Our guest speakers at the July 13 meeting were Prof David Croaker and Liz Hearn on ROMAC. Liz recently forwarded this email to Beth Woolley reflecting on Rotary's support for their efforts:
Dear Beth,
I hope you won’t mind forwarding on my letter of thanks for the money donated to us for the
next trip.
Thank you everyone for choosing us to donate your funds to get us over to the Solomon
Islands.
Actually I had so much more I wanted to tell the group and I hope by my emailing you, I can
get this to them all.
Firstly, my impressions of Rotary.
We were gifted “Rotary Club of Hall” hats to wear on the trip. The first person who commented about my hat was in the customs line when we were brought through quickly and quietly. “That’s a very cool hat!”
As we checked out of our Brisbane accommodation, the young receptionist informed me she was a member of Rotaract. Nothing was too difficult for her to do for us…..not that we were difficult!
On our flight home, the lady in the row in front of us turned around and said she would try to
get us funding from her club in….Canada! I haven’t heard from her….yet!
Last year I had some boxes of medical equipment that were needed in the Solomon Islands, so I delivered them to Bob, who runs the Rotary warehouse in Melbourne. I delivered the 4 boxes and was gobsmacked by the extent of the products donated, and the places to which it was sent. I received a phone call regarding 50 brand new beds that could be donated, did I know someone who could use them? I rang Bob in the Melbourne warehouse, he said, if the donor could get them to him, he could send them all over. The two men connected, and the beds arrived in Melbourne, they have since had some sent to outback medical centres and overseas.
Rotary; you don’t let anything stop you.
Rotary; the community is welcoming.
Rotary; you care
Thank you all for donating the funds to get us started on our next trip to the National Referral Hospital in Honiara.
Without your caring community, we would not have been able to do the surgeries and help the children in May of this year.
We won’t let anything stop us, we will keep working on getting funding to help the children.
With kind regards and grateful thanks,
Liz Hearn RN
