Rotary Club of Perth - Valedictory 2010President Bill Duncan - VALEDICTORY ADDRESS: 24th June 2010
The year has flown by, and the Club has continued to flourish with increasing numbers attending the weekly Meetings at McDiarmid Park, where we are well looked after, and provided with good quality food and service. Earlier in the year, the club purchased a pull-up stand for use throughout the Silent Auction, and a new skin has been purchased to allow the stand to be used as a welcome to visiting Rotarians to our weekly meeting. You will have noticed the welcome stand at the entrance to the stadium.
We have managed to keep our membership at 59, with 2 new members, Duncan McIntosh and Julie Robertson joining us during the year, whilst we lost Peter Bing, and Alison Lowson, will become an Honorary Member with effect from 1st July. One of our well known past members Harry Ruthven, who was a previous President of the International Curling Fellowship of Rotarians, passed away earlier this year. As we did not manage to increase our membership within the 12 months to 29th February 2010, we did not qualify for the Presidential Citation. There is a new membership drive by Rotary with Central Scotland acting as a pilot, but whilst adverts are being placed in specific magazines attracting young persons, we have yet to get any leads from the central collating point.
The Club organised its now regular annual fund raisers, beginning with the Charity Fayre at the end of August. This was another very successful day on King Edward Street, with the Club running a number of the usual stands, Tombola, Produce, Books, Bottle etc., and letting out around 15 stands to local charities on a f.o.c. basis. Whilst we raised around £3.2k on the day for our Charity account, the other charities involved raised “2.7k making a total of around £6k.
This was followed by our now extremely successful Silent Auction with the proceeds this year being split 3 ways, with Macmillan Cancer Care and The Black Watch Heritage Appeal both benefiting to the tune of £8.5k, and the Rotary Charity Account receiving £6k from the total of £23k. This was another opportunity to have Rotary and the Club name highly visible through the excellent support of the Perthshire Advertiser. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those involved in this committee which puts in an enormous amount of work and many unselfish hours to make this the huge success that it has become.
This was followed by the Annual Golf day at Moncrieffe Island, courtesy of King James V1 Golf Club. The weather was very kind to us, and we managed to attract a good number of teams which resulted in us raising the great sum of £5,175. Taking all of the fundraising into consideration, this has been a fantastic year with over £33k raised, which includes numerous collections which I will mention later.
We continue to receive our fair share of local PR through both the PA and Courier newspapers, and our excellent website carries most of the updates, photography, and any information that we want to post for external reading. We also had an article produced in both local newspapers highlighting the End Polio Now campaign.
The Community & Vocational Service Committee, had a successful Slim which was originally supposed to raise funds, but did reduce the waistline of a number of our members including the Convenor and myself. The Cairncross Trophy was presented during this Rotary Year to Ken Drummond who has been involved with Youth Football in Perth, predominantly Letham Amateurs, for the last 50 years. A separate group was set up to start a new project with Fairview Additional Support Needs School, where we have started to create a Sensory Garden from scratch, and the initial land clearance and building of stone walls has taken place, with planting due to take place shortly. We have been successful in applying for District Simplified Grant of £650 to assist with the phase two of the project. We also received press coverage, by planting saplings gifted by Dobbies Garden Centre, at Fairview School as part of the National Tree Week.
I was pleased to be able to arrange a couple of joint events with the other two local Rotary Clubs over my year in office, and the Thanks for Life collections at Tesco stores in town raised just short of £1,000, with our £525 at the Crieff Road store representing a good proportion of the collection. We did hope to be able to play a part in the Perth 800 celebrations, but although we put forward a major project which would have required an enormous level of support from all three clubs, this did not receive any financial backing which made the project non viable. However, at the Joint Rotary Meeting of all three local Rotary Clubs, at the International Curling Fellowship of Rotarians – 20th World Rotary Curling Championships held at Dewars Centre on 1st April, we had 206 attendees sit down to Dinner, which must be the largest Rotary Club meeting that we have been involved with, at least during my 20 years in the Club. The speakers were Gordon Bannerman from the PA, and David Hay, coach to the GB Men’s Olympic Curling team. The District Governor and his wife Daphne were guests of the three local clubs, and we had guests attending from Canada, USA, England and Scotland.
The week of good curling, fun and fellowship was organised under the auspices of the Rotary Club of Perth, and a committee comprising all but two members of this club along with Stewart Cameron of Perth St. Johns, and Jill McEwan wife of our Rotarian John McEwan who took on board the organising of the partner’s programme. Thanks to Hamish as Chair of the Committee, the other committee members, and all of the club members who helped out throughout the week either by driving, home hosting or coming along and watching the competition.
I should also mention that the club’s curling team of Alay Milne, Russell McCabe, Hamish Milne and Mike Hope, who won the Rotary Scottish Championship – The Rams Head, and Ian MacLean who was runner-up in the Harry Rankin Fishing Trophy.
Mike Hope organised a few collecting days before Christmas at Dobbies Garden Centre for our Charity account, raising the fabulous sum of £2,030 followed by a further weekend at Dobbies collecting £2,063 for Shelterboxes for the Haiti Disaster. We managed to raise sufficient monies to send 7 Shelterboxes at that time. It was very useful to have a Shelterbox at the venue to allow people to see just what we were collecting for.
International saw us continue to support Grace Njoko, and as mentioned above we have supported the Shelterbox campaigns, along with sending funds to pay for life straws. Ian MacLean arranged the sending of 75 shoeboxes 50 filled by Auchtergaven School and 25 by Scotia Glass in Inveralmond Estate, plus 47 filled by Rotarians.
Entertainment saw a number of the regular events take place including a theatre outing, snooker & pool night, plus visits to Stanley Mills and the Guide Dog Centre in Forfar. Unfortunately, due to the inclement weather, the annual golf outing between Xmas and New Year had to be cancelled as the course was covered in snow, and the proposed Scottish Night was cancelled due to lack of support.
Fellowship continued to prosper with over 20 successful Fellowship Dinners, plus an organised trip to Orkney. Later this summer the trip is to Krakow in Poland. It would be remiss of me not to mention the success of our Gavel Challenge team who have reached the final, and await Thurso there. And what about the Safari Supper – what a great night with thanks to the McEwans and Ritchies for looking after all 40 attendees, and thanks also to those who prepared the main courses
Over the last few weeks, our Youth Activities Committee, organised the annual young chef competition at Perth High School, and the Creative Writing Competition saw three groups of young people from the local senior schools attend last week’s meeting. The Club will once again be sending two boys to the RYLA Camp at Nethy Bridge.
Over the year we have had our mix of speakers on a range of subjects, with a few charity appeals, but in the main, we have heard from some very interesting speakers, raising environmental and business issues, with others taking us on lifetime journeys, and journeys of a lifetime. I am pleased that throughout the year, we were able to make a number of substantial donations to a broad selection of local, national and international charities.
Finally, can I thank all of those members who have served on Council for their pearls of wisdom, the convenors who have delivered their programme of events, to the Treasurer Euan, for keeping our funds in order, and to Charles for his support and standing in when necessary. And last but by no means last, that leaves the man who keeps the club functioning on a day to day basis, our club secretary Robbie Singer – many thanks for all of your support, and a job very well done again!!!!!