Club News

The Rotary Club of Ryde Charity Golf Day is on again at Oatlands Golf Club on Friday 25 February 2011.  Another huge day of fun, fundraising and friendly competition is planned.

We are looking for players, teams and sponsors.  Please contact Mick Nelson for full details and bookings on 0428 645 128.

At a recent club meeting, fellow Rotarian Stefan Sojka announced the official "go-live" of the Rotary Club of Ryde Website.  The site was produced during the 2009-2010 club year, under the presidency of Rtn Bob Carroll, so Stefan presented him with a memento, a framed home page screen shot print of the site, captured before the presidential change-over.  Current President Allen Horrell (center) officiated the meeting, and oversaw the launch, as well as Bob's presentation. 

Shelterbox is one of the best ways that you can help with the Pakistan Floods

Web: www.shelterboxaustralia.com.au

Download PDF file here

Circus Quirkus is on again!

The beneficiaries of the proceeds raised by the Club from hosting this event will include construction of a School in Borjegai – Afghanistan & Other Rotary Projects.

Show Date:
Sunday 12 September 2010

Show Times:
11.00am & 2.00pm

Venue:
Sydney Convention Centre
Bayside Auditorium
Darling Harbour

More information: http://www.circusquirkus.com/circus-show-ryde-96362635.htm

Bayside Info and Map: http://www.darlingharbour.com/index.cfm?menu_id=2994&venue_id=101

Contact @ Ryde Rotary: Graham Metcalfe: Ph: 02 9876 3128

Macquarie Uni Rotary is getting a new Rotaract Club!  This is great news, as it shows a resurgence of interest in community service among our youth.  Supported by Ryde Rotary Club and other local Clubs, the Macquarie Uni Rotaract Club is going to become an excellent vehicle for students to experience and create community service projects.

They have already achieved some excellent results with International Service in pre-launch project warm-ups; two big projects in Vanuatu and Ache.

Support our youth and their efforts by attending these upcoming events:

Trivia night
21/8 Sat 6:30pm
$20
Masonic hall Rowe St Eastwood
RSVP trivia@rotaractmq.org

Charter night
4/9 Sat 6:30pm
$60
Ryde Eastwood Leagues Club, 117 Ryedale Road, West Ryde
Buffet, beer, wine & soft drinks included
rsvp charter@rotaractmq.org 

Saturday 7 August 2010 was Graffiti Clean-Up Day again. The Rotary Club of Ryde has adopted this program from Turramurra Rotary and has received full support from the Ryde Chamber of Commerce and City of Ryde Council.

One of the most effective ways to deal with Graffiti is to clean it off as quickly as possible. We have seen a marked drop already in paint vandalism around the city since our program began.

Rotarians, led by Past President Charles Kilby, met at the old "cash for cans" collection site at 8:00am and began another great day of successful community service. See you at the next one!

In a visit to Africa’s most populous nation, Bill witnessed remarkable progress against polio, with lessons for the fight against infectious diseases worldwide.

With continued hard work and investment the world is on a path toward something pretty incredible, the eradication of polio.  In the past two decades, polio cases around the world have been reduced by 99 percent.  If we can get rid of the last one percent, polio will become the second major infectious disease, after smallpox, that has ever been completely eliminated.  There are still gaps in funding for polio eradication, and new outbreaks could reverse some of the progress made so far.  But if polio is eliminated, never again will a child be crippled by this terrible virus.

We have a chance to get there because of some great efforts, particularly by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which involves the World Health Organisation, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).  Our foundation is very involved in supporting polio immunisation campaigns and other efforts to educate parents and communities about the importance of immunisation.  We’re also supporting work to improve polio surveillance and to develop better vaccines and anti-poliovirus drugs.  

Northern India and northern Nigeria are two areas where polio continues to be a problem.

I visited northern India in May this year to see the progress there.  I was very excited to visit northern Nigeria in June, because the progress there since my last visit in February 2009 has been especially impressive.  As of 14 July, only five cases due to wild polio viruses were reported in Nigeria this year, versus hundreds last year.  I spent most of my first day in Kano, one of the northern states most vulnerable to polio.  I met with community leaders, visited a local health centre and stopped in at an informal school where students study the Koran in Arabic.

On the streets and most everywhere else we went, I noticed so many young children around.  Nigeria has more people by far than any other African country, and more than 40 percent of them are under the age of 15.  That makes polio immunisation a big challenge.  Kano had just begun a campaign to immunise more than 6 million children under the age of five.
  Part of the challenge is overcoming fear and suspicion.  In Kano in the past, false rumors linked immunisation to sterility and HIV.  Community leaders told me that because polio vaccine is free and brought to people in their homes, some people think there must be something wrong with it.

Community leaders play a critically important role in helping to overcome mistrust, and a big focus of anti-polio efforts is on informing these leaders and enlisting their support.  Another ironic thing I noticed was that because polio cases have been dramatically reduced, it’s more difficult to know whether local immunisation campaigns are reaching everyone they need to reach, particularly sub-populations that may be more at risk.  Without many actual cases, you have to rely on other ways of monitoring immunisation rates, and the different measures are sometimes quite inconsistent.  I think we need to look at how to help get more reliable data to guide our efforts and ensure they’re effective.

Also of concern is the risk that progress against polio in Kano might be undermined by the virus filtering back in from neighbouring countries and other parts of northern Nigeria.  Increasingly, the problem needs to be approached on a regional basis.  The school we visited was very interesting.  It didn’t really look like a school.  There were no classrooms, just children sitting on the street, against a wall or under a tree, holding slates with Arabic script written on them.  I asked one of the boys to recite the lesson from his slate, and he did.
  That night in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, I had dinner with government officials including the Minister of Health, Onyebuchi Chukwu.

