Conference Speaker Series - The Purple House Presentation
Sarah Brown, The Purple House, will be presenting online on 14 April at 6.30pm
Sarah was to be a keynote speaker at the D9780 Conference in Swan Hill in March. Unfortunately, this conference had to be cancelled due to Covid 19, but Sarah has agreed to give her presentation online instead of in person.
Sarah is the CEO of The Purple House, an innovative Indigenous-owned and run health service operating from its base in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
She was a remote nurse before that – and Australia’s nurse of the year in 2017. She loves sharing the story of The Purple House, often speaking at local and Rotary events.
Now operating 16 remote clinics and a mobile dialysis unit called the Purple Truck, Purple House is getting patients back home so that families and culture can remain strong.
Sarah has built relationships with key corporate organisations and supporters to ensure the success of The Purple House mission. She is regularly invited to provide input development of government policies on remote health.
Please invite your members to join DG Rosanne and Sarah online.
While we are in a time of physical disconnection and isolation, it is even more important to keep our social connections. Rotarians join Rotary to do good in their community and give back, and they stay because of the connections we make. What can giving back look like in our changed world?
How can we help Rotary stay strong and even prosper, during a time when nothing is as it was, but people are seeking purpose and an opportunity to contribute. Rotary has resources – people and financial resources. We care and have a strong reputation.
The key is to start with ensuring we engage with each other, existing Rotarians. When we take a break from our regular routine for an extended period, we can find something else to fill that gap, or simply decide it wasn’t that important.
Some ideas:
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Encourage “user generated content”, to make it a two way communication
Have Online Club Meetings through a platform like Zoom
District wide meetings, where members from across the District can connect
Invite online speakers to join your Zoom meetings
Share ideas for projects you can do collectively but remotely
Set up a phone tree to keep in contact to keep people in your Club engaged and informed
Support vulnerable individual members who may struggle with using online technology
Change your Club Bulletin to include some fun interactive items.
Review and refresh your Club Strategic Plan
Carry out a needs analysis in your local community – phone and talk with people about what are the real needs right now
Identify community partners, both for now and the future
Do some learning through the many learning modules in the Learning Centre in My Rotary www.rotary.org
You could run some of these learning modules together as part of your Zoom club meeting
Within the guidelines of social isolation and essential travel, volunteer to run errands for those who need it.
Start planning now for recovery – how do we want our Clubs to look after this is over. What projects can we pick up and who will we partner with.
Remember, we will meet together again face to face, we will enjoy the social benefits of friendship and fellowship, we will continue our projects and events
Plan to be stronger when this is over than before it began.
Virtual Travel
Travel may be off the agenda for a while, but you can visit a Rotary Club anywhere in the world - online of course. If you would like to add your Club's online meeting to a list being created by Mt Lawley Rotary, click bit.ly/addmyonlinemeeting
Share what new and innovative ideas your club has come up with in response to the new needs of our communities, via email to pauline.stewart@rotary9780.org or tag Rotary District 9780 in any of your posts and we will share those posts over onto the D9780 Facebook Page.
While Clubs are adapting to the new normal of social distancing they are still working to support our communities, like Rotary Club of Kerang who are making face masks, which although not medical grade can provide some protection for those working with the public. Check out their project https://www.facebook.com/rotarykerang/ You will find patterns and instructions about what items you need.
Another great project from Warrnambool Daybreak Rotary, who during isolation have been knitting for backpacks4vickids, a charity designed to support children at risk. Find out more www.backpacks4vickids.org.au
TRF Cadre of Technical Advisors
Past District Governor Ronald G. Pickford, of the Rotary Club of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, has served The Rotary Foundation as a Cadre member for nearly 20 years. During that time, he’s reviewed more than 20 projects and traveled to six countries to perform site visit evaluations. Pickford, an architect and building designer, has also witnessed the positive progression of Rotary grants from 3-H projects and Matching Grants to global and district grants.
He uses his experience as an evaluator to help Foundation staff members and Rotarian grant sponsors plan stronger, more sustainable projects. Pickford has also applied his knowledge and professional skills to helping the Foundation evaluate the structural integrity of low-cost shelter and simple school construction projects.
A member of the Cadre’s water, sanitation, and hygiene team, Pickford has contributed to the evaluation of the WASH in Schools Target Challenge pilot program and served as an evaluator for The Rotary Foundation Grant Model Evaluation.
COVID-19 has certainly had a huge impact on the youth exchange program as it has with all Rotary programs
We started 2020 with 13 inbound students (who had arrived July 2019) and we sent 15 Australian students outbound in January. Since the pandemic was declared, there has been a n enormous amount of communication with both inbound and outbound students, their families and counsellors. These are very difficult times for families whose 15 or 16 year old student is living on the opposite side of the world.
Some students in consultation with their parents have decided to come or go home or to stay and finish their exchange. Most of our outbounds are telling us they are in isolation as we are, however most had school closures a number of weeks ago. Our current inbounds have been able to continue to attend school up to the recent closure. I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank not only the hard working youth exchange committee, but the hosting and sponsoring Rotary Clubs and counsellors who have supported their inbound and outbound students to make some difficult decisions.
The youth exchange program has now been put on hold for 12 months. This means we will NOT be accepting any inbound students this July and will NOT be sending any outbound students January 2021.
The current status of our students :
Inbound- 7 students have returned home. 2 will be returning on the 20thApril and 4 are remaining. We have now asked these four students to consider going home early (as they were due to go home first week in July) as it has been announced that school will not be going back in 2ndterm.
Outbound- 6 students have returned home and all but one are out of their mandatory isolation. 9 students remain in their host country with their exchange due to finish Jan 2021.
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