When the going gets tough, the tough keep going!

New Team takes Click 4 Action eRotary Forward

Cheers to every one in Click 4 Action eRotary

We are pleased to announce our new team as from the 1st November, 2014 President Janice Mason takes over the reigns, to support President Elect Mary as she prepares to take on the President mantle in 2015/16. Janice will also lead the new Treasurer Team that will help manage the eRotary finances, becoming the Treasurer with a team in 2015/16. James Lovatt has been elected President Nominee for 2014/15, James brings a wealth of experience in Rotaract, RIBI and website/social media, we are pleased and excited that he is eager to help take our eRotary forward. James will also continue as part of the Webmaster team for us and we are in the stages of upgrading our website as we move forward. Tim continues for now as the Secretary, but is planning to hand this on in 2015/16. Debbie Vance has agreed to help coordinate a Mentoring Team to help new members feel art home in eRotary, whilst learning more about eClub involvement. As we continue to develop our team we hope other members will join in with the teams we are creating to ensure that our work is a team effort and no one member is having to carry the burden. We remain committed to ensuring that our eRotary engages our members and responds to their passions as we develop Rotary for busy people in the 21st Century.

What we’ve achieved so far

So far we have already achieved our plans including the involvement in Peace One Day in September and in October a really good Mental Health Awareness Day at the Cafe Bliss in Worcester as part of our efforts for World Mental Health Day. We were please to see the launch of the Malmesbury and District Foodbank which we are a co-partner in and the launch of Safe Places Swindon, where we are partners in the Steering Group. Plus we’ve launched this year’s Young Writer’s Competition (please help us to promote). Rotarian David has been busy helping District 1100 with our bid for a Vocational Training Team and a Global Foundation Grant to send a team to help the FSCI Charity in Bulgaria with developing Social Enterprise for young people leaving care.

There is still much to do to complete our plans for 2014/15

We intend to put achieving the District 1100 Equality and Diversity Charter Mark as one of our goals for 2014/15, so we are leading by example in making E & D Central to all eRotary achieves. As part of that we want to make eAwareness a key part of our programme, particularly in raising awareness about Disabilities in our Communities and how we can ensure needs are catered for and that everything is accessible. We are already committed to Autism Awareness, Mental Health Awareness, Let’s Loop Swindon for people with Hearing Aids and we want to assist with the website development of Show me the access.

We’ve had the ambition to develop an online shop, as mentioned above our website is to have an overhaul, as part of this we hope to have a Let’s Loop Swindon page and incorporate an online shop to help organisations we support sell their goods and help us raise funds. Hoping we can sell some lovely things made out of ties from our Tied Up with Rotary project helping to support charities and End Polio Now.

We will run our annual virtual balloon race to help raise funds to purchase a Disaster Box, we intend to continue to support Roll Out the Barrel and with our Christmas Song project we hope to help water sanitation in Gambia. We will continue to develop our eDraw to help raise funds for the Rotary Foundation and a new charity to be announced.

Environmental Issues still remain a key priority and we hope to get involved in Earth Day whilst encouraging all our members to be extra practical when recycling at home. Above all we want to learn more about the transition movement and encourage this kind of community enterprise and sustainability.

Membership Development remains a key to all we do

We will continue to develop our menu of opportunities in joining eRotary, especially Family Membership and our offer of provisional membership for those who are interested in seeing if eRotary works for them. A key to our community efforts will be the Rotary Community Corps, in Malmesbury with the Flood Defences and in Swindon with Let’s Loop Swindon, our hope is that we can encourage other Rotary Clubs to adopt this way of forming a team to volunteer where there is a need or project in our communities. We will also continue our relationships to develop support for Uplands Educational Trust and our Uplands Interact Club, plus support PN James to develop the Rotaract Hub.

We believe once you’ve become a Rotarian you’ve joined a network of 1.2 million members in over 200 countries. Learning and experiencing International Rotary is really important for our membership, so we intend to arrange some international exchanges and encourage members to attend international opportunities.

Together we will working to 

Whatever next? Cows on Wheels, Music for Barrels….

