Join Rotary – Make a Difference
All Rotary members are asked to give a life talk after joining our Club – it’s an opportunity for them to give fellow members an insight into their past and to learn a little bit more about them. This evenings talk was given by John Whitten and with the words ‘I learnt a lot about life in the slaughter house’ we knew that we were in for an interesting evening.
A master butcher trading from premises on Tettenhall Upper Green John explained to the Club what had been involved in his training and the ups and downs of his life as a butcher. With some truly horrifying stories of initiation ceremonies which have been meted out to him over the years its surprising that John remains so level headed.
John’s first contact with Tettenhall Rotary Club followed the theft from his shop of an Air Ambulance collection tin. When the Club heard about the loss we stepped in to make good the money that had been stolen and in the process gained John as our youngest member.
With over 30 years service as a soldier with the Ghurkhas Colonel Mark Cook has witnessed at first hand the effect of conflict on families and children. The conditions which he and his wife witnessed at orphanages in Sarajevo following the Balkan War of the 1990’s were so appalling that they decided that they must do something to help and so was born Hope and Homes for Children.
Initially the Charity worked to rebuild and refurbish orphanages but their work has now progressed to moving children out of institutional care and into caring family environments and to work to prevent family breakdown which leads to children being placed there in the first place.
This change in direction came as a result of their listening to children and understanding that what they really want and need is the love of a family – something which Mark is convinced cannot be provided in an institution.
Mark says ‘More children are been orphaned or abandoned today than ever before in history and many of them will have to resort to begging, crime, prostitution or violence just to survive.The world has to realise that this is a crisis on an unprecedented scale as these children will grow up disenfranchised angry people’.
The Rotary movement has been a long term supported of the Charity’s work and following Mark’s moving presentation Val Campbell, Chairman of Inner Wheel District 21, presented him with a cheque for £750 which the ladies of Inner Wheel had collected at the own District Conference with a further £250 being donated by District Governor Elect Trevor Davis.
District Conferences are meant to be motivational and there can’t be a much better motivational story than that of Rotarian Tom Henderson and the work of the ShelterBox charity which he launched.
Just 10 years ago Tom, a member of the Rotary Club of Helston-Lizard in Cornwall, noticed that the aid response to most disasters took the form of food and medicine to help people survive the immediate aftermath but that little or no assistance was given in terms of proper shelter to help them through the first few days, weeks and months as they tried to rebuild their lives. He started to think about how that gap could be filled – and from that was born the ShelterBox.
To date over 100,000 boxes have been distributed by the charity – now a Rotary Global Club Project – each containing a durable family tent designed to house a family of 10, thermal blankets and netting, a stove, water purifcation equipment and a toolkit as well as an activity pack for the children.
Along the way ShelterBox has gained a reputation for being one of the first on the scene of major disasters – something which Tom credits to the role which Rotarians with their local knowledge and connections play in ensuring that ShelterBox can get their response teams and boxes through where and when they are needed most.
This weekend saw the Rotary District 1210 Conference at Chester Racecourse.
Each of the Districts within the Rotary movement holds an Annual Conference to give Rotarians an opportunity to network with other Rotarians, to listen to inspirational addresses, and to discuss the development of Rotary.
The conference aims to give Rotarians a vision of Rotary beyond the club level, an opportunity to recharge their Rotary batteries and the inspiration to become more involved in service.
This years 1210 Conference saw inspirational presentations from Tom Henderson OBE, the founder of ShelterBox, Colonel Mark Cook OBE, President of Hope and Homes for Children, Sue Cook, a member of the first all women expedition to walk to the North Pole, and from former Test Cricketer Henry Olonga.
Showing his own support for the ShelterBox project District Governor Barry Preen based himself for the weekend in a ShelterBox tent pitched in the racecourse. The tents have been especially designed to stand up to extreme weather conditions and it certainly proved to be wind resistant when during the early hours of Saturday morning Barry woke up to find a police helicopter hovering over the tent whilst it assisted with an incident on the racecourse. If you are wondering about the fine head of pink hair that Barry is sporting in the picture the wig was a homage to Sergeant at Arms Greg Watson of the Rotary Club of Whitchurch who had dyed his hair pink for the month of October to raise money for cancer research.
Midway through their visit to our District the Conference was attended by Rotarian Dave Bennet and his visiting GSE team from Rotary District 5550 which spans Northwestern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. Team members Shauna McKim from Regina, Jody Jury from Neepawa, Brennan Brooks from Saskatoon and Alicia Smith from Moose Jaw gave Conference an insight into life in Canada and what they’d look to take back to them following their vocational visits on our District. We look forward to meeting them again when we host their Farewell Rally at Tettenhall later this month.
Since the formation of the first Rotary Club back in 1905 the Rotary movement has shown how local people can join together to pool their resources and talents to help serve communities in need and to achieve some truly remarkable results.
