President: Norm de Grussa 2013 - 2014

Rotary club of

WANNEROO 4 T H N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3 B U L L E T I N N O : 1 8

MEETING Wanneroo Tavern

Guest Speaker Susan Saleeba

4th November 2013

Wanneroo Rotary Club Committee 2013—2014

President: Norm deGrussa

Secretary: Graeme Smith

Treasurer: Andrew Kininmonth Youth Services: Owen Douglas

International Service: Debbie Singh

Club Service: Phil Cousins

Vocational Service: Neil Cook

Membership: All Members

Sergeant: Phil Cousins

Attendance: Jacob Etoka Belgrade Village: Colin Griffiths

Program: Peter Miskelly

Bulletin, Publicity

& Photography: Ray Perkins President Elect:

NEW WEBSITE: www.rotarywanneroo.org

Apologies: If unable to attend meeting, an apology is to be lodged with Jacob Etoka before 12 noon Monday.

Contact details for Jacob email: mmungaetjab@yahoo.fr or mobile 0413104989

DISTRICT 9455

P.O.Box 47, WANNEROO 6946

November 11th is Partners Night to farewell Colin and Barbara Parker

who are moving back to the U.K.

Chairman Tom Drinkwater

Duty officer Colin Griffiths

Duty officer Andrew Kininmonth

Vote of thanks Bill Kell

Reserve Peter Miskelly

Reserve Debbie Singh

Fellowship Rebecca Williams

Guest speaker COLIN PARKER

Topic

Duty Roster 11th November 2013

November 2013 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

1 2 3

4 GUEST SPEAKER

Susan Saleeba; To talk on NAKURU HOPE

5 6 7 8 9 10

11 PARTNERS NIGHT TO FAREWELL COLIN PARKER AS WE

HAVE CANCELLED HIS RESIDENCY VISA

12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

MEETING AT WANNEROO TAVERN 4th NOVEMBER 2013

President Norm welcomed all members, exchange students and our guest speaker Susan Saleeba from Nakura Hope. Secretary: Graeme Smith; we have received an invitation to attend an awards presentation for the Year 12 Students at the Wanneroo Senior High School to make a presentation on the 28th November. There has also been a request for the supply of microscopes to the Carramar Primary School for up to 35 students at a cost of $15.00 each. Youth Service: Owen Douglas; We have a nomination for someone to attend RYLA which will be put forward Anna Mumford. The RYLA Camp we have had a number of Rotaractors who have also nomi-nated with clubs that are willing to sponsor. We have both of our inbound exchange students and they will give a short talk.

Akin: has been here over 2 months 2 weeks and on Friday they went cycling with his school and then travelled into Perth with his friends. Also he went surfing on Saturday and learnt to stand on the surf-board. He went to a costume party on Saturday night and reckons that he was handsome ! He leaves at 8.00am each morning to go to school and tonight he came straight to the meeting as there was not enough time to go home.

Anson: he has been in Australia 3 months and 3 weeks and went to his first Halloween Party wearing a mask and went to Trick or Treat and some people said don't you think you are too old to do this, and one of the other exchange students said come on this is the first Halloween Party he has been to. Owen said what he failed to mention was that it was on a Thursday night and was held in Mosman Park. Sir Grumpy mentioned that he had warned Anson to not stray too far away from the party as what has happened in the past and when he went to the door and got no answer he sent a text from his car and 30 seconds later Anson appeared running down the stairs and shouted Owen I'm here I'm here. Sir Grumpy thought that was funny.... lol. Owen appreciated that he was still there in the place that he had left him.

President Norm: mentioned that this is possibly the last time we will be using the current meal format and going back to the soup and main meal. Next Monday is the Partners Night and also we have a visit from the District Governor Hank DeSmit. If all Board members can attend a Directors meeting at 5.00pm with the DG and then we will have the Partners Night meeting to Farewell Colin and Barbara Parker who are returning to England. Phil Cousins in now the Club Service representative so if he could attend.

Ray Perkins: The Melbourne Cup Sweep has been organised and will be drawn later this evening.