Uplands Interact Club are holding a Musical Event on the afternoon of Wednesday 11th June, 2014 at 1.30.p.m. to help raise money to buy 10 Barrels, for the Roll Out the Barrel Project. They would like help with raffle prizes, can anyone donate prizes? Please let Tim Mason or Mary Loran know if you can help. If you’d like a ticket for the event, please let Tim or Mary know.

Festival of Rotary – Worcester Guildhall 3rd May 10.30 to 4.00.p.m. come and see Click 4 Action eRotary and have some fun with the family at this special day. Janice will be there with others getting Tied Up with Rotary.

Now have you ever seen a Cow on Wheels?

Or been asked to sponsor a Cow Pat? Every year we have helped Max Leaning (Kevin’s son) to do his sponsored Scrumrun to raise funds for a good cause can you help this year to sponsor a Cow Pat?

Max says ‘Those who know me will know that I am a bit of a petrol head and as I looked for something to do with this passion a couple of years ago I stumbled across the Scumrun Rally.  I have completed it the last two years successfully and had such a great trip raising over £1000 as a team each year. This year we are raising funds for Tommy’s funds medical research into the causes of premature birth, stillbirth and miscarriage and provides an information service about health in pregnancy, all invaluable for expecting parents.

Click 4 Action eRotary has supported Max for the last two years and we hope to do so this year, please can others consider helping Max & Ben to undertake this excellent challenge to raise funds. You can contribute by:

at JustGiving  or by Text – Send “POSH90 £3” or another amount to 70070 or use our Click 4 Action eRotary Paypal letting Kate our Assistant Treasurer know you have done so at treasurer@1100rotaryeclub.org.

Other News:-

• It was with great pleasure District Governor Jan Harris presented the Charter Certificate for the first Rotary Community Corps in RIBI and District 1100 at the Rose and Crowns Malmesbury. Ray Sanderson holds the charter while other members look on, Ray will be speaking about this new volunteer force at District Assembly on Saturday 26th April, in Cheltenham.

• Currently members of Click 4 Action eRotary are helping District 1100 trial a Membership Skills Audit, as part of the new Membership Development and Retention Strategy 2014/17

• The Click 4 Action eRotary Annual General Meeting will be on Thursday 15th May, 2014 and President Elect Sinead will be holding her eClub Assembly on Thursday 26th June, 2014.

• We are continuing our fundraising for The Rotary Foundation (Rotary International’s own Charity) with our eDraw, have you joined up yet? Please visit the Click 4 Action eRotary eDraw and be a winner for Rotary good causes and perhaps yourself!

• Don’t forget if you shop online, you can help our Fundraising by joining Easy Fundraising, this soon mounts up and helps us to work in partnership with organisations in communities.

Members of Click 4 Action eRotary would like to wish all our readers a Happy Easter and hope they will continue to help promote our eRotary to friends, relatives and work colleagues who are busy people and may be interested in joining eRotary.

 

Wow C4A eRotary does it in 2013

Over the past year Click 4 Action eRotary has enjoyed continuing to develop its activities as online Rotary for busy people in the 21st Century, we look over the year with pride in the Service we’ve undertaken and look forward to 2014 with what we can achieve further.

January 2013 saw our Post Christmas party at Jimmy’s in Bath, don’t miss our next one on Saturday 11th January, 2014. January also saw the launch of our Uplands Interact Club and later in February the RIBI President dropped in to do it officially.

February 2013

We launched the Virtual Balloon Race Up Up and Away for the British Heart Foundation, a great way to have fun without damaging the environment. We also launched the Young Writer’s Competition in partnership with the WLF. We welcomed our Group Study Exchange Students from North Carolina, they brought such fun to our Face Space meeting at Kevin’s or perhaps it was just doing Rotary on the iPad!

Have you seen this App, would you like to swap?

Don’t forget we also did the hedge planting, eRotary isn’t all in doors sitting at a computer its hands on in the freezing cold ensuring we help the environment!

March 2013 – We ran the Click 4 Action International Peace Symposium and the RIBI President visited Uplands Interact Club to help us officially launch this new venture.

