Water
Aid Presentation.
On Thursday 9th March our Club was visited by a team of Water Aid Volunteer speakers, Sara Hayes, Clara Hughes and Rizwan Siddiquee.
Water Aid is a World Wide Charity and is very proud of helping over 8.5 million of the worlds poorest people gain access to safe clean water over the last 25 years.
Their work covers :-
- Water supply.
- Sanitation.
- Hygiene Promotion.
Our young and enthusiastic speakers all worked for Welsh Water and had only recently finished their training as Water Aid Volunteer speakers, in fact our presentation was their debut. Their talk, linked with the Water Aid Video, was most competently and professionally presented and very well received.
Many facts concerning the subject were covered during the presentation, however the importance of the work done by Water Aid was starkly brought onto focus when we were informed that every 60 seconds, 4 children in the developing world die due to unsafe water related diseases and poor sanitation.
Following their presentation Past President Mike Collins was pleased to make our Club donation of £750 to Water Aid. The photos shows our VPII Barry handing over the above cheque to our three guest speakers and a photo of an actual water pump installation in use in Africa.
Follow this link to read more about the work of Water Aid.
Visit to the Czech Republic.
In 2005, our Club was advised by RI that we were officially Twinned with the Rotary Club of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic (District 2240).
Wishing to continue the building of links with our Twin Club, in February of this year four of our Club members and their wives accepted an invitation to visit the Czech Republic in order to attend a Rotary event organized by our Twin.
The 3rd Jiri Porkert Memorial event was held on Saturday the 11th of March in Deštné v Orlickýck Horách, a small but beautiful mountain ski resort N.E. of Prague in the Czech Republic, and involved participants in a Giant Slalom and Cross-Country Ski-ing event.
Following these highly competitive races, a celebration Dinner was organized for that evening, at which the winners of the various categories were awarded their prizes.
At this same Dinner, President Tony was awarded a plaque conferring on him, life long Honorary Membership of the Rotary Club of Hradec Králové. Similarly, VPI Malcolm accepted a plaque conferring Honorary Membership of the Rotary Club of Hradec Králové on all future Presidents of our Club. These honours were gratefully received and appropriately celebrated.
The six day visit wasn't without its setbacks, namely illness laying low four of our Team of eight skiers for some or a large part of the holiday, however out of such adversity came some personal achievements, namely:- Daniella celebrated her birthday with several cards, flowers, presents, a birthday cake and Moravian sparkling wine, (and a room full of noisy visitors)!
- Vanessa and Sam skied for the first time in their lives and loved every single minute. (Sam made friends with a Tiger and a Blue Cat)!
- Tony skied like the professional Ski Instructor/Czech International Skier he once wanted to be.
- Hedley stoically refused to let the throat bug he had, stop him ski-ing.
- Roseanne, Maggie and Malcolm just enjoyed the whole holiday!
Ski-ing In Czecho ROCKS!
Jazz Evening.
On Wednesday the 18th of March, eight aficionados from our Club attended a Jazz and Loose Women evening which was held at the Widnes Rugby Union Social Club. The near capacity crowd were royally entertained by the Rod Mason Hot Five jazz band, who are normally resident in Germany but are over here on tour.
They played New Orleans Jazz in the style of the late Louis Armstrong and as one might expect, the performance brought back many good memory and so a good time was had by all, well nearly .......
Much to the disappointment of every single one of our Club members, the loose women promised did not, however, materialise.
Never mind lads..........