It was interesting to learn about some of the creative approaches being used to inform Nigerians about the importance of immunisation.  Pro-immunisation messages are being embedded in the plot-lines of popular TV entertainment programs, for example.  One of Nigeria’s largest mobile phone service providers has agreed to send out about 25 million free text messages on polio and health.  The next day I had a number of meetings including a session with several state governors and one with Nigeria’s new President, Goodluck Jonathan.

Commitment from Nigeria’s leaders has been crucial in advancing the nation’s fight against polio.  

A recurring theme I picked up from the people I talked to was the importance of using what we’ve learned and accomplished in the drive against polio to fight other illnesses such as infant diarrhoea, respiratory ailments and malaria.  I do believe that polio eradication helps strengthen routine immunisation, which has the potential to save the lives of large numbers of children.  Wherever I go, I always find that saving children’s lives is a universal concern.

I was very impressed with Nigeria’s progress against polio.  I tried to encourage everyone to not let up.

Bill Gates – from http://www.thegatesnotes.com

Welcome to my fortnightly newsletter.  I am currently on university holidays, so sleeping in and relaxing have been high on my list of things to do.  Right now it is a little bit scary that I’m half-way through my exchange.  It is now 6 months until I arrive back in Australia!

My holidays haven’t been very packed but I have been up to some things.  I at least caught up on sleep for once.  Uni is starting again next week so I will have to get back into the routine of getting up at 6:30am instead of midday (lunch time).  However, it will be good to see all of my classmates again.  I have been ‘hitting the town’ with some of them during the holiday and it was good to see them outside uni.  I have received my marks from last ‘bimestre’:  Calculus I (99); Linear Alegbra (90); Informatics (95); Digital Electronics (90–100?); Basic Electricity (90–100?). For Digital Electronics and Basic Electricity I still haven’t received my results, so I put what I think I will get.

It is always a great feeling when you see the postman at the front door with a box.  My parents sent me a box full of things that every exchange student would need.  I received more Australian lapel pins to give away (I had run out), new shoes and of course TimTams.  I have found out (from talking to other exchange students) that TimTams are only sold in Australia, New Zealand and India.  They only appear in India in the speciality import shops, so they are ridiculously expensive.  Must be a good marketing opportunity for someone!

Now I am a guest member at Olimpico country club, I have been going every day, playing tennis there every afternoon.  I will start training properly soon so I can get my fitness back to where I was before the HSC.  I have also been swimming there and going to the sauna.  The sauna has been great to relax after playing or even just after a long day.

Rotary over the last few weeks has been a bit hectic.  Last weekend my Rotary Club had a party for the President’s Changeover.  It was a very grand party and nearly all of the Rotarians were there.  I received some gifts from the Club including an official football shirt of Brasil and the Brasilian flag.  I addressed the meeting by saying a few words of thanks to the current president and toasting the new president.  The picture shows me in my Australian blazer, draped in the Brasillian flag, sharing one of the toasts with the Rotarians.

Last Saturday my family had a joint birthday party for both of my host nephews who turned 7 years old.  I spent the afternoon setting up the house with balloons and making the nibbles for dinner.  I joined in with the little kids and ate lots of sugar.

On Sunday, I went to the current President’s house for a family barbeque.  It was great to be accepted into another family and be treated like a son.  After lunch, he took me to an old abandoned airport where he goes every Sunday afternoon to race remote control model cars.

The fellow racers in Maringá have built a track on the old runway.  The cars were to scale 1:10 and were incredibly fast.  The fastest car went from 0–100km/h in 1.9 seconds and had a top speed of about 120–130km/h.  The cars run on a mixture of 80% methanol and 20% nitro.  It was amazing to see the amount of tuning and fixing that went into managing the cars.  When it started raining, we all piled into the back of a Kombi van to watch the World Cup Final.

Currently there is a German Exchange Student in Maringá, who I went to the Amazon with.  We’ve caught up several times.  He will be leaving for Germany in 3 weeks and then there will just be Australians here.  It is great to catch up with other exchange students before they leave.  Even though I might never see them again, they are people I will never forget.

So 6 months to go.  It’s all downhill from here.  I hope your first 6 months without me wasn’t too hard, but I’ll be back in 6 months today!

Tchau,
James Dodd

You are invited to the 19th Community Prayer Breakfast on Friday 13 August 2010 in the Ryde Civic Hall.

The breakfast has become an annual event since the City’s Bicentenary celebrations in 1992 to celebrate the Christian faith within our community.  Our special guest speaker this year will be Most Rev. Julian Porteous DD VG, Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney.

Bishop Porteous will be speaking about the purpose of World Youth Days and both he and the young people who will accompany him will share their stories with us.  We encourage you to invite a delegation from your school, church or community group to participate and to show the strength of our Christian community.

Cost is $16.00 per person, bookings are essential.  Further information can be found at www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/prayer RSVP by Friday 6 August 2010

If you require further details please do not hesitate to contact Kellie Yelds – Community Facilities & Events Officer on 9952 8328 or via email kyelds@ryde.nsw.gov.au

The annual Rotary Club of Ryde charity golf day is on again at Oatlands Golf Club.  This big fundraiser on the Club calendar is always an event not to be missed.  We raise a lot of money for charity and have a great deal of fun doing it.

We are looking for teams and sponsors, so get in early.  For more information please contact Mick Nelson by email: micknelson1@bigpond.com