President John meets members of our new Interact Club

Dave King our new Disability Officer talks about Autism at our awareness workshop

April 2013 – Do you remember the Autism Awareness Workshop end the end of March and the celebration of World Autism Day on the 2nd April. We have plans again in 2014 so keep Saturday 29th March available as we again raise Autism Awareness and report about what we’ve achieved since our last event. Dave King is now our Disability Officer in Click 4 Action eRotary.

May 2013 – Saw us all splashing away selling the yellow plastic ducks, for the Rotary Club of Swindon Old Town Duck Race thanks to Debbie’s efforts we sold over 1200 in this year. May also saw us helping to celebrate Rotary at the Festival of Rotary in Cheltenham. Finally celebrating being one year old at our President and Charter Event’s at Ola and Maria’s, where we learnt more about Maria’s exploits in India and our feelings about being part of Click 4 Action eRotary were summed up in the video made by Sinead:

Tim presents Ed with cheque for £400 for Disaster Box, the last target to be achieved in his year 2012/13

June 2013 – We inducted our new Rotarian Ed at the RI Convention in Lisbon and we saw the fruits of the Young Writer’s Competition at the Worcester Guildhall, a great partnership has been established with the Worcester LitFestival.

July 2013 – Janice becomes President and we present a cheque to Ed Cox towards his work with Disaster Aid International.

August 2013 – We launch the Get Tied Up with Rotary Campaign and have a really successful visit to the Trussell Trust in Salisbury, where we learn about Foodbanks and Young People leaving Care in Bulgaria. We are looking forward to following all this up in 2014, with Vocational Training Team going to Bulgaria and helping to start a Foodbank in Malmesbury.

September 2013 – Saw our second Face Space meeting at Kevin’s, this time we inducted Margaret from Scotland by Skype, while husband DGE Alistar looked on by Skype from Dubia and we all kept in touch with International Peace Day by internet transmissions. We were proud of our Rotaractors who’d organised an International Peace Photograph Competition for Peace Day.

October 2013 – gave us the opportunity to raise Mental Health Awareness as part of our contributions for World Mental Health Day, we wanted to get people talking openly about Mental Health and exercising their mental health. Our Facebook page continues to promote this eAwareness campaign, coordinated by our new member Maria.

October saw the launch of our eDraw to help us raise funds for the Rotary Foundation. Again this year organised by Debbie we packed Christmas Shoe Boxes for children in Eastern Europe, what a lot of presents collected to pack 100 boxes.

November 2013 – we organised Meet the Governor and ensuring members were aware of Domestic Abuse and how this affects families in our communities, plus continued to induct new members into the eClub, welcome Jill and Kate.

Rotarian Jill wife of a Rotarian takes the plunge and gets involved with enthusiasm

Rotarian Kate is inducted while proud Father looks on

December 2013 – at last we had the opportunity to sell some of those ties or is it bags to help End Polio Now at the Worcester Lit Festival Christmas Fair. 

We were pleased to be able to help with the Philippines Appeal by sending a cheque to purchase 10 Roll Out the Barrels for helping with Water Collection.

Of course there have been disappointments in the year, but membership has grown and it has been great to find different ways to induct new members, it was a pleasure to induct George a Rotarian for 60 years previously, whose Rotary came to an end because his traditional Rotary Club had to close.

We are looking forward to 2014, to continue our plan, undertake more projects and continue to develop eRotary, its a shame we can’t get everything on these pages, but WOW what we’ve achieved is fantastic and we wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

eRotary Trailblazers

working in partnership with Click 4 Action eRotary present an ideal Christmas gift, for life.

Looking for that unique present for your friends and family for Christmas?

More details at A unique present 

• Reduces energy consumption, lowering bills.
•  Helps with the environmental agenda, by using less energy.
• Supports Click 4 Action eRotary to build a Micro Financing Fund.
• Help communities to become more sustainable and enterprising.