Roy Stallard, a retired local nurse with a special interest in the history of healthcare, talked with the Club this evening about how the local people of Wolverhampton have worked together in the same way over the course of two hundred years to improve local healthcare and in the process to develop one of the top two none teaching hospitals in the country.
In the days before the formation of the National Health Service provision of local health provision lay mainly in the hands of local people themselves through voluntary contributions. Roy traced this proud history from the opening of the original Queen Street Dispensary in 1821 through to the glory days of the much missed Royal Hospital. You can learn more about the history of the Wolverhampton hospitals by following this link to a site maintained by Roy and his colleagues.
The history of the development of Wolverhampton’s hospitals is a perfect example of what local people can achieve by working together and is one which we and the other Rotary Clubs of Wolverhampton are following today in our continuing support for Compton Hospice. You can help us to continue this tradition by supporting our fund raising events in November with the Big Band Concert at the Perton Community Hall on the 11th and the Auction of Promises at Patshull Park on the 20th.
The Club’s fellowship month continued this evening with a visit to the Wolverhampton Scalextric & Slot Car Club.
Based in the grounds of the Aldersley Stadium and with two tracks it offers adults and children of all abilities the opportunity to build and race slot cars. Its amazing how far the cars have come since the time when most of us were playing with Scalextrix tracks at home and it is now a competitive sport with intentional teams visiting the Wolverhampton Club to race.
Needless to say that the members of the Tettenhall Club will not be posing a serious challenge on the international stage in the near future but the racing did make for fun night with John Margetts crowned Club Scalextrix champion.
Congratulations to the podium finishers:
1. John Margetts
2. Ken Whalley
3. John Francis
It’s August and for the Tettenhall Club that means its Fellowship month – when our regular monthly meetings are suspended in favour of social events. These events offer a further opportunity for members to build on the friendships which are such an important part of Rotary.
This first fellowship meeting of the year saw the staging of the Club’s Crown Green Bowls competition at the Summer House pub in Wolverhampton.
The competition took the form of a doubles competition this year but despite that and the attempt to level the playing field by matching last years champion Greg Instone with one of the Club’s worst players Greg still charged his way through to regain the Club title for further year in what we hope will bode well for the Club in District competitions.
Only five Brits have had the honour of holding the top job in Rotary as the President of Rotary International. One of those was Tom Warren who was a member of the Rotary Club of Wolverhampton. Taking over the job in 1945 Tom is credited with helping to steer the Rotary movement through a very difficult time. Each year the Rotary Clubs in the City hold a dinner to honour his achievements and this years meeting was hosted tonight by the Rotary Club of Bilston.
In his keynote speech to the Rotary Convention in 1946 Tom encouraged Rotarians to work towards solving the problem of learning how to live together as good neighbours in a rapidly shrinking world and so Bilston took as their theme for the night the issue of Fair Trade.
Wolverhampton has been a Fair Trade City since 2004 and the Churches of the City having been instrumental in bringing this about it was fitting that the Right Reverend Clive Gregory, Bishop of Wolverhampton, led us in Grace.
We were joined for the evening by Lord Bilston, Dennis Turner, who is Chair of the Fair Trade Association in Wolverhampton. Fair trade gives a better deal to farmers in developing countries to ensure that they receive a fair price for their goods which enables them to further develop their businesses, to invest in health and education projects and to better care for their community’s environment. Lord Bilston explained the development of Fair Trade in the City and the importance of trade and not aid in improving the lives of people.
Paul Birch perhaps better known for his association with Revolver Records but who now is heavily involved with fair trade products in the Co-operative organization through Revolver World then spoke about the difference which Fair Trade can make to the lives of people in the third world and of the power of individuals to effect change on a large scale simply by changing their own buying decisions.
District Governors are expected to attend meetings of each Club in their District at least once during their year in office. Fortunately we’ve managed to get hold of our new District Governor, Barry Preen, at the beginning of his year in office before the miles take too much of a toll on him.
As the representative of Rotary International one of Barry’s jobs is to communicate to Clubs the thinking behind this years Rotary theme, Reach Within to Embrace Humanity – a theme which has caused a little puzzlement amongst many Rotarians. To help members make more sense of the theme Barry told us of a meeting with a District Governor from Sweden who had translated the theme into Swedish and back into English after which it reads Listen to Your Heart to Help Others – a theme which the members of the Club can certainly relate to.
Rotary International President Banerjee is not a fan of change for its own sake and he is encouraging Clubs to continue with their long established programmes but to be conscious of the ways in which a little more can be done to help those causes which we support – as with Tettenhall’s commitment to raise an additional £10,000 to support the new Rotary Suite at Compton Hospice.
It was clear from District Governor Barry’s presentation that he does not take a one size fits all approach to matters and that his views of Rotary are very much in step with the members of the Tettenhall Club and we look forward to supporting him in the coming year.