Events

Pam was educated and worked in the Blacktown area for most of her adult life, with about 40 of those years

working in the real estate industry as a Valuer and Commercial Asset Manager, in a family business with the most recent 18 years

in her own business.

Recently retired she now has more time to support he Rotary International Projects which have inspired her since joining Rotary some 15 years ago.

The inception of Teacher in a Box was in 2013 after a Rotary visit to the School of St Jude in Tanzania back in 2012 with four members of Rotary in Brisbane joining the Blacktown team for the 3 week tour. Pam and the TIB team have recently revisited Tanzania to follow up  some of the deployments and see first hand the progress and value of the project

TIB was founded by Jeanette Johnstone from Paddington Rotary Club in Qld, after she visited Tanzania and Zanzibar in 2012 and recognised the need for Educational resources without access or reliance on the internet, as the internet is both unreliable and expensive in many parts of the country.

Jeanette was fortunate to meet Patrick Hackett who was volunteering with Computers 4 Learning, another Rotary Project, whereby donated computers are repurposed and sold for a small fee to the Community.

Jeanette then partnered with Patrick and together they took donated laptops, stripped and cleaned them, then uploaded thousands of Educational Videos, lessons, books and associated resources, which then connected to a small router can be shared to as many as 100 other devices i.e. laptops, ipads and smartphones.

The Project continues to grow and thus far has been invaluable to schools in Liberia, Tanzania, Kenya, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and the Philippines

District 9685 is very proud to be launching a program that will recognise those clubs which have been major donors to the Rotary Foundation over their lifetime.  This is designed to match the recognition programs for personal giving.  The program was really initiated by Harold who raised the concept many months ago.  This has been taken forward and the proposal put together on or behalf by Rob Byrne.  TRF has asked that it be piloted with one district before launching across all ANZ districts so quite rightly D9685 has been selected, to the delight of District Foundation chairs and DG and DGE.

   Crows Nest Rotary, which has been extremely generous over the years, has contributed to date $US96,641.18, so with a club donation of at least $US3359 (presently about $A4736) before say early June this year we would be able to include you as a Silver Major donor at the presentation at the District Changeover on the 6th July.  Please note that the giving in these figures is Club giving only and not Personal giving. 

Our Club Board has agreed to make the necessary donation and Sue will present a cheque to the Foundation during this meeting.

Royal North Shore Hospital School provides continuity of education for all students from Kindergarten to Year 12 who are patients at Royal North Shore Hospital. The school offers Individual Learning Programs for students who come from metropolitan and country areas, a range of cultural backgrounds and all sectors of schooling. Students remain enrolled at their census school whilst attending our hospital school. While the school is situated on the children's ward, it also caters for older students who may be on the Orthopaedic, Neurosurgical, Psychiatric, Burns or Spinal Wards.

Vanessa is the Principal at Royal North Shore Hospital School and is a leader in Positive Education and Wellbeing. She is passionate about supporting student’s wellbeing by connecting and understanding the context of student lives.  Vanessa will deliver an empowering talk about RNSH School’s innovative approach to supporting their students whilst in hospital. Vanessa and her team have identified a range of strategies that boost positive wellbeing, and that igniting a sense of purpose through authentic engagement greatly increases human connection and belonging.

Vanessa holds a Master of Special Education (Behaviour and Emotional Difficulties) Bachelor of Education, and Diploma of Positive Psychology.

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John Friedsam is the General Manager of Divisions at Canteen Australia.  John has specialised in psychooncology service provision and management for the past 16 years.   He is passionate about developing and delivering evidenced based, sustainable supportive care, counselling and group work services to cancer patients and their families.  John has also worked extensively in space of the impact of cancer on families, cancer communications and familial adjustment to cancer - most recently, over the past five years with CanTeen, concentrating his work directly adolescents and young adults who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis, that of a family members, or are bereaved due to a cancer related death.

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OzHarvest is Australia’s leading food rescue organisation, collecting quality excess food from commercial outlets and delivering it directly to more than 1300 charities supporting people in need across the country.

Founded in 2004 by Ronni Kahn, after noticing the huge volume of good food going to waste from the hospitality industry, she decided there had to be a better way.  Starting in Sydney with one van – the first of many donations from Goodman+ Foundation – she delivered 4,000 meals in the first month.

OzHarvest now operates nationally, rescuing over 180 tonnes of food each week from over 3,500 food donors including supermarkets, hotels, airports, wholesalers, farmers, corporate events, catering companies, shopping centres, delis, cafes, restaurants, film and TV shoots and boardrooms.

Education is crucial to the business to help enable positive change for vulnerable people. OzHarvest has education programs, NEST and Nourish which Cassie will outline for us. Our new curriculum-aligned education program FEAST for primary school students is currently being piloted, with plans for NSW roll-out this year and nationally in 2020.

OzHarvest has recently opened Australia’s first rescued food supermarket – the OzHarvest Market in Sydney, based on a ‘take what you need, give if you can’ philosophy. There is also a new OzHarvest Food Truck, available for corporate, community and private functions and helping feed communities in need around Sydney.

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