My year as club President has been a year of learning, collaborating, understanding and experiencing with You as club members and Rotary as an organisation.
As members of our club YOU have made my year as president a worthwhile and enjoyable experience, thank you..
I am enthusiastic about our club's future as part of the regionalisation in 2024/2025.
Our club changeover precedes the district changeover on 29/6 at Wentworthville Leagues Club 5 pm until 6 pm. Let our club celebrate…
Have you registered for the District Changeover? Click on the link
This Week's Meeting Is All About Rotary Youth Exchange
I don't know how much you know about Rotary Youth Exchange, but this meeting will be a great chance for you to find out. Personally, I have hosted students from France, Brazil, Chile, Switzerland and Italy. Five with Rotary Youth Exchange and two with AFS. It is a very rewarding experience and you make lifelong friendships with both the students and their families. You don't have to be a family to host, single people can do it too, so can grandparents - as long as you are prepared to think young.
This week, we are hoping that PDG Susan Wakefield will speak to us about Youth Exchange. However, as she has not been very well, she will be assisted by Katie Graham, who is a past exchange student and a member of the Youth Exchange Committee. So get your questions ready, it will be a great opportunity to learn more about Youth Exchange.
Katie went on Rotary Youth Exchange in 2012 to Denmark sponsored by North Rocks Rotary Club.
After completeing a Bachelor of Communications, and beginning her career in marketing at a construction firm, she joined the Discrict 9685 Youth Exchange Committee five years ago as Marketing Officer and a Zone Coordinator for the North Shore and Beaches.
Rotary Fellowships Month this June is a great time to reflect on your hobbies, interests, or profession and connect with a fellowship. Or consider forming your own! Rotary Fellowships are international, independently organized groups of people who have a common interest or profession. They host activities and networking events, and they offer professional development opportunities virtually and around the world. With more than 100 officially recognized fellowships, you have so many ways to connect and build community with new friends throughout the Rotary world. View the full list of Rotary Fellowships to find one that fits your interests or write to rotaryfellowships@rotary.org if you have an idea for a new fellowship.
The Science Experience is a fun 1, 2 or 3 days of science activities for Year 9 and 10 students in 2024 program year.
Each program is designed to provide students who have an interest in science with an opportunity to engage in a wide range of fascinating science activities under the guidance of scientists who love their work.
The program takes place in over thirty universities and tertiary institutions throughout Australia, within many different laboratories and lecture theatres. Participants perform experiments in the laboratories, meet and hear senior lecturers in the lecture theatres, attend site visits and walk around and experience what it is like to be on the campus of a university or tertiary institution. More than 85,000 students have taken this rare opportunity, up to date.
The program also provides information about further studies in science, technology and engineering. It highlights the wide range of careers that allow students to pursue their interest and abilities in the sciences.
One aspect of the program often commented on by participants is the opportunity to meet and share ideas with students from different schools.
Universities & Tertiary Institutions
Program Dates
Best Apply Before
Places Remaining
University of New England
9 - 11 July 2024
20 May 2024
15
University of Technology Sydney
24 - 26 September 2024
25August 2024
4
Macquarie University
9 - 11 October 2024
10th September 2024
30
REGISTRATION FEE The full fee to register and attend a 3-day program is $210 (incl. gst)
ROTARY SPONSORSHIP As this is a program initiated supported and promoted by Rotary clubs since its beginnings in 1990, most Rotary clubs are willing to sponsor one or more students for full or part of the registration fee.
Moises Bakomeza – one of our proud students
The Rotary E-Club has supported at least one student every year.
Let’s start with something uncontroversial: good decisions start with good information. Managing your finances starts with gathering information in a budget. If you’re playing a sport you seek out feedback from a coach. Nutritional information on food packages makes it easier to decide what to eat. But there is one area of life where the link between good information and good decisions has broken down: climate change.
There are many theories as to why this is the case. Some blame the melodramatic messaging of climate campaigners. Some say our political system isn’t set up to address a truly global challenge. Some even say the information basis for making decisions to address climate change is flawed, that there is still a lack of scientific evidence that global warming is created by human activity, or that the rapidly changing climate is not going to do untold damage.
The doubts cast on the warning of climate scientists are demonstrably false, but their persistence is evidence of a serious problem. If the scientific consensus on global heating is as clear as anything in science can ever be – and it is – why do so many people still feel compelled to minimise, delay, nitpick and quibble?
