The 2010-2011 Rotary year is coming to a close. One year ago I stood here and set out some goals for the upcoming year:

  1.  Interact Club: This is no longer a goal but a reality, thanks to the hard work of Brian, Lydia and Ryan.
  2. To have 100% participation by our members giving to the Rotary foundation: We fell short of this goal but did have eight members receiving their Paul Harris Fellows on Charter night.
  3. Keeping fun in Rotary: I feel this was a success with our summer social, Christmas brunch,  directors party, Thursday night make-ups and Charter night, which I feel is the grand finale of our social year.
I would like to highlight some of the events from our 5 avenues of service. I. Club it looks after the day-to-day operations. This year our constitution and by-laws have taken up a lot of their time. Our weekly bulletin has been promptly sent out each Monday after our meeting. One part of club that demands a lot of attention is the attendance and membership. They have done a very good job on this, keeping our membership stable throughout the year. Thanks to Al and Laurie for leading us this year.

Community.. Judy and Dave have served  our community well using your money to assist in many projects, medical supplies, building a wheelchair ramp, and the food bank, to name only a few.

Three of the larger contributions were:
  •             Truro Police Cyber-Cop project-$3000.00.
  •             Colchester Community workshops- $5000.00, and
  •             Camp Tidnish- to make much needed improvements- $20,000.00.
Vocational... Youth are our future. With every dollar spent we receive a high value of return.  We are pleased to have added two more schools to our bursary program- E.Cole Acadienne and Colchester Christian Academy.  I had the opportunity to attend RYLA this year. The students were bright and ambitious. I thank Steve for his ability to keep the students involved all day.

Some recommendations came out of that day that will be passed on to the new executive, which will hopefully have more students attend. Thank you to Kevin and Chester for overseeing our vocational service.

International... Mark and Sharon. We were able to support many good projects to  the cost of $12,000.00.  Not all of the money went overseas, some just went over the bridge to the NSAC to sponsor bursaries for their international students. The largest amount was $5000.00 for the Japanese disaster relief fund. I believe we have helped improve the lives of many people in some of the poorest countries of the world.

How can we afford to give $20,000.00 to Camp Tidnish, $5,000.00 to the Japanese relief fund and $5,000.00 to the Colchester Community Workshop? Because of our two great fund-raisers- our auction and our yearbook. Thanks to Jim and his committee. We broke new ground this year by having our total auction on the internet. Some say it was a big leap of faith but it worked. With $33,904.00 in revenue. The auction report is attached.

Rod and his committee worked on the yearbook. Although all the figures aren’t in, they are predicting approximately $50,000.00 in revenue for this year and expect bigger and better things for next year. Yearbook report is attached. And thanks to all the members for making both projects a success.

I would like to thank my executive, the board of directors,  and each member for their support during this year. For all your good work, we have received the District Governors Citation and the Presidential Citation.

As the 2010-2011 year comes to a close, I will ask you for your continued support for President Jim, Vice-President Arnold, Secretary Laurie and all the incoming board of directors, as they chart the path for our Rotary Year 2011-2012.

Working alone we accomplish a little, working together in Rotary, we can accomplish great things.


Ken MacLean
President 2010-2011
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