Bally Barker Blog

Tuesday Feb 16   Our inspirational guest speaker at our meeting (via ZOOM) was Gemma Sisia - founder of the school of St Jude Gemma Sisia The School of St Jude is a charity-funded school located in the city of Arusha, in the northern Arusha Region of Tanzania. The school, located across three campuses, provides free primary and secondary education to the poorest and brightest children of the Arusha Region. It was founded by Australian Gemma Sisia in 2002, based on the belief that education is the best way to fight poverty. Gemma statted the first class in 2002 with three students; today 1,400 students are borders at the school, plus approx. 400 living locally in a fifty Km radius attend daily. They are collected by 26 buses (10 coaches, 7 mini vans; the remainder 4WD that pick-up /drop-off from the unmade dirt roads). There are 300 staff at the school in key areas of teaching, head office, Alumni and fund-raising. In earlier years the staff was largely international, but today al

Balgowlah Rotary's annual charity Golf Day raises funds for local and international charities and Rotary youth projects . Our last two club meetings have been focused on planning and activities for our Golf Day that was to be held on Friday March 26, 2021. Postponement of the Golf however the Dinner will go ahead. Due to the horrific weather conditions over the last few days we are unable to have carts for the golf day on Friday March 26, so we are postponing the Golf part of our Charity event to Friday 23rd April. We will still have the Charity Dinner with Auctions and raffles on Friday 26th March as we would need to pay 50% of food cost if we cancel this date and postpone due to food purchases. IT IS DISAPPOINTING HOWEVER THE END RESULT WAS OUT OF OUR CONTROL Our Golf Day and Dinner is the most important fundraising event held by the club.   It benefits our local community programs which have all been greatly impacted over the last year due to Covid19 a

Changeover night was held via ZOOM tonight. Eighteen people were present for the ceremony where the office of President was handed over from Lindy Myers to Rick Van Brugge in what is now Rotary Balgowlah’s 47 th year.     We were most honoured to have a number of special guests, James Griffin, MP - Member for Manly; Michael Regan, Mayor-Northern Beaches Council; Sarah Grattan, Counsellor Manly Ward - Northern Beaches Council and Johanna Johns -Rotary Assistant Governor Beaches (District 9685) In addition to Rotarians we were joined by former Rotarian Ken Reed, Past President of the Club.   After opening the meeting, Lindy invited James Griffin to address us. James thanked the club for its support and many ways that we are helping the community - many people in our community were struggling at present due to Covid and necessary restrictions.     James also pointed out the Centenary celebrations were a wonderful recognition of the work that has