Our skills at getting speakers were tested last week when our scheduled speaker notified us 2 days before the meeting that he had to withdraw due to a family issue. Fortunately, the speaker we had organized for 19th November agreed to fill in so we were treated to an excellent presentation from Kitchener about the ROMAC program. (Rotary Oceania Medical Aid for Children). It really is a great Rotary program that our new member Dr. Ida Whiteman was a very interested listener who knew a lot of the doctors that are involved in the program.

Talking of Ida, after I had completed last week's report I found out that she was the guest speaker at the regular weekly meeting at the Melbourne Rotary club last week. I have had feedback from past District Governors on how impressive she was.

I mentioned at the last meeting that last Thursday we received district notification that our application for a Secondary School Scholarship was successful which means the district will continue to pay us $500.00/year for another 2 years for Simmons College based on us matching that amount. Past member, Andrew Hanley has also been contributing $1,000.00/year as well-meaning we have been contributing $2,000.00/year. We have contact Andrew to ascertain if he will continue with the $1,000.00/year payment and he said no, he will now be paying $2,000.00/year and has asked if we can advise the school we want the scholarship to be named after his father and Past President of our Club, John Hanley. We told him we are sure our board will agree with that request. We need to now consider if we consider we are in a position to increase our annual contribution as well. Otherwise, the school will still be getting $3,000.00/year to support students whose parents cannot pay the cost of schooling there.

Another thing for us to discuss at our next Board Meeting on 26th November is to respond to the query from Mercure Hotel as to when we will bed resuming back there. They contacted us yesterday to say they can offer us the service again. 

This last week has been a very busy MUNA week for me. I am pleased to say it all seems to be falling into place nicely. I have distributed 21 resolutions to all the students for them to choose their preferred 8 to debate. The program is set so that each day 4 resolutions are to be debated and each club will debate 3 each day. We also now have 2 judges and Stephen Sennet from the E Club to control all the technology on the weekend. The plan is for the event to be via zoom for participants only and spectators will be able to view the event view Facebook Livestream.

The judges are both members of the Wyndham Harbour Rotary Club