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If opportunity does not knock, build a door for it!
Eden Skipper, who joined our Club in 2020, stepped in at short notice last week to be our speaker.
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Eden shared his life journey to date, where he comes from and how he became a Rotarian.
A special night was held on Wednesday 7 July 2021 with our annual Club changeover held at the Wellington Club on The Terrace.
President Mike Selvadurai hands over the chains to incoming President Marc Rands for the 2021-22 Rotary year.
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Three moving stories of adversity overcome were presented at the Rotary Club of Port Nicholson’s Goalsetter Awards ceremony held in Parliament’s Banquet Hall on Wednesday 10 March, 2021.
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A DASH ACROSS THE COUNTRY
July 8 2020
Our ambulance is on the way to Samoa. Driver Darryl and navigator Rick took the Samoa bound ambulance on the first leg of its trip to Apia. What was expected to be an uneventful and well-planned drive through to Auckland on Thursday turned out to be a series of small challenges.
The Rotary Club of Port Nicholson continues to support The House of Grace Trust which provides a home for pregnant young teens to live, learn, prepare for childbirth and make plans for their future. Club members provided gifts for young Mums, their babies, pantry supplies and for the live-in supervisors. President, David Shackleton and Past President Bev Wells were delighted to deliver these items to the hard-working staff and volunteers of the House. Members of the Trust are very appreciative of Rotary’s generosity which they said provides a positive impact on young Mums and their babies.
Earlier in the year the club provided $10,000 towards their Warm Home Project to re-roof and insulate the house situated in the greater Wellington region. We are proud to have a long association with the House of Grace Trust providing support for this much-needed initiative.
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Paediatric Surgeon Brendon Bowkett spoke to our club about the work he and his colleagues have been achieving in Timor with the Rotary Oceanic Medical Aid for Children program. ROMAC’s aim is to provide specialist treatment for children from developing countries, in the form of life saving and/or dignity restoring surgery not accessible to them in their home country, providing hope and restoring dignity.
While Dr Brendon is based at Wellington Hospital, he has travelled to Timor a number of times, transforming the lives of many families who otherwise would be suffering from the emotional and mental stress of having a child with major medical complications. He described his work and the impacts it has, allowing children to return to or start school. The team perform six to eight weeks worth of surgeries in a week, in conditions and with equipment of a much lower calibre than they are used to in New Zealand.
He was incredibly humble, telling us “we’re just doing our jobs, the miracle is that we get support from Rotary to do this”. He praised and honoured his colleagues for their contribution to the success in Timor.
Nurse Grace supported staff who don’t usually work with children to better understand and work with young patients in an adult ward. Dr Brendon showed us a picture of Grace blowing bubbles in an outpatient clinic, and talked about the importance of play therapy when working with children.
Nurse Fiona supported the surgeons in theatre. Her efforts in ensuring the swab count was correct at the end of surgery was very challenging, but getting this right can be life saving. If the swab count is wrong, the surgery itself is a waste of time. Fiona likely saved a child’s life when she informed surgeons there was a swab missing. She managed this without the usual methods she would be able to employ in NZ. Without X-ray abilities and the streamlining of processes, Fiona had to manually account for all swabs, with the added challenge of them being used by others in theatre, including the anaesthetist!
Not only are the ROMAC team helping the children, they are also passing valuable knowledge and skills on to the Timorese medical staff. With the support of ROMAC, standards of hospital cleanliness and care are improving with every visit, and the Timorese staff are empowered to take charge of patient treatment plans and outcomes.
Dr Brendon told us that the connections between communities is one of the most important outcomes of his work. He shared stories of the Timorese people; their humour, their strength, and their resourcefulness. He repeatedly highlighted the support of Rotary in his being able to contribute to peoples’ lives in Timor. When David thanked Dr Brendon and his team, he said it is an honour and a privilege for our club to be able to support their team in their work. And he’s right. What incredible and life changing work to support!
