The main Office Bearers for the Rotary Club are also Office Bearers for the Rotary Berwick & District Benevolent Society (The Society).  As such, the 'Society' has been included as a standing agenda item at all the club’s Board meetings.

 

PP Gus Dominguez became our representative for the 'Society' on the Casey North Community Information Support Service (CNCISS) Board, replacing David Collyer.  Funds raised by the ‘Society’ were again mainly provided by donations from the Magistrate’s Court, with a small contribution from coin donations made by the public at Coles Berwick Supermarket.

 

 

 

The ‘Society’ conducted a successful 2020 Christmas collection of food and toy items, involving seven local Secondary schools and public donations at the Berwick Market Square.  These items were delivered to CNCISS in Narre Warren, where they were made up into Christmas hampers to be distributed to those in need within the local community.

 

 

In March, six Rotarians and two CNCISS staff members sorted 3 pallets of new clothes, which had been donated by a large Retailer through Rotary Donations in Kind.   From the sorting, CNCISS received 30 boxes and 20 boxes of the clothing were also provided to Windermere Child and Family Services for distribution to those in need within the local communiity.  Other items donated by Rotary Donations in Kind to the ‘Society’ included 300 pairs of CROC shoes and 132 walking frames.  These were also offered to CNCISS.  It became clear that both CNCISS and Windermere do not have sufficient storage capacity, or sufficient staff, to handle large quantities of donated items such as this.

 

In June, the ‘Society’ was part of a review of selected charities by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), to ensure that they were still meeting the requirements for charity registration.  Based on our responses to the review, the ACNC confirmed that the Society has a continuing entitlement to be registered with the public benevolent institution (PBI) subtype.

 

An historic joint meeting of the Rotary Clubs of Berwick and Biggleswade (UK) was held on Wednesday 28^th April 2021. A meeting that would have seemed almost impossible before the COVID-19 pandemic hit in February 2020, was made possible by means of Zoom technology.

 

Biggleswade is a town in Bedfordshire England, which is approximately 60 km North of London, 30 km from Cambridge and approximately 17,000 km from Berwick.  The Berwick’s Club meeting started at 7:30pm, which equated to 10:30am in the UK.  Despite the tyranny of distance and the significant time difference, several of the Biggleswade members successfully linked in to the meeting.

 

After the initial pleasantries, the two Clubs exchanged information on their Clubs and the local projects that they were involved in.  President David Button explained how the two Clubs were initially connected.

 

Michael Scott-Worthington from the Rotary Club of Biggleswade had paid a personal visit during the Berwick Club’s Cemetery Working Bee in January 2020, to present a cheque from his Club to support the victims of the East Gippsland fires that had ravaged the area in November and December 2019. The bushfires caused the loss of five lives and destroyed more than 300 homes.

 

The cheque was subsequently added to other funds provided by the Rotary Club of Berwick to BlazeAid. It is a volunteer-based organisation, which assists disaster affected people to clear, repair or replace fences lost on their property resulting from natural disasters such as bushfires, floods, or cyclones. 

 

Past President Isobel and her husband Mark have spent the last two months working with BlazeAid in fire affected areas.  Therefore, it was appropriate that she should be our guest speaker on the night, highlighting the work that they were involved in, which was mainly removing and replacing fences destroyed by the bushfires.

 

Biggleswade reported that they have not had any face-to-face meetings since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Group meetings, such as that in Berwick are unlikely for a while, as the UK is still very much in lockdown mode.  However, they advised that they have already had similar meetings via Zoom, with Clubs in Florida and the Cayman Islands.  Berwick is the first Club in the Southern Hemisphere that they have linked up with.

 

The interactions between the two Clubs was stimulating to all involved, so both Clubs agreed to stay in contact with each other in the future.

It is hoped that this is the first of many such collaborations between the Rotary Club of Berwick and the Berwick Central Cub Group, to assist the local community.