Please help us to raise funds for Micro Financing projects to help create sustainable enterprise in world wide communities. One project we’d like to invest in is: The Goat project for poverty alleviation – To support poor families of the rural area for extra income generation:-

Programme

• Provide easy loan to poor families for goat farming
• Training for animal husbandry management
• Support for goat shed and grass planting

This will take place in the remote village of Madhyapur Thimi, Bhaktapur Nepal

eRotary presents to District 2340 in Sweden

Last weekend in Sweden Tim Mason presented about how the twinning between the Rotary Clubs of Swindon and Degerfors had set the first steps into motion in setting up Click 4 Action eRotary. To an applause from the audience Tim said from 27 members at charter in February 2012 we’d grown our membership to 48, with the majority being women Rotarians. The most significant factor was we provided a flexible, affordable and vibrant way of taking Rotary forward in the 21st Century. Today we need to ensure people are aware that there are alternatives to belonging to Rotary which fitted with their lives, it was important people are aware what Rotary offers, there is a need to encourage greater networking and undertaking service within our communities. Tim stressed the need to highlight what our own charity The Rotary Foundation achieves, so people want to contribute and help make a difference in the world.

WIN, WIN ALERT – President Janice announces the winner

Today we can announce the first winner of our monthly draw as being no.22 owned by Alistair, the husband of one of our eRotarians. This is a great way for us to collect for The Rotary Foundation whilst having some fun and a chance each month to win some money, please join in the eDraw and encourage friends, relatives and work colleagues to join in.

eRotarians certainly make it happen

Debbie Vincent successfully coordinates this year’s Click 4 Action eRotary Team to fill 100 Shoe Boxes for Christmas delivery to Moldova.

Thank you to everyone who supported this marvellous effort to bring our Christmas cheer to families who will appreciate these presents.

Fund Raising made simple, please help if you regularly shop online: David Wren (pictured right packing shoe boxes) says “we’d like to invite you to register for easyfundraising – it’s a really easy way to raise funds for our eClub simply by purchasing your goods online as usual. You won’t be charged anything extra”.  There are three easy steps

Step One…this will take about 1 minute of your time : Register online with Easyfundraising  Navigate to “Support a good cause” – you are supporting Click 4 Action eRotary

Step Two: Think of a user name and a password. Download and install the Find and Remind Toolbar – it’s worth doing as this toolbar does all the work for you. This will take about 2 minutes.

Step Three: Start shopping at any of the major online retailers – john lewis, amazon etc. – most of them support easyfundraising, the Find and Remind Toolbar makes it easy. As soon as you go to the website you will be prompted to claim your donation from the retailer – tick yes at that stage to ensure any further purchases attract the donation.

So spend 3 minutes and spend your dosh as usual – Click 4 Action eRotary gets the donation.  We have already raised over £100 for our charities – before you spend anything on line this Christmas, sign up and raise money for our Click 4 Action eRotary.

New Facility to help us to do online Fund Raising

To help us raise more funds for the eClub Sinead has started an eClub EBAY account.  She would like to sell items donated by our members on ebay.  If it sells, you get to choose how much you would like to give to the club.  You can keep the rest for yourself or another charity of your choice.  Sinead has started things off by selling a bird bath from her garden, people are already viewing it!

You can view the account as it currently stands by migrating to ebay and in the search field type 190954506604

this will bring you straight to the relevant page.  If you are doing a clear out please give Sinead a ring or text or email.  It will only take her a couple of minutes to work out the value of your item on ebay. You’ll make the decision yourself about whether you want to go ahead with the sale and decide then what percentage to give to the club.  Things that are selling well at the moment: furniture (it’s the recession!!), cookery books by well known chefs, vinyl LPs, old computer games – don’t chuck it without giving her a call!

Long terms plans

We are planning to open a specific charity ebay account.  That will open other options for us and make it clear to any buyers outside the club that the profits are going directly to charity – this will to help our sales.

Please email Sinead on sdarker@me.com, tel 07999 861782

Plus help to promote our:

• Young Writer’s Competition please click for more information
• Tied up with Rotary we are still wanting loads more unwanted neckties and sewers
• How about encouraging a friend to join us, two month free trial – Join Us we are helping to incubate eRotary in the South East, Ireland, Hertfordshire, East Midlands and West Scotland. It doesn’t matter where you live eRotary welcomes you.
• Meet the Governor on Saturday 16th November, more details please visit the Members Forum.