President Marcus’s Announcements

1. We will be having a Kids Fun Run with Puffing Billy and not with Thomas this year. Guest Taj has run in the Fun Run in the past. Lia, Marcus’s daughter, has been the fastest runner four times, but she is too old to compete now.
2. Youth Chair Tina will be telling us about some of the youth programs our Club runs.
3. There will be a Pride of Workmanship evening next year.
4. Our club currently has 35 members.
5. We have held two Debutante Balls with Emerald Secondary College this year, which are Rotary projects.
6. We also have Citizenship awards at ESC
7. The Primary School Speech Contest is another Rotary project.
8. Providing the brick pavers for Emerald Times Square was also a club project; the Square was built to celebrate the 100 years of Rotary in 2005.
9. The barbecue in the park off Kilvington Drive was set up by Rotary.
10. ANZAC Walk was a project we shared with the RSL.
11. These projects highlight our involvement in the local community.
12. We also have International projects.

• have all generations from sixty years of age upwards
• meet on the third Wednesday at the RSL
• the motto of Probus is the 3F’s - Friendship, Fellowship and Fun
• the Emerald club has a fourth F which is Food
• the newsletter, put out by Linda, covers all of their activities
• Covid also affected Probus and they started zoom meetings like ours
• phoned the members who didn’t have the technology
• are back meeting in person and are quite active
• their meetings also start with apologies followed by a morning tea and a speaker
• have had great speakers this year including

• a woman who did a motorbike trip through Africa solo
• Alice Anderson who runs a girl-only garage
• a Muslim woman who converted to Christianity at age 21; she spoke about Muslim women’s status in life
• a representative from Yarra trams will speak next

• have painted Easter eggs
• have had their own Emerald Royal Show which featured baked goods
• have to cater for everyone regarding their outings; they go out for lunches and carpool to places such as Bunjil Place and the Cameo so that everybody is able to attend
• had excursions into the city to go to the Treasury buildings, Lt. Lonsdale Street, Dame Nelly Melba’s etc.
• do not have a bus as that would be very expensive but they would love one andare seeking funds from local businesses
• will celebrate their 35^th birthday in May next year.

• Melways instead of Google Maps
• a physical printed calendar
• a physical tape measure
• a magnifying glass to enlarge pictures
• a separate calculator
• a camera which contained film which had to be kept out of light and taken to the chemist to be developed and collected perhaps a week or two later

Committee Reports

• The Fun Run this year will be with Puffing Billy and will take place as scheduled on 4 December
• the event has been running for 20 years as it was first started in 2002
• it has raised almost $700,000 and the money has been donated to different children’s charities over that time to improve their health
• over $1,000 has been spent on printing posters so they must go out and about and be distributed far and wide
• the areas of Ferntree Gully, Rowville and Cockatoo still need to be covered
• registration opens Friday 21 October
• Facebook posts are going out which we need to like and share.

• next market will be held on 12 November
• there will be a cooking night in the Emerald Primary School kitchen on the Thursday night before
• we will make cakes for a cake stall
• the police plan to visit again
• we hope to have the plant stall again
• we need to try to draw in more stallholders as Catherine said last week

• there is Breakfast Club at Emerald Secondary College every Tuesday and Friday mornings between 8 and 9 am. The government pays for the food that our members serve.
• Care packages for the Year 12s were delivered to them today
• this is the third year we have put care packages together
• we started the care packages during Covid isolation to let the students know they had not been forgotten and we were thinking of them
• for the Primary schools, we’ve been working in conjunction with the Emerald Men’s Shed; children need to sit outside more under Covid. We paid for the materials and the men built the furniture
• we’ve also subsidised payment for treatment of mental health issues that arose because of Covid
• the teachers at ESC started a kitchen garden and hothouse to teach how to grow, propagate and cook what the students have grown and eat it.
• Casey Cardinia provided some of the money for the garden
• we also have RYDA which stands for Rotary Youth Driver Awareness
• the decision to attend RYDA was made after a horrific accident a few years ago which took the lives of some ESC students
• the students learn what speed does etc.
• our Club defrays some of the costs
• we also provide music scholarships at the College and one for a young artist at the Emerald Arts Society

• please keep collecting stamps
• they are sold by weight. They can be the $1.10 ones, the more expensive ones and foreign stamps
• the money raised is used to pay for eye operations in other countries and for polio eradication
• our president takes the stamps to the district meetings and gives them to the district person responsible
• bottle tops are still being collected by Vicki although she hasn’t got a home for them yet but we are still collecting them
• we’ve heard a lot about technology tonight and this gives some of us the feeling that we’re losing the personal touch
• the physical card is still highly prized by the children on their birthdays
• Gayle handed out cards to the children so they could write a personal message to a friend for a birthday or just to keep in touch.

Closing Remarks: President Marcus

• acknowledged Gayle for how fabulous she was tonight in bringing the generations together
• Shalini and Dave will be celebrating their wedding anniversary on 20 October
• Citizenship awards are being held in November at the ESC
• Russ Nielsen has passed on great news about his wife Heather:
• there has been fantastic progress - the cancer from the lymph nodes can no longer be seen
• she will be going for chemotherapy at hospital eight times now instead of twelve
• the District Governor’s meeting on 27 October will discuss funding support for flooded districts
• on Wednesday 16 November we are having a cluster meeting at Ginfinity.
• the Pride of Workmanship in March next year will enable the employers to really celebrate their employees following the impacts of Covid
• the event will be held at the Puffing Billy Discovery Centre at Emerald Lake
• Hita organised the Coastrek Walk in which Emma, Sangeeta and guest Alan participated. A longer one is now being planned
• Lana and Amy are well versed in fundraising and supporting the community
• Emma has been performing in the latest production at Gemco called “Come Back for Light Refreshments after the Service.” There is a show this Saturday, 22 October.
• Thank you to the Probus ladies who attended
• It was a great night

A Thank You Note