Welcome to the website of the Rotary Club of Mansfield
WINDOW DRESSED FOR SUCCESS
Mansfield shoppers will be stopping in their tracks to view an emotive window display produced as part of the Rotary Club of Mansfield’s initiative to help end the war against polio.
The Rotary Club of Mansfield will be decking out the unoccupied shop window of the former River Island store at the back of the Library at the top of Westgate on Friday 19th, Saturday 20th and Tuesday 23rd February between 10am and 4pm each day.
The window will feature posters and shocking statistics about the devastating effects of polio in a bid to get the public behind Rotary’s last push to stamp out polio from the world.
Members of the Rotary Club of Mansfield are joining forces with over 55,000 other Rotarians across Great Britain and Ireland in a co-ordinated effort to finally win the battle with this most debilitating and, often terminal disease.
The Rotarians are aiming to generate over £1 million on one day by forging links with Mansfield residents and encouraging them to help raise funds towards the world-wide initiative to stamp out polio for good.
The partnerships will form part of Rotary’s national Thanks for Life campaign which will see hundreds of Rotary clubs across Great Britain and Ireland linking up with businesses, organizations, schools and individuals to hold a range of fund-raising events to raise the £1 million target by Thanks For Life – Rotary Day, Tuesday, February 23 (Rotary’s 105th birthday).
Polio is a crippling, and sometimes fatal, disease and still a very harrowing reality for children in parts of Africa and Asia and threatens children everywhere. It is highly virulent and only an air flight away from the UK
Every £1 raised in this campaign will purchase five doses of the special anti-polio vaccine. These children will be protected against polio - forever.
Charles Dawson, the Rotary Club of Mansfield’s president said: “This is a wonderful opportunity for our children to learn about issues facing children in other parts of the world and to help those that are less fortunate than themselves.
“Rotary has been involved in this fight for 25 years and the world is so close to being free from polio for good thanks to the joint hard work of organizations and governments. How fantastic for a town, individual, business or organisation to join the fight and be able to say, ‘I helped to wipe out a disease for only the second time in history, after smallpox. I stopped children from dying - I help change the world’.”
The Rotary Club of Mansfield have so far helped raise over £3000 from specific fund raising events directly related towards polio eradication.
[NB: This money has NOT come from the public collections that the Rotary Club makes at Xmas and at other times during the year].
Anyone interested in the campaign should contact Rotarian David Brown on 07831 578175 or by e-mail to dave_brown@tesco.net or visit www.ribi.org/thanks-for-life.
Ends
Photo/Interview Opportunity
Members of the Rotary Club of Mansfield will be present at the former River Island store at the back of the Library at the top of Westgate on Friday 19th, Saturday 20th and Tuesday 23rd February between 10am and 4pm each day.
Notes to editors:
• Polio eradication has been Rotary's top priority since 1985. Since then, polio cases have fallen from 350,000 a year to a recorded 1,600 last year. Thanks to Rotary’s help, two billion children have been protected from the disease, and the number of endemic countries has fallen from 125 to just four: Afghanistan, northern India, Nigeria and Pakistan.
• It is estimated that five million children have been spared from disability and 250,000 deaths have been averted.
• Rotary is the largest private sector contributor to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, with partners including the World Health Organisation and UNICEF, which battles against a number of difficulties including geographic isolation, armed conflict, cultural barriers, worker fatigue and poverty.
• Rotary members have so far raised US $700 million to fund polio immunization activities and every penny raised goes to the project. Rotarians all work on a purely voluntary basis so funds are not drained away in administration costs. Rotary clubs in Great Britain and Ireland have so far donated more than £10.5 million (US$20 million) to polio immunization initiatives.
• Money raised goes towards funding national immunisation drives for all children under age five in endemic and high risk countries, as well as tracking possible incidences of the disease, measures to control outbreaks and improving public health infrastructures.
• Rotary International is a worldwide voluntary organisation of 1.2 million dedicated business professionals and community leaders. In Great Britain and Ireland there are over 55,000 men and women of all ages from all walks of life in Rotary clubs who share a passion and commitment to helping and improving communities both locally and across the world. Each member enjoys giving something back to those in need, as well as building business and social networking opportunities, learning new skills and having a huge amount of fun. For more information, visit www.ribi.org
Our Town
Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest town in the county, lying on the River Maun, from which the name of the town is derived. The town is surrounded by a pocket of steep hills within the Maun Valley, and has a population of 167,885.
Mansfield has a large market square and, focused around the market, a large commercial centre including a museum, the Palace Theatre, and numerous pubs, bars and night clubs.
Mansfield was originally the home of Mansfield Brewery, once the largest independent brewer in the UK. The brewery was acquired by Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries for £253m in October 1999, with production of the Mansfield range of ales moving to other parts of the country. The brewery's physical assets were later sold on to Pubmaster Ltd, and the former site of the brewery is now derelict. In the 1980s, Mansfield Bitter was advertised with a photograph of then US president Ronald Reagan and the tagline "He may be president of the most powerful nation on Earth, but he's never had a pint of Mansfield"; "Not much matches Mansfield" was also used. Mansfield is also the location of an Irn-Bru factory, owned by the Scottish drinks company A. G. Barr.
Several urban regeneration projects are underway in Mansfield, including reconstruction of the nearby Kings Mill Hospital.
The television presenter Adam Kingswood (from BBC TVs The Truth About Property), Richard Bacon and professional golfers Oliver Wilson and Greg Owen come from Mansfield. The singer Alvin Stardust lived there as a child. Classical pianist John Ogdon was born in the suburb of Mansfield Woodhouse in 1937. Mark Holmes, lead singer of the Canadian New Wave/stadium rock group Platinum Blonde, was born and partly raised there. Mansfield is also the home of the Cantamus Girls Choir, World Choir Olympics champions. As well as this it also features a thriving music scene with many promising up and coming young artists. Rebecca Adlington - 2008 Olympic swimming gold medallist, 400 m and 800m freestyle, the latter in a new world record time, was born in Mansfield .
