Waitakere City Rotary Club: The Fourth Decade
President: Kerry McMillan
Rotary Theme: Create Awareness… Take Action
Club Service:
- Held 30th Anniversary celebration with Auckland Harbour boat trip.
- Joint meeting with Lions Club.
- Joint Henderson Club Meeting
- Held a Club Forum to discuss management, fellowship proposals, membership and future events.
- Club attended theatre.
- Held partners night celebrating older members contribution to the Club.
- Big turnout to support Kumeu Club at film evening.
- Held Fellowship BBQ’s at Monique’s and Colin’s
- Increased membership to 30 members
- Supported District Membership Drive with approx. 12 couples attending.
- District Conference attended by three couples.
- Continued with Membership Drive after the ‘awareness’ dinner.
- Formed a new PROBUS club – Kon Kuiper.
Community:
- Funds provided for Bethells Beach Surf Life Saving Patrol surf boat.
- Commissioned new surf boat and helped Club with their recruitment drive as part of Water Safety Initiative and Rotary promotion at Westfield Shopping Mall, Henderson.
- Presentation of computers to Rutherford preschool and Salvation Army.
- Two tree planting sessions with Trees for Survival were held with participating schools at sites selected by ARC.
- Pomaria School was approached and are prepared to accept a growing unit. A sponsor has been found – however more funding is required to construct a security fence around the unit before a start can be made.
- Finished Peace Garden project and Don Page Memorial. Presented to Mayor Bob Harvey by PP Bob Benzie who organised the event. Maintenance was carried out by Jim Wakeling.
- Graeme Nicholson’s Mangere Marae project
- Supported Yugoslav dance troupe
Youth:
- Awarding of bursary scholarship to Rebecca O’Gorman.
- Organised funding for Waitakere City Improving Schools programme by providing urgently needed car. Funds obtained from CARE Foundation.
- Received two visits from Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars.
- Arranged funding via CARE Trust for St Johns initiative to train teachers and provide First Aid Kit for Ranui School – publicity received in local paper.
- Assist Waitakere City Council initiative to promote literacy programme
- Presented old DARE van to Youth In Search Group
- Presented Waitakere College with funds for new cricket pitch
- Held ROTARY STOP
- Provided 50% funding for Genesis School of Science
- Birdwood School – provided funds via various trusts for reading assistance programme, music programme and Police
- sanctioned Warrior Kids Programme.
- In conjunction with Henderson Club provided funding for Outward Bound participant.
- Tertiary Scholarships were awarded to three senior Waitakere College students.
- Tertiary Scholarship awarded
- Challenge 2001 supported
- Youth Exchange to Australia supported
- Arranged funding to send Snr. Sgt Rod Bell to Adelaide Youth Summit
Vocational:
- Improved members knowledge of Rotary
- Vocational – Trip to Vodafone
- RYLA participant supported
- Vocational – Youth Summit – organised for District by our Club
Sunshine Fund:
- Presented emergency funding for crippled solo mother to send child to drama school.
- Donated Sergeant Session funds to Denise Reid of Swanson to establish ‘food for less’ training sessions.
Fundraiser:
- Golf Under the Stars fundraiser for the Don Page Memorial Trust and youth projects.
Interestingly enough International isn’t included in the above list although Kerry certainly made up for this omission in future years!
President: Ken Dixon
Rotary Theme: Mankind Is Our Business
President: Darcy Haliday
Rotary Theme: Sow the Seeds of Love
President: John Ritchie
Rotary Theme: Lend a Hand
This was the year that John Ritchie, Kerry McMillan and Bob Benzie brought the AASBD Soapbox Derby to West Auckland.
The race turned out to be not only a real winner with the local children but also a very, very good fundraiser.
Half of the funds raised went to the new West Auckland Hospice and the remainder went into our various Rotary community projects – including Truancy Services being given a car.
Our major fundraiser was the 1st Annual Soapbox Derby in March 2004
President: Derek Gee
Rotary Theme: Celebrate Rotary
February 2005 was the Rotary Centenial Birthday. To honour this our Club started preparing for this in the 2003 to 2004 year with a large donation to the new West Auckland Hospice.
This year, 2004 to 2005, a second equally large donation was also given to the West Auckland Hospice www.wah.org.nz as our Centenial Year project.
In April 2005 Waitakere City Rotary ran the RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) camp on behalf of District 9910
Our major fundraiser was the 2nd Annual Soapbox Derby in March 2005
President: Monique Mataga
Rotary Theme: Service Above Self
Much of the content was reused when the website was redesigned for expansion reasons in 2010.
Our major fundraiser was the 3rd Annual Soapbox Derby in March 2006
President: Jim Annison
Rotary Theme: Lead the Way
Three more cars followed in the next few years and the photo at left shows all five with the Truancy team.
Jim tells me that in amongst the regular Rotary projects this was a great fellowship year with several trips to the Westwind Theatre in Avondale.
President: Domenic Wood
Rotary Theme: Rotary Shares
Individual Rotary Clubs are part of a really, really big organization and joint Club meetings and Conferences are a great way to see what others are doing and to forge the bonds between us.
Visiting other organizations and meeting with others in our community also help define our own role and see where the needs are greatest.
- Waitakere hosted a Paul Harris dinner for the Area 6 (West Auckland Clubs) at the Showgrounds. Four Paul Harris awards were awarded – one of them to Past World Rotary President Bill Boyd
- We visited at least 4 clubs during the year – Henderson, New Lynn, Northcote and Takapuna when the Korean RI president visited.
- Domenic attended the District Conference in NZ.
- Jack and Lucy attended the RI conference in the States.
- We hosted a business dinner and Graham Douglas was the key note speaker
- We were also involved in the “Dragons Den” supplying seed funding for the Youth Enterprise Scheme and Domenic attended the Waitakere Enterprise dinner where the winners of YES were announced
Our major fundraiser was the 5th Annual Soapbox Derby in March 2008
President: Terry Hodges
Rotary Theme: Make Dreams Real
Over the next three years small teams of Rotarians went across to the island armed with materials and worked with the islanders to finish it. June 2009 saw its completion.
An update to this was that 2 weeks prior to the completion trip a massive earthquake damaged the village water supply and school so two more trips followed to fix these.
Our major fundraiser was the 6th Annual Soapbox Derby in March 2009
President: Terry Hodges /
Craiger Hargesheimer
Rotary Theme: The Future Of Rotary Is In Your Hands
West Harbour Rotary called on Henderson Rotary and ourselves to give them a hand to run it… so we did.
During the year we had several joint club meetings with others out here in the west and also helped out at the Henderson Rotary Santa Parade.
Our major fundraiser was the 7th Annual Soapbox Derby in March 2010