The problem is not the quality of scientific information itself, it’s the inability of the media to convey the level of certainty and the gravity of the problem. It is a failure of journalists and journalism, of those who see climate stories as a turn-off; of those who confuse impartiality with repeating false claims. It’s a failure fuelled by cynical social media companies that use algorithms to drive division and make money out of muddying the waters.
To put it simply, we are stuck because our flawed information ecosystem has so far proved unable to communicate a clear and urgent message based on science.
We need to build a better form of media, a trusted source that communicates complexity to a wide audience. The Conversation was created to do just that. We only publish academic experts who are writing in their area of expertise. We team them with professional journalists who are committed to upholding
high ethical stands, and who also know how to communicate effectively to a wide audience.
We work with colleagues across the media and in libraries and schools and government to ensure that students and citizens have access to the most up to date information presented in a way that is easy to understand. One example: we recently published an article by the scientist and IPCC author Joëlle Gergis. She wrote that if current policies are continued, with no increase in ambition, there is a 90% chance that the Earth will warm between 2.3°C and 4.5°C, with a best estimate of 3.5°C. She concluded that, despite what you hear on the news, the scientific reality is that the planet is still on track for catastrophic levels of warming and an “intergenerational crime against humanity.”
For there to be any hope policy-makers will make better decisions, we first need to arm them with reliable information from bona fide experts. And to do that, we need your help.
The Conversation exists to provide the vital information we need to make better decisions, for free, for whoever needs it. You can help us by making a donation of whatever you can afford so we can ensure that everyone has access to the information they need to make better decisions.
Environment report 2023/24
The environment team, Lucy Hob-Good Brown, Doug Vincent, Ross Johnson and Judy Charnaud, have been busy this Rotary year pursuing our environmental plan; to raise awareness of the natural environment and reduce the causes and impacts of environmental degradation by implementing easily achievable environmental targets and encouraging all members, their family and friends to engage in environmentally friendly behaviours.
To this end we have:
1. Planted over 500 trees in conjunction with Rotary-Adopt-a-Tree. Money was donated in the memory of Maurie Schockman and the trees were planted on the boundaries of the Western Sydney Airport.
2. Another tree planting is in the planning stages. Marilyn Mercer has been working with the Myall Koala and Environment group in Tea Gardens regarding a tree planting in Dudley’s name, plus a “buddy bench” for quiet contemplation along the walkway where the trees will be planted. Donations from our club members are currently coming in for this project.
3. Our club was awarded the Gold Environment Award at the beginning of this Rotary term, having previously attained Bronze and Silver. This award is not easy to come by, one of the reasons our club received it is due to the fifteen Aid projects we run globally through RAWCS, the majority of these projects include environmental aspects.
4. Rotarians for Bees is a group of Rotarians from a variety of Rotary Clubs who are very concerned about the dangerous decline in bee and other pollinator populations worldwide and are taking action to help reverse this trend. Our club has three members in this group, one Lucy Hobgood brown is on the executive committee. Several members include support for bees in their overseas projects in the Congo, Timor leste and Kenya.
5. End Plastic Soup. Our club has recently supported the implementation of the Oceania Chapter of End Plastic Soup. See https://endplasticsoup.org/ , (Areas, Oceania), for an article on cleaning up plastic in Oecusse, Timor leste.
Our Board has set up the bank account for the Oceania Chapter, this has three paid up members with many more clubs from across the region expressing their interest in joining after attending the Singapore Convention.
6. Eco Poles. We have settled on the design of the pole and its Bee Hotel. The Northern Beaches Council is supportive of this project so through them and the Coastal Environment Centre we will have access to schools on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. A local Men’s Shed has offered to build the hotels and poles for us. It is intended to install these poles in local parks, business centres and schools. Once the first pole has been installed other club members who wish to can have Eco Poles installed in their communities. The full costing for this will be under $150 dollars.
7. Making our meetings carbon neutral. A ZOOM meeting produces 2 grms of CO2 per person per hour, obviously due to the use of electricity. General calculation for our club - 20 people per meeting, 24 times a year = 960 grms, almost 1kg of CO2 per year for the club.
According to the carbon calculator, (Calculate your Carbon Emissions, Carbon Positive Australia), our club should plant .017 trees per year to offset this! Our Environment Committee decided that we would be well in front if we planted a tree a year, which we will do via Rotary-Adopt-A-Tree.
8. Individual Activities. Members are encouraged to carry out environmentally friendly activities on a regular basis, appropriate articles are posted in our fortnightly newsletter, The Phoenix, giving members ideas of how they can easily reduce their carbon footprint, one step at a time.
