RCPN Bulletin April 20 2025 (Apr 19, 2025)

Club News

April 20 2025

To ensure your content is included in the next bulletin, please send it to

rcpnbulletin@gmail.com by midnight on THURSDAY

Fortnightly Bulletin

Please note there will be no bulletin next week as I will be away, and apologies that there was no bulletin last week.

This week's speaker

Erika Butters

Founder and CEO Volition

Volition is a company that builds the decision-making capability of disabled people and their supporters through:

Education
Smart and simple resources
The Volition app - an accessible multi-media app that empowers disabled people to collaborate with their supporters and direct their own decisions, services and lives.

Desk- Hadleigh Petherick

Greeter-Darryl Ross

Kaikohau- Everard Aspell

Opening Thought-

Hayley Burns

Introduction Richard Brodie

Thanking- Brad Weekly

Sharing - Steve Lawton

Closing thought-Jeff Lee

Club report -Lou Bray-Burns

Can you help?

"The Sunday Waitangi market carpark is a good fundraiser for the Club and we are now doing around twice as many Sundays as a year ago. This is because RCPN has a reputation for service and reliability. We are the first group the WCC thinks of when another community has pulled out of their Sunday shift and they need a 'step-in'.

I am so grateful for the core group of members who have been supporting our carpark rosters, but we are seeking more people who can help. Because of the growth of this initiative, we are starting to struggle and we are very reliant on a small group of members. In some cases, this means the same people are helping two or three Sundays in succession and doing multiple shifts.

We seek more members who can commit to the occasional Sunday. Helping out is enjoyable as we are outside, get to talk to many people and make good money for the Club.

As Rotarians, we are putting ourselves out in the real world, supporting the market (a real Wellington institution) and we present Rotary as relevant and present. Beyond raising money, the carpark initiative enables us to fulfil our motto: 'service above self'; our Rotary value is in directly and literally serving our community.

Please look out for the next opportunity - and sign up! David Barnes

The future looks good

Meetings, speakers and events coming up

26 April Rotary Karori Quiz night to raise funds for "Lifting the Lid" The Tap room 7pm
30 April Charlie Cordwell The role of surf lifesaving
7 May Serge Van Dam Wellington's going-global software - threats and opportunities in the era of AI.
11 May Sunday 5.45 Fundraiser film - The Salt Path. (see flyer below)
14 May Club Forum
21 May Alex Hockley Wellington Heritage Festival
28 May Nicole Skews Poole Disinformation
4 June Te Rina Leonard Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu,( Correspondence School) the work we do, the impact we make and the challenges we face.
25 June Changeover
13 July Planting trees with friends of Tawa Bush
15 October A Grand Night out

President Jo

Why do I appreciate our club ?– we are vibrant, involved and busy, our members are involved in more than just our club, and here are two examples from the previous week.
Tony and Samaritans
Tony told us about Samaritans, explaining how it started, and the situation it is now. David Barnes
On Thursday, Tony and I were privileged to go and witness David Barnes being inducted as a JP. This fellow is also a Freemason, and runs our book group and the Waitangi parking. Congratulations David and thank you for all that you do.

Golden Mile project

It was good to hear from the WCC speaker this week about the Golden Mile project. It was very obvious from our discussion over breakfast, and from the lively questions that they are in a situation with this work, where you can’t please all of the people all of the time. I imagine once the actual work starts there will be alot of comment. Lets hope it is successful and brings life back into the Courtney area.

Board meeting- Notice of special general meeting on May 14th
We had a successful Board meeting on Thursday. During the coming week, a discussion document will be coming to all members with regards a potential subscription increase. We will then bring a motion to this effect to a Special General Meeting on 14 May for a decision. Please treat this as 21 days notice of the Special General meeting.

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Trying something new-

Port Nic rotary evening meetings once a month

From July we are going to trial having a rotary meeting one Wednesday evening a month. The meeting format will remain the same, except we will start at 5.30pm rather than 7am.

This idea came from one of our younger members David Quinn who sees it as an opportunity to bring potential new members in straight from work. We also thought it might appeal to people who have retired and prefer a later start than 7am.

If you have any questions or suggestions on how to make this successful please contact me on nicolebarker883@gmail.com. Thank you for your support while we trial this new approach to our rotary meetings.

Paul Harris Fellow Community Award Nominations

The Club Honours Advisory Group (David Shackleton, Howard Tong and Brenda Lazelle) would like to invite Club members to nominate candidates for our Paul Harris Fellow Community Awards. The following Guidelines are intended to inform your recommendations:

Paul Harris Fellow Community Award Guidelines

The recipient is recognised for their:

Outstanding service to the community - the Wellington region;

High ethical standards in their professional and personal lives;

Any member of the Port Nicholson Rotary Club can nominate someone from the community; Please provide the Advisory Group with a summary of your nominee's contributions to their community including examples of the impact they have made;

The Honours Advisory Group will consider nominations and make a recommendation to the Board for their decision.

District Governor Elect Carol Green

Posted on Apr 05, 2025

Our scheduled speaker was unwell and Carol Green, DG Elect for District 9940 stepped in at short notice. We were able to hear a little of Carol’s distinguished professional career. As Head of the Department Cytology at Valley Diagnostic Labs she was at the forefront of the breakthrough that identified that HPV was the cause of cervical cancer. She worked alongside the pathologist who wrote the textbook that provided the diagnostics training. Carol travelled to Chicago twice yearly to run his workshops for him, therefore no surprise that one of the projects she is spearheading as DG is looking at funding HPV vaccinations in the Pacific.