At Rata Street School last week, Eastern Hutt Rotary was once again present to promote 'Books in Homes' and of course Duffy Books. Those included were Annette Ruck, John Cole, Linda Goss-Wallace and myself.
A very big welcome back in Rotary to Linda Goss-Wallace! Linda joined Eastern Hutt Rotaract in 1985, then a year later moved back to Wainuiomata and joined Wainuiomata Rotaract. Over the next 7 years she held all the board directorships and was President for two years.
Last evening Jaye Howey and myself had the honour to attend Government House to celebrate 25 years of Duffy books in Homes and receive acknowledgment of Eastern Hutt's contribution to such a wonderful cause.
The Innovative Young Minds (IYM) program is run by the Hutt City Council and Hutt City Rotary with some help from other local Rotary Clubs, including us at Eastern Hutt. It provides young women in years 11 and 12 (the old 5th and 6th forms) with exposure beyond the school gates to the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Manufacturing - the STEMM subjects. Traditionally these have tended to be male dominated fields but they are now accessible and available to women if they know about them.
Des Darby and I had previously interviewed three Naenae College students, Alaa Loulou, Cindy Zhu and Ilma Aminudeen, all of whom gained places on the course, with our club sponsoring two of them. One of them, Ilma, was in the first cohort and Jaye Howey had the pleasure of hearing her speak on behalf of them all at the Grand Hall of Parliament.
Ilma Aminudeen at the Grand Hall of Parliament, and Cindy Zhu with Alaa Loulou at the Innovation Dragons Den
This year the program ran over two weeks and involved eighty students in total. Each week, 20 of the students were local and 20 were from other parts of New Zealand. I had the privilege of being a volunteer on seven of the ten week days.
At this evening's meeting President Pat Heffernan was pleased to present Biddy Harford, CEO of Te Omanga Hospice, with a cheque for $16,500. Two thirds of this will be used by the Hospice to purchase items for patient care and the remainder will be added to its current need for capital expenditure. The larger part of these funds were raised at our annual Te Omanga Golf Tournament.
This proved to be a very successful day with 20 exhibitors attending. Feedback from the exhibitors is that they really enjoyed the day and would love to come again next year. Feedback from the people who came was that they benefited from the day and would like the event to be run again.