Most people live and die not far from where they are born. So globally immigration is a distinctly minority experience, even if it doesn’t feel that way in NZ. NZ was the last major land mass on earth that was settled, perhaps less than 1000 years ago. Those of us without Maori ancestry trace the arrival of our families to some time up to perhaps 200 years ago. The discussion of NZ as a nation of immigrants is however a distraction from serious consideration about the role of immigration policy in NZ today.
As an island country, a long way from anywhere, we don’t have much of a problem with immigration. Successive governments have promoted immigration as it assists the economic performance of NZ and lifts the living standard. The target for immigration is currently about 45,000 per annum - around 1% or our population. Most countries don’t want or get that many immigrants. But we are also unusual in how
many of our people have left – around 850,000 in the last 40 years. A hundred years ago the living standard in NZ was as high as anywhere in the world. These days, depending on how you measure these things we rank about 35th. When economic performance is analysed (what a country manages to produce with the inputs it uses) we have ranked since 1970 as the second slowest productivity growth rate of any of the member countries of the OECD.
Rapid population growth means a lot of investment spending has to take place on roads, schools, houses, offices and shops. Those demands put an upwards pressure on interest rates and the exchange rate. NZ is almost totally reliant, in its foreign trade, on what able people can do with a fixed quantity of natural resources. With population growth that has been so fast we have slowly been slipping down the league tables. For decades people have discussed developed industries that weren’t simply reliant on natural resources and have drafted strategies and even offered subsidies. However even today 85 per cent of our exports rely on natural resources.
The problem appears to be that as communication technology has developed personal networks and connections seem to matter more than ever. The so called “value chains” are a big part of modern manufacturing, with componentry manufactured in several different countries and the final product assembled in yet another. When you are the last bus stop before Antarctica your firms aren’t going to be part of many chains. People coming in as immigrants may be able to ease that pressure but they will quite reasonably expect decent housing, entertainment and travel etc. Michael has been arguing for some time that the residence approval target should be cut from around 45,000 to around 10,000-10,500 per annum. This will mean that the population will be growing much more slowly, general spending levels will drop and specifically fewer houses will be required and fewer workers will be required in that and related sectors. This will mean that more workers will be available in other sectors with the view to providing an economy that is more oriented to selling goods to and in competition with the rest of the world.
District Changeover.
A good crowd of some 180 Rotarians gathered in the Palmerston North Fire Station - no fires or callouts were observed or caused during our presence. Four members of RCPN attended.
The District SGM passed the motion to have a financial review of the District accounts rather than the employment of an auditor. This was the only change to the District Constitution.
For Changeover, Martin Garcia gave a broad review of his year and its highlights. District PHFs were awarded to Deb Gimblett, Graeme Blick, Adrienne Murray, and Richard Stephen for long periods of special service.
The new DG Mitchell Brown enhanced his arrival on the scene with a fantastic and youthful dance troupe performance. He introduced his team of Assistant Governors. We will continue to have John Mohi as our AG ( he is also now District Governor Nominee [i.e. DG for 2019-2020]). Lisa King will be an AG but in a different cluster of clubs. Howard continues to be one of the 2 District Trustees.
The DG will not be starting club visits until September so clubs have time to get started for the year. Visit to RCPN will be on 21 February 2018.
The tradition of awarding a District PHF to the previous DGs partner was observed and awarded to Denise Garcia.
Last Sunday, the 30th of June, the Interact club of Port Nicholson volunteered at Zealandia. The group, about 15 of us, spent three hours in the beautiful park learning about the conservation work they do to support New Zealand native plants and birds. After a quick and slightly challenging walk up to our site the team excitedly got to work cutting down blackberry bushes. We used "Cut and Paste" a special paste developed to stop the blackberry regrowing and which will give the native plants that will be planted there soon more room to grow. It was great exercise and despite the cold and slightly drizzly weather the day was a roaring success.
