On 29 October a number of our members attended the District meeting of Inner Wheel in Palmerston North. We were proud to support our District Chair, Dale Julius, who hails from our club.
It was an opportunity for us to get fellowship and fundraising inspiration from other clubs and especially useful to learn more about the implications of our UN consultatative status. As Inner
Wheel focuses on drugs, the welfare of children and families our organisation sends representatives from NZ to three of the four UN meetings annually, that is, Vienna, Geneva and New York (the other is Nairobi) to contribute data, advice and other information from our clubs and national levels. It is a great tool for us to make a difference.
Our speaker this month was Rotarian, Anne Atkinson, who told us about her trip to Russia. She had recently returned from a tour of a very remote area called Magadan in Eastern Russia. Only conducted every two years because of the difficulty making arrangements, the tour did not sound like a barrel of laughs. It started in St Petersburg, renowned for its beautiful buildings. But this was starkly contrasted by her slides of barren and isolated terrain and, abandoned villages. It became more arduous as it went on and included a day-long journey to the Stalin Gulag camps established in the 1920s. These had accommodated around 20,000 people forced to mine copper, gold, and other resources to pay for the industrialisation of Russia. Life was obviously extremely hard in those days, workers using pick axes and going hungry much of the time. Anne and her husband felt this very keenly especially when they travelled on a road called the ‘Road of Bones’. On Anne’s return the journey was “in her head” for three weeks. Her experience left her with an overwhelming sense of how “damned miserable” housing and life was there. She seemed pleased to be home. No surprises there!
A 2nd edition of Laugh your tits off! by Anne Hayden, a light hearted aid to families of, and people with breast cancer was mentioned in last month’s IW article. It is now available this month at $15 per copy. If you wish to order a copy, please email iznzpublicist@gmail.com. Alternatively you can order from our Greytown branch of IW by contacting Monica Rose Ph: (06) 3049265, or email: graymon@xtra.co.nz. Remember it is Xmas next month!
New Members are welcome, please contact Judy Shakespeare at 06 379-6554
