Another great evening with just over 50 members and guests presents.

Thank you all for your attendance and making Stu Corlett or guest speaker welcome. Stu mentioned how much he had looked forward to visiting our club, it was comforting to hear him say “Cambridge Rotary had a solid reputation as one of the strongest clubs within NZ”.

Thanks again to Ken Leatham and Andrew Bateman for our fantastic vocational visit to J SWAP last week.

Just a reminder for next week, and the visit by our District Governor Ross Pinkham.

Please bring along partners, guests, and any new potential members and give Ross warm welcome to Cambridge. Ross will take the floor for around 20 minutes with an opportunity for questions directly after. He is an immensely interesting speaker and carries messaging form Rotary International and will talk to our District workplan.

A reminder please to notify of any additional attendance via the usual channels, and I look forward to seeing you all at next weeks meeting.

 

Ted Mason opened the meeting right on the dot of 6pm.

Ted shared with us about the 5^th of August in History:

Ted then handed the evening over to our President Ian.

Ian talked about the successful SWAP visit the week before and he had heard members rave over the event, well done Ken Leatham and Andrew Bateman for organising.

Ian welcomed the following along with our regular members:

                                                       

                                                                                                                        

Shirley Haycock introduced our guest speaker for the evening, Stu Corlett from Circuit International.

Stu spoke to us about an organisation he was a part of Circuit International.

     

More detail on Circuit International can be found at this website link https://www.circuitinternational.org/

Stu has grown up with a farming background and he believes farmers come up with useful solutions to problems.

The main goal of Circuit International is to work with local leaders in Myanmar to find local solutions to end poverty.

Myanmar is a country in chaos. The original name of Myanmar was Burma and Burma was occupied by the British in 1886 until their independence in 1948. The country has seen many wars over the years and there has been civil war since the 1940s. The country now has a population of 50 million.

Myanmar is run by a group of 12-15 families “that are just thugs” Stu shared with us.

He mentioned that he witnessed a situation back in 2012 where families sold their children for US$1000. The children apparently volunteer to be sold to save their families from poverty.

80% of the girls trafficked out of the Golden Triangle end up as brides in other parts of the world.

 

Stu and a few others came up with a solution to create banks to stop this from happening. The theory being, if we gave you a bank so you could borrow money to plant your crops on your land and you paid back the loan and interest then it worked to reduce the poverty in the country.

These operating committees that were set up consisted of 50% women. The interest charged is accumulated and put aside over a 6–7-year period, and the result is large enough to start another new community. In essence ‘Community Based Loans’.

There is almost zero education in the population of these communities. The main source of funding for the loans comes from individual donors and 50% of the money used for project in Myanmar.

The admin fees are funded from the buying and selling of Maize.

Don Harris thanked Stu for his speech and handed Stu a gift from the Club.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carey Church –  Spoke about the progress with the Garden Festival. The festival this year is to be run

                              on the 21^{st of} November. Tickets will be on sale next Friday.

                              Carey asked if any members had any walkie talkies to use on the day.

                              Carey asked about the teardrop banners and needs help with media contacts.

      Marketing will be via Facebook, Google Ads, Cambridge News and Te Awamutu local paper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nigel Salter -      Talked on 3 items:

 

Mark Hanlon -   Mark updated us on the progress on the Urban Miners project. Battery labels are available, and he further raised an idea to collect batteries from friends and shops. Has also has received a grant for $6300 to fund an extra trailer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Robinson -   Bill talked about his year coming up as District Governor and the 3-year journey ahead. He is involved in regular Sunday virtual meetings over Zoom, and on the 11/12 Sept, there is a Zone Conference that all members will be invited to connect in to. You will need to register for this 2 hour event, which will be in the middle of the day where the Worldwide President will speak to the conference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Partis -     Gave an Adventure Group update about the family day at Te Aroha on 4^th Sept. There will be 3 options graded from hard to low, hard being the 3 hour climb up Mt Te Aroha, the second being partial ride along the Hauraki Rail Trail and the third option is a shorter 2 hour walk in the Wairongomai Vailley. The day will end with a soak in a local spa and dinner. David Blewden and David Partis to finalise and advise

 

Ted then ran the sergeant’s session and extracted as much money as he could from the members.

 

John Bishop shared with us his session on Our Rotary World. John talked about the history of the Cambridge Rotary Club and remined us our current members that were present at our 50^th, 25 years ago.

Hamilton Club chartered us back in 1946 on the 10^{th of} April. The Cambridge Club started with 25 charter members out of a population of 4500 people in Cambridge at the time.

The Club used to meet at the Triangle Restaurant on the corner where Deli on the Corner is now.

John stressed the importance of attendance at our 75^th anniversary as Cambridge Rotary Club is had a great history in the Cambridge Community.

 

Ian closed the meeting on the dot of 7:45pm.