each other along with guests from other Rotary clubs. We were very pleased to continue our work to raise awareness about Autism, with our second Autism Awareness Workshop at Uplands School, Swindon.

Kirk Anderson explains the Autism Spectrum

April to June Really exciting in the history of Rotary International in Britain and Ireland we launched the first Rotary Community Corps in Malmesbury to help with Flood Defences and the Foodbank project in partnership with the URC. May saw the completion of the Duck Pond at the Gloucester City Farm, a great way to involve our new Family members. We enjoyed also taking part in the Festival of Rotary in Worcester, a great opportunity to tell the public about Rotary, our Tied Up for Rotary was a very popular stall. When you think the end of the year is nearly over and we’ve done it, June pops up and wow we’ve still much to do.

June

Uplands Interact Club’s plans come to fruition after over a year of planning to hold a Musical Event to raise funds to buy 10 more Roll Out the Barrels for Africa. A fantastic event with the help of the choirs from Uplands, Brimble Hill and Wroughton Primary School, they raised £233, thanks to Music teacher Paul Ashman and all the other teachers and staff to make this a very special event.

We start recruiting for our second Rotary Community Corps as we work in partnership with community partners to Let’s Loop Swindon. Do listen to Rotarian Dave Kings interview by Dave Woods on Swindon Community Radio which explains all about this exciting project.

Do you know hat this sign indicates? Help us make more people aware.

It was fantastic to be present at the launch of the Worcestershire Lit Fest and Fringe Festival and hear all the winning entries of the Young Writer’s Competition which we have been working in partnership with over the last two years.

Having ideas is great, turning them into actions is what Rotary is all about. How important though is the emphasis of working with the community to develop projects and the seeing the Malmesbury Foodbank attract loads of volunteers at the open morning on Saturday 21st June, was inspiring, the community cares and Rotary has helped. Today Sunday 22nd June, Rotarian Kate’s work with other Rotarians and the community will see the Spalding People’s Parade take place, we are proud to be associated with this event.

What Next – President Sinead looks forward to the new Rotary Year when RI President Gary Huang calls us to – Light Up Rotary. This week we hold our Assembly to hear the plans for 2014/15, these include:

• Continued work to build our Rotary Community Corps and help others to get these happening
• Continue developing our work with the MAD Foodbank, Let’s Loop Swindon, Uplands Educational Trust and Uplands Interact Club
• Continued partnership work with the Worcestershire Lit Fest and Finge
• Helping the District to undertake the Vocational Training Team to Bulgaria
• Helping the work in Cambodia run by the Human and Hope Association
• Developing our Rotaract Hub
• Writing and publishing a Song for Christmas
• Continuing to get Tied Up with Rotary
• Helping Rotary to grow by putting people and communities at the centre of all we do and yes Light Up Rotary by our actions and service delivered.

Rocking with eRotary

There was great interest on Saturday 3rd May in our new Rotary way of using the necktie, no not around the neck as would be expected of all Rotarians at a normal meeting. Our re-cycled neckties are helping to raise funds for End Polio Now by becoming beautiful bags, necklaces, glasses cases and bangles. We raised £70 towards End Polio and were able to show that Rotary Rocks as part of the Festival of Rotary in Worcester Guildhall, networking with other Rotary Clubs from the Worcester area. There was a lot of interest from visitors and an opportunity to talk to Clubs about plans for 2014/15, plus a young woman was interested to learn more about our Rotaract Hub, which our new Youth Team will be helping to create in 2014/15.

Rocking and Quacking to finish the job

On Sunday 4th May we were at the St.James City Farm in Gloucester, finishing the job (see Newsletter about this at Help us finish the job) started in our first year as an eClub.  It was great to be able to complete the Duck Pond, which is really looking good and the ducks were reluctant to leave while we planted the shrubs. This was a great opportunity to get our new Family Members involved in our activities, the Parkes family Lucy, Rob and Joe; The Parker family Nicky, Terry, Luke and Zachary; the Mason family apart from the boys as it was best they didn’t come as they might have liked the ducks! and Rotarian Katharine, all set to and had fun trying to herd the ducks into the shed, drilling the holes and planting. The pond is a real picture now and its construction was even helped by the Gloucestershire Fire Service, who supplied a Fire Service hosepipe to help drain the pond when required.

Talking of Ducks and Spalding Fun

eRotarians Cyril and Charlotte were helping to sell little plastic yellow ducks to the public in Swindon for the Famous Duck Race on Monday 26th May, at £1 a duck the Rotary Club of Old Town do a fantastic job and last year sold over 10,000 ducks.

For more details please visit The Rotary Club of Swindon Old Town Famous Duck Race.

Another of our eRotarians Kate Alexander has been working on the Spalding People’s Parade, for which our Click 4 Action eRotary are helping in a small way to sponsor the event.

Help us raise more to help others

 

Next Rotary Year we are intending to have a Silent Online Auction to raise funds for The Rotary Foundation. To start things off Lucy Parkes has donated a Signed Gloucester Rugby Ball, what can you donate to help in this activity? Let us know at info@1100rotaryeclub.org