The ancestral home of Lord Byron, Newstead Abbey, is located not far away in Ravenshead.
Planning permission has been given to develop a new bus station on the station road car park which is estimated to cost in the region of approx £7 million.[6][7] The bus station, built in 1977, handles around 1,500 buses and 16,000 passenger arrivals a day. It is the busiest bus station in the county outside the City of Nottingham. The new bus station is an attempt for redevelopment of the old bus station site to enhance Mansfield town centre, and to regenerate the whole of the Stockwell Gate area. The town is the northern terminus of the A38, which runs from Bodmin in Cornwall and is the longest 'A' road entirely within England.
The town also has good road links. Mansfield can be reached within around 10 minutes from junctions 27,28 and 29 of the M1, and is situated around 18 miles from the A1 at neighbouring Newark-upon-Trent.
Mansfield railway station is a stop on the Robin Hood Line, a relatively new rail link connecting the town with Nottingham and Worksop. Before the introduction of the Robin Hood Line in the 1990s, Mansfield was the largest town in Europe without a railway station.- all the more remarkable because the town pioneered the railway in the East Midlands.
The town was originally the terminus of the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway, built as a horse-drawn plateway in 1819 and one of the first acquisitions of the newly-formed Midland Railway. The Midland used the final section to extend its new Leen Valley line to the present station in 1849.
Thus, prior to the 1970s, the town had two railway stations: the LNER (former GNR) line on Great Central Road, near Ratcliffe Gate, and the LMSR (Former Midland) line on Station Road, near Belvedere Street. From the early 1950s, however, the LNER line ceased carrying passengers and remained as a freight only line; and in the 1970s the former LMSR line ceased to travel via Mansfield. The Robin Hood Line re-opened in from Nottingham to Newstead 1993, although Bulwell station didn't open until 1994. It was extended to Mansfield Woodhouse in 1995, with Kirkby-in-Ashfield station opening in 1996. The through passenger route from Nottingham to Worksop opened in 1998.
Mansfield is home to Mansfield Town, who are known as the Stags,. They were relegated to the Conference National after 77 years in the Football League at the end of the 2007–08 season. The team's traditional rival is the nearby town of Chesterfield in Derbyshire. The rivalry between the two clubs is considered among the fiercest in the lower leagues. Angling is well supported in the Mansfield district, where ponds remain from the former textile milling industry.
Mansfield is one of the three outlets of the Nottinghamshire County Council Swim Squad, who compete as Nova Centurion. The Sherwood Swimming Baths in Mansfield Woodhouse are, as of 2008, being refurbished and will re-open as the Rebecca Adlington Swimming Centre in September 2009.
The Palace Theatre is located on Leeming Street and is the town's primary entertainment venue. Built as a cinema in 1910, it was originally known as the Palace Electric Theatre and was later adapted to a proscenium arch theatre presenting live shows. It has also been known as the Civic Hall and Civic Theatre before the current name was revived in the 1990s. With a seating capacity of 534, the theatre is a mid scale touring venue presenting a programme of both professional and amateur productions.
Just a few miles outside of Mansfield lies Sherwood Forest. Mansfield has an Oak Tree and a plaque to mark what was the centre of Sherwood Forest on West Gate.
The local newspaper is the Chad (Formerly Chronicle Advertiser). Mansfield is home to one radio station, Mansfield 103.2 broadcast from the Fishpond's Hill transmitter on Skegby Lane which also broadcasts Mansfield versions of the Nottingham stations Radio Nottingham and 96 Trent FM on 95.5 and 96.5 FM respectively.
Television reception in Mansfield however is a different story. Television reception has often been problematic due to the location of the town being in between regions. However since the arrival of Diamond Cable (formerly ntl, and now Virgin Media) in 1995, BBC East Midlands and Central East were provided, and since regionalisation of SKY digital many residents can now watch BBC East Midlands which is the default region for this area and appears on channel 101. Channel 103 is still showing ITV Yorkshire East.
Mansfield is notable for being one of the 13 towns in the United Kingdom with a directly-elected Mayor.
Alan Meale (born Joseph Alan Meale) has been the Labour constituent Member of Parliament since 1987. Prior to this, Mr. Meale had been a member of the Socialist Campaign Group.
The text concerning Mansfield is taken from the wiki.com under the terms of the Creative Commons License
In the next 30 days..
11/03/2010 Link Evening. at Derbyshire Hotel16/03/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - Speaker British Limbless Ex-Servicemen's Association.
18/03/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - Club Council Meeting.
18/03/2010 Club Council Meeting.
23/03/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - Club Meeting at Mansfield Town FC. match v Altrincham optional
24/03/2010 Meal at West Notts College.
30/03/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - Speaker Terry and Val Leivers PLUS Final weigh-in for Sponsored Slim..
06/04/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - No Meeting ( Bank Holiday ).
11/04/2010 Walk in Derbyshire. organised by James Pinder. Distance optional
12/04/2010 International Committee Meeting. At the home of Rtn Frank & Mrs Margaret Ceney
13/04/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - Speaker Pat Holden on Silver Smithing.
20/04/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - Speaker Trevor Prseley Clumber Park - National Trust. Ladies invited
22/04/2010 Club Weekly Meeting - Club Council Meeting.
22/04/2010 Club Council Meeting.
24/04/2010 District Assembly. Clifton Campus, Nottingham Trent University. 9.00am - 1.00pm (coffee from 8.30am) All Rotarians welcome
24/04/2010 District Assembly Nottingham University. Venue Nottingham University
Click here for 