Raffle: 1st Prize Jacob Etoka 2nd Prize Owen Douglas

The Melbourne Cup Sweep was drawn by Akin who drew out the names and Anson drew out the Hors-es. They both did a good job not mixing up the names and numbers. President Norm gave me a scare when he said there was an extra name and no horse. All was correct thank goodness, thanks Presi-dent Norm :) Bill Kell drew one of the favourites Fiorente which proved correct. A copy of the drawn horses is attached. The winners will be advised and dividends paid out next year :)

Sergeants Session: Phil Cousins; Raffle winners, Jacob and Sir Grumpy, Neil for his occupation as being untrustworthy, Owen for cheap labour for using exchange students for babysitting, complaint about Ladies night in place of Partners night, no Ladies night in Rotary anymore, birthday for Paul, Laurie for birthday and holidays, Debbie for soccer winners and losers, and not forgetting Tom for backing the wrong teams. Norm for scaring Ray with saying there was an extra name, he went grey with shock! Colin for recarpeting the house and having to remove all furniture. Akin for having the most fashionable shorts on. Treasurer: Bill Kell; Reminders that fees are due now and the Directors need to put forward any budget issues as this will be ready for next week. A big thank you to Graeme and David from Hillarys for cleaning the Dolphins and also for Debbie for holding morning tea without us. They were cleaned on Saturday morning and the money was removed on Friday by Clive. Another good result for this peri-od and they have provided a good income and should be half way to paying back our investment.

International: Debbie Singh; The cheque has been received and will be forwarded to BCMF. Her target to raise was $10,000 and so far she has raised $8,700.00in 4 weeks. She was invited by St An-thony’s church to sell some jewellery and within 1.5 hours she had sold $1,200 worth. The local priest also made a generous donation. She has been invited back on the first Sunday in December when they have their big morning tea.

Chairman: Debbie Singh; Debbie introduced our guest speaker Susan Saleeba.

Susan is a member of the Rotary Club of Nedlands and has come from South Fremantle this evening. Susan thanked our club for inviting her to talk. Once upon a time she lived in Cottesloe with a wonderful life with boats and houses and all sorts of things but after her partner found a tall blond she now has all of those things, and now Susan has her dogs and the house in South Fremantle and is now a lot happier, which has now given her the opportunity to follow her passion which is Kenya.

7 years ago she decided that her children that are grown up and she decided that it was time to do something for Me. Susan decided to do some volunteering and had tested the waters a little bit up in Nepal in the Himalayas. When she went with an international organisation she realised that a lot of the money that was raised, donated and invested in these organisations the money doesn't get there.

So 7 years ago she went to Kenya with an International Organisation volunteering for 3 months and she had asked if some of the money she had invested with them could be returned to her which was said could be done, to put in floors in the school and they said no it doesn't work like that. And that’s when she realised that all that glitters is not gold when you are volunteering.

So for the following 4 years she went back and forth to Kenya to a place called Nakuru and there was a lot to be done which she could do by herself.

There are many Flamingos around Nakuru, Giraffes and also the Black and White Rhinos. She was there to see Kenya for herself and not as a tourist and in 2007—2008 there was a political uprising between two groups which was horrific and she decided that her needs were there.

The Children she showed on the slides live on the rubbish dump and this is where they eat, play and sleep. She moved from the London Hilton where the Rubbish Dump was to another place and showed us the typical housing.

What could I do as a one person operation? I thought about creating a school and many people here in Perth just thought it was just my thing.... Well after going back within 2 weeks I found a little house and I had a friend that I had worked with before and started a little school.

The reason we started the school and we called it Gabriel is because the night before we decided to start a school my children's Grandfather had passed away and his name was Gabriel and he was the epitome of Family so we called it the Gabriel learning Centre. The Kenyan's are very religious and Gabriel was the Ark Angel Gabriel so it all came together.

With the little house we found in the slums it had a lounge and three bed-rooms we didn't want to just have a school for the children as we wanted to educate woman as well so that they could support themselves and provide for their children so we had sewing machines set up in the lounge room.

We actually received a Licence to run the school.

The courses we do for our dress making takes a nine month period and with 9 different languages it makes it very difficult and also you need to learn to read and write and also Maths to do dress and pattern making sewing design and us-ing the sewing machine. We have 12 sewing machines and we can have 24 women in this little room at one time. selection of the women was by visiting their homes to see if they were needy which also depended on their health. Slowly but surely they graduated and

they even made their own graduation clothing after seeing this in magazines.

On the side of the house was a garage so we set up, a pre-primary school which could accommodate 30 children. If the children don't come to school they don't eat so another good reason to have them come to school.

So there is a program for food. We supply the students with chair clothing and books as no family could ever afford to buy these.

There is a little boy called Wilson who is nicknamed the cabbage patch kid as he was found in a cabbage patch. We have a spare classroom for English classes for our older students of 75 who is an old Masai Warrior and he doesn't want to move on he just wants to learn more and more.

Everyone that comes into our school becomes our family. So if a child comes into our school he becomes our family and his family also becomes our family so we visit the family with a home visitation to check that they have food and water.

The water is only turned on twice a week for 2 hours only twice a week by the government. We look at their sanitary conditions and we help to build latrines. With some latrines 500m away the young girls are suscep-tible to being raped.

