It was a busy night with guests from the Rotary Club of Somerville, Howick Coastguard, Shirley and Daron Curtiss, and Barbara and Meryl. Ethan McCormick was our guest speaker.
Steven Naude from the Rotary Club of Somerville said a few words and thanked us for the welcome. We agreed that hopefully we can have more joint meetings. Being able to access quality speakers in this way benefits both clubs and I look forward to joining one of their meetings.
Rob is home and recovering well and also passed on his welcome to the Somerville Club.
The single one minute speaker was Glenice who covered two topics. The Mangemangeroa planting day was a success on Saturday and the Car Rally on Sunday had six vehicles participating and was a great fun event. Thank you to Glenice and Malcolm for organising the day.
Malcolm thanked Howick Coastguard for their work in our community and we presented them with a cheque for $10,000. These funds will be used to update their radio equipment on the boat. Malcolm shared that to date our club has raised $80,000 for the Howick Coast guard.
Madeleine introduced Ethan McCormick who is no stranger to our club. He is a past winner of the Brian Hanlon Speech contest and the inaugral winner of the Rotary Club of Howick Environment award at Howick College. He has also been very involved at Mangemangeroa establishing a pest eradication programme.
Ethan has recently travelled to Antartica with a sponsored trip on a Heritage Expedition cruise with 15 other young, like minded people. His expedition took him through the sub-antartic islands and down to the Ross Sea. Here he was able to witness the abundant wildlife, visist huts and relics from expeditions over 100 years ago and see the effects of climate change on the area first hand.
The variety of penguins and whales he saw was amazing but tempered with the observation that some of these species will disappear in the next 30 years without intervention.
Ethan continues to study for his Masters degree at Auckland University and I am sure he will go on to working in the environment and do his part to make a difference.
Only the Have a Go raffle was drawn and the winners were:
1st: Geoff Thompson 2nd: Maureen Owen
Our next meeting will be on 24 June and is our changeover night. Please email Glenice at glenice.yeoman@gmail.com to confirm your attendance or pass on your apologies. As usual this will be a night celebrating the previous year and a chance to welcome in the new Board.
Thank you all for attending. I hope you enjoyed an interesting evening.
Mike Stanghan
President Elect.
