Posted by Kathy Bryant
The highlight for August must be the successful wine tasting evening.  It was once again a fun evening, and we cannot thank the 8 vineyards that came along enough for the evening.  The International committee under Brian Clarke did a great job organizing and a big thanks must go to Annette Ruck and her catering corps who organized all the food.
 
As well as the great social aspect of the evening we managed to raise over $5000 for the Wellington Children’s hospital equipment.  Sue Darling put in a huge effort liaising with the vineyards, sourcing raffle prizes and her hall decoration was beautiful.  Thank you, Sue.
 
August speakers tended to be very much Rotary oriented.  Due to Covid cancelling one of the scheduled speakers, we had an evening where a few members shared four statements about themselves, and the rest of the club members had to work out which statement was the lie.  We had Wayne Gordon (Rotary Club of Makino and District Governor Elect) come and talked to us about the pilot programme that RI is wanting the club to vote on in September.  It was lovely to be joined by members of the Rotary Club of Upper Hutt for this evening.
 
Ten of our members made the trip over to the Naenae Bowling Club to be guests at the Rotary Club of River Valley and (along with the members of the Rotary Club of Petone) had a very entertaining talk by Hon Chris Hipkins on the Covid pandemic.  It was a very relaxed talk, and it gave insight into how/why some of the decisions were made at certain times.
 
We also had District Governor Marilyn Stephens speak to the club and she offered her palindrome on what Rotary needs to be:
R elevant  
O pportunities 
T raining
A gile leaders 
R eal community impact 
Y outh focussed
 
Other activity: The organizing of the Christmas trailer raffle in Queensgate is underway.  Getting prizes, printing tickets and getting the roster organized.  We were fortunate to Wim Julicher.
 
Later this month we celebrate Joe Tomlinson being in our club 44 years.  A wonderful commitment and achievement Joe.
As I was away last Monday due to my plane out of Christchurch being cancelled, I have not yet caught up with the other committees as to where other projects are at.  I’m looking to next Monday’s Board meeting to hear all about the things committees have in store for the near future.