‘Needed to act yesterday’: Can a plastic tax stop Australia’s waste tsunami? KAT WONG JANUARY 12, 2024
SOURCE: UNSPLASH/ NAJA BERTOLT JENSEN Australians know life in plastic is not fantastic but every year the nation continues to use more, prompting researchers to look to Europe for ways to cut down.
The population already consumes 3.8 million tonnes of plastic every year, and that number is expected to more than double to nearly 10 million tonnes by 2050.
Though recycling has long been touted as a potential solution, less than a fifth of plastic waste is recovered through recycling, composting or other methods.
Australia Institute’s circular economy and waste program director Nina Gbor says drastic change is needed for the nation to meet its goal of recovering 70% of all plastic packaging by 2025.
“Australia is facing a growing tsunami of plastic waste,” Gbor said.
“The government needed to act yesterday and should start by following the EU’s lead.”
Research from the institute has found that a tax on plastic packaging, similar to those implemented in the European Union, could solve the nation’s waste issue while also raising billions.
In 2021, the EU introduced a levy requiring member nations to pay about $1300 for every tonne of plastic packaging waste that was not recycled. If the Australian government introduced a similar user-pays tax on businesses that import or manufacture plastic packaging, it could raise $1.46 billion and reduce plastic waste, the institute says.
Though 85% of Australians polled by the institute backed measures that would crack down on plastic like legislated waste reduction targets for producers, suppliers and retailers, it is unclear if a tax would receive the same support.
But either way, Gbor says Australia can no longer rely on recycling schemes as the main solution.
“If recycling was the solution to the plastic waste crisis, it would have been solved by now,” she said.
“Instead, it just encourages the production and consumption of even more waste that is choking our landfill and oceans.
“We know that Australians support tougher action to curb plastic waste and that taxes and schemes requiring producers to fund the collection and recycling of plastic they produce are working overseas.” This article was first published by AAP.
Gov’t grant boosts services at Junction 142 - from the Rotary Club of Upper Blue Mountains
From the newsletter of the Rotary Club of Upper Blue Mountains
A recent $50,000 Community Grant from the NSW government has been of great assistance to Junction 142, the Katoomba-based community service provider. Junction 142 provides services to homeless, and those in need, and in recent months has been able to expand its services for the first post-Covid. Manager Stephen Bradley says: “Our expansion has also been due to great community support and consistant fundraising.” “This scenario has led to an expansion of the free shower and laundry service from three to four days per week, now including Tuesdays, which coincides with Junction 142’s Open Table food services. “The Open Table continues to provide a hot breakfast and food hamper service on Tuesdays and Thursdays, supporting approximately 35 people at each sitting. It also acts as an important social hub where people can meet, socialise, and exchange information. “A major development for Junction 142 has been our hosting of the Link Wentworth organised Community Hub, which takes place in the Junction 142 Church, the first Tuesday of every month.
We (The Rotary E Club of greater Sydney) are constructing a storage cabinet to storing chairs of when not in use. Ed. I think the 'We' is Lucian Keegal.
Well, this is the last edition of the Phoenix that I will be producing. Penny Vos will be taking over in the next Rotary year and I wish her well in her endeavours to produce an interesting and informative newsletter. It is not an easy task. The Bulletin program in Clubrunner (the product this club uses to produce the Phoenix) is not an easy program to learn to use. It is not at all intuitive, its slow, clunky, definitely not 'what you see is what you get', text and images move all over the place, it's hard to format, and frankly, I don't know why anyone would want to use it. There are much better publishing programs available. Well, that's my little rant. Good luck Penny. I'd use a different program.
And now its time to say goodbye to those of you in the E-Club, because as of the end of this month, I will be transferring back to a land-based club. Now that I don't live in the country anymore, and don't have to dodge kangaroo's, wombats or black ice at night when driving home from Rotary, I think I would like to go back to helping with Bunnings BBQ's, and other land based club activities. Also, having been club secretary for the past two years, it will be nice not to take on any official roles for a while. I know that won't last long, I can't help myself but be involved. Best wishes to Tony Miller, who is taking on the role of Club Secretary, he will be on a steep learning curve. (I've done the job in three different clubs about 10 times, but every club does it a bit differently.)
Hopefully, I can stay on as a Friend of the E-Club and join you in meetings from time to time.' So bye for now,
Ian Stuart from Turramurra Rotary Club is the presenter of Rotary Matters on community radio station Triple H 101.1 every Friday at 3.00pm. Podcasts of each week’s program can be found on the Rotary Matters Australia Facebook page soon after the program goes to air. Ian reminds us to be in touch with him if our club has any interesting stories to share on Rotary Matters.