By Bob Aitken AM, RI END POLIO NOW Coordinator, Zone 8, 2018/23

Wild Polio Virus summary:

Numbers have not changed since February 24. The number of wild polio cases at June 2, 2021, remained static at two – one in Pakistan and one in Afghanistan.

The total number of WPV cases in 2020 was 140, with 84 in Pakistan and 56 in Afghanistan, compared to 176 WPV cases in 2019, with 147 in Pakistan and 29 in Afghanistan. The total number of vaccine-derived cases in 2021 stands at 100 compared to 133 for the same period last year.  The total number of vaccine-derived cases for 2020 was 1088.

The Melbourne Pollinator Corridor is set to be the most significant street garden environmental project to be undertaken by Rotary District 9800 and will act as a model for other high density urban areas throughout Victoria and Australia. The aim of this project is to bring community together, create vital biodiversity and wildlife corridors through urban Melbourne and improve the health of our city, environment and community.

Part of The Heart Gardening Project created by Emma Cutting, a South Melbourne mum with a passion for street gardening, the Melbourne Pollinator Corridor (MPC) will focus on harnessing community support to participate in street gardening. The Heart Gardening Project will run the MPC through four identified highly urbanised suburbs of inner Melbourne, being Port Melbourne, South Melbourne, Southbank and Melbourne. It will involve using public and private land through the four suburbs and will cover an 8km wildlife corridor joining Westgate Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens.

By Rowan McClean, District 9800 Club Service Chair

I was always grateful for an introduction to a model that focused on underlying cause and effect rather than dealing with symptoms.  It stood me in good stead in my management consulting career. Let me explain it with a dramatic analogy. 

If someone is sick with a fever and you administer aspirin, they might die if you don’t know the cause of the fever was snakebite!

When it comes to Rotary clubs, giving consideration to the Drivers of Performance, the causes, their Impact and the Outcomes they can produce can be valuable to the success of the club.

The following diagram shows possible drivers of performance for Rotary clubs (the causes) and the logical flow to the desired outcome, which of course is a successful and sustainable club.

By Rowan McClean, District 9800 Club Service Chair

It was a cheeky customer who invited Sue, a Bendigo Bank Manager, to come to a Rotary meeting in 2007 at Melbourne South. The meeting was full of friendly people and with their upcoming Christmas function involving singing to people in aged care, Sue couldn’t help but get involved, as she is also a singer. What followed was an understanding of other club projects and an opportunity for Sue to serve and network with her community.

Over the ensuing years, Sue took on the roles of President and Treasurer several times, which also provided her with an even greater understanding of the workings of a Rotary club, as have the projects involving working in partnership with DiK and external bodies to provide care packs and clothing to people in need.

District 9800’s ‘Innovation During COVID’ Award Recipient

Each year Rotary Castlemaine’s national Truck Show brings over 200 trucks (and lots of spectators) to the Mount Alexander Shire and raises in excess of $40,000 for a range of community projects and local charities. With COVID-19 restrictions, the 32^nd annual Truck Show scheduled for 28-29 November 2020 had to be reimagined.

To pay tribute to the trucking industry that worked particularly hard during a challenging year to keep goods and services available to the public, Rotary Castlemaine decided on an alternative online program … one that would reach over 40,000 people.

Speech by, Mia Andrews, Ruyton Girls’ School

Rotary Balwyn has run The Four-Way Test Public Speaking Showcase over many years with the objective of providing a competitive outlet for secondary students attending schools within the City of Boroondara to hone their public speaking skills and promote the Rotary Four-Way Test as a moral compass. In this competition students can speak on any subject that they feel is current, interesting or important. Their speech must however, be based on the application of Rotary’s Four-Way Test, with its principles running either expressly or implied throughout the entire speech.

The following transcript is from one of the four finalists, Mia Andrews.

Good evening adjudicators, Rotarians, distinguished guests, and fellow speakers. Our world is a tumultuous one; filled with unspeakable tragedy and tremendous accomplishments. It is a little over two years since the Christchurch massacre, 3 years since the Charlottesville attacks, and only 5 months since the Capitol riot. These events made the world stop and look, to ask how these tragedies could happen and look for somewhere to place the blame. The tragedies I just listed share many commonalities, but there is one which is often overlooked; why did we choose to ignore the words, ideas, organisations and ideologies in plain sight that espoused hatred, typecaste or criminalised minorities and amplified extremism? Apart from the perpetrators, is it sometimes surprising that these ideas have been blatantly or subtly endorsed by elected politicians and media voices? The lack of accountability for politicians and the media who undermine the fundamental moral values of truth, fairness, goodwill and kindness to others, whilst amplifying extremism and falsehoods poses an existential threat to our nation and the world. Nothing changes unless the way we treat the responsibility of those in privileged positions changes too.

By John Granger

History and culture have weaved wondrous paths in Fitzroy. Football club photographs at the North Fitzroy Arms Hotel provide insights of the old town showing flint-eyed teams of serious, tough men with laser-parted oiled hair. The 1944 premiership team was Fitzroy’s last and, nearly 80 years on the team’s remnants reside in Brisbane.

Until around 1960, Fitzroy was a ‘working man’s suburb’. Rows of single-fronted terrace houses … the wood merchant and the iceman ‘delivered’ and the baker’s carriage ‘clip-clopped’ around the streets. Fitzroy’s Brunswick Street oval was a mud heap after a light shower but weather, or mostly inadequate team performance, never deterred the faithful.

By Helena Wimpole

The seed for ROTI was planted in the mid-90s when a Rotarian from the Rotary Club of National City, California established a Rotary interest group list on the original Prodigy system. The idea of an actual fellowship grew when another Rotarian from New Zealand started talking on the list about trying to form a new Rotary International fellowship on the Internet specifically created for Rotarians using the Internet.