Susan does not have any medical training but she has attended many births and also helped many families say goodbye to their loved ones. Some children are abandoned by their parents and just left in the homes by themselves as the parents can-not support them. They hope that someone will come along and help them. Many houses have mud and clay floors and all of the bedding material has to be taken away and burned to kill all of the bugs.

Susan explained about one family where the wife had killed the husband as he had been constantly bashing her and had given her aids. She had been put in jail which meant the children had been left alone. Bad things had happened to the children over the time and were separated but Susan has been able to reunite them but the young boy has a brain tumour and they have been waiting for over a year to have him operat-ed on. The operation should take place in about 10 days’ time and hopefully all goes well.

There is a baby called Ruben who suffers from cerebral palsy. During childbirth there was a problem and he was starved of oxygen which was not brought to the mother’s attention so for 2 years everybody told her she was a bad mother. After all of the tests we confirmed the findings and relayed the bad information to the mother.

Their future is in buying land to secure their future so they bought 1 acre of land and then we built our own compound. We painted our door a bright yellow so that we are recognised.

There are 2 floors to the building that incorpo-rates the administration, library, schoolrooms and accommodation. With the school the budget was $260,000 and in 4 years she has raised over $500,000 and that's without any large help from Rotary. It has mainly been through her personal fundraising.

Last July when she was in Kenya she had 2 wonderful volunteers from Queensland and for 3 weeks they questioned her and the reason they questioned her was because they wanted to buy 4 acres of land in the rural area to grow their own produce. There is a strong volunteer base and does everything to help in the community. Susan leads by example and a photo shows her digging a latrine. The volunteers range from 17 as she won't take anyone younger as it can be very confronting. The oldest volunteer is 73 and has been with her 3 times now.

While the volunteers are there they go on to Tanzania and climb Mt Kilimanjaro and the visit the Gorillas in Uganda.

Susan has the question asked many times what percentage of the donated money goes to the project and that is 100% Susan pays for all of her own transport and accommodation costs. The reason is that when she first started volunteering so much of the money she had donated did not all go to the fund. Her aim is for the project to become self-sufficient with making their own school uniforms, growing their own food and building everything themselves. They are registered with RAWCS so they are 100% a non-profit organisation. Can we make a difference? Yes we can with any donation or volunteering in any way possible. If anyone wants to know more she can put us on her mailing list. If anyone wants to become involved just let her know.

Paul Conti asked if the land purchased is titled. Susan said yes it is titled and in the name of the school. With some of the land they have acquired it is very much like a peppercorn lease where after 99 years you have to pay a shilling. Vote of Thanks: Paul Conti; Paul thanked Susan for a great presentation and such an informative talk.

President Norm presented Susan with a small donation to assist with Nakuru Hope.

The meeting was closed with the singing of the national anthem.

MEMBERS BIRTHDAYS

MARGARET BAIN 4TH

PAUL CONTI 7th

VIV PERKINS 21ST

MEMBERS ANNIVERSARYS

NEIL & DIANNE COOK 12TH

CLIVE & MARGARET BAIN 14TH

DOLPHIN WISHING WELL—CLEANING ROSTER 2013

30th NOVEMBER CLEANING ROSTER

TBA

TBA

Mark Kitson (Supervisor)

Chairman

Duty officer Jacob Etoka

Duty officer Debbie Singh

Vote of thanks Rebecca Williams

Reserve Clive Bain

Reserve Ian Bradshaw

Fellowship Paul Conti

Guest speaker

Topic

Duty Roster 18th November 2013

Visit Vibrant Vietnam

The Rotary Club of Hillarys would like to invite you, your family

and friends to a fundraising experience for all to enjoy.

Cultural Fundraiser Night Statistics show that 10 children drown every day in

Vietnam. We can help by providing them the opportunity to learn to swim and receive the safety education they deserve

Joanna Stewart from Swim Vietnam has asked for our support again af-ter the success of the 2011 Rotary Club of Hillarys sponsored program in conjunction with AustSwim Australia and Mullaloo Surf Life Saving Club, for Vietnamese teachers Doan Minh Trung and Vo Van Vinh to become Swimming Instructors.

This year the Rotary Club of Hillarys will be running a Fundraiser Night

for the Vietnam Swimming Association to sponsor two more swim-

ming instructors.

The Event will be held at the Hillarys Yacht Club contact Alan on 0401 883 486

November 14th, at 6:30 P.M. Cost is $40.00 per person includes a Vietnamese buffet and entertainment.

Payable by direct debit to The Rotary Club of Hillarys Inc.

ANZ BSB 016 494 A/c 2036 39752 or cheque made payable to The Rotary Club of Hillarys Inc c/o

PO Box 440, SUBIACO, WA 6904

BILL KELL PETER MISKELLY NEIL COOK PAUL CONTI

$144.00 $60.00 $24.00 $12.00

GIGGLE’S CORNER