Meeting Notes for 19th May 2025

                                       THE ROTARY CLUB OF CHELTENHAM NORTH

                                                MEETING NOTES MONDAY 19th May 2025

WELCOME

Past President Janet Keenan welcomed 17 members and one guest our speaker Natalie Krapf who would be talking about Mary’s Meals

Grace

Richard Purdon gave a grace which was appropriate as well as being amusing and pertinent to the talk.

Announcements

· Richard Purdon on behalf of Clive asked members who were not going to rejoin, to notify him ASAP so that he could delete them from the DMS and the Club would not incur any charges from District/RGB&I or International.

· Anne Bartholomew reminded members, the next District Council Meeting is on Zoom, on Thursday 22nd May and hopefully Club voting members will attend.

· Anne also reminded members the District Assembly and Handover Meeting is on Saturday 7th June at the Holiday Inn, Gloucester, with lunch provided.

Lecture by Natalie Krapf on “Mary’s Meals” a simple solution to solve world hunger.

Richard who introduced Natalie asked, “how many meals do you think they serve per day” and “how much does one meal cost” The answer follows: _

In 1992 two brothers, fish mongers, felt compelled to help people, three weeks later they were part of a convoy taking aid to Bosnia. Food aid kept flowing in so one of the brothers Magnus took a gap year, but he never returned from the gap year and continued on his charity work. In 2002 working for Scottish International Relief Magnus met Emma with six children, she was dying of aids, Magnus spoke to the eldest son Edward who said “I would like to have enough to eat each day and go to school” From this conversation Mary’s Meals was formed and their main office is still a shed. Their vision is that every child receives one daily meal and goes to school. Fast forward, the daily meal is served at school, teachers feel that children concentrate on lessons better when fed (seems obvious) today they cover 13 countries and serve 2.6 million meals per day, at a cost of 10p each.

Natalie then showed us a short video of the work the Charity is doing, but more can be found from their website, there is also a comprehensive introduction into “Mega Match May” where due to a benefactor, if a person sets up regular donations their donation will be tripled. This deal is only available until May 31st 2025.

Message from Michael

As you all know by now, I am stepping down from the role of your secretary, I have enjoyed my time as secretary which included the reporting of our fortnightly meetings which I expanded to give brief summaries of our speakers for the members who could not make the meetings. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I did writing about the various topics. Janet Keenan has kindly agreed to step in as secretary, ably assisted by Clive, also Rosanne will be producing fortnightly meeting notes as she did in the past. I wish them both every success.

DATE OF NEXT MEETING

· Our next meeting is on Monday 2nd June 2025, it is a partner meeting, at 12.30, a lunchtime meeting (trial) and is at Cotswold Hills Golf Club. The speaker will be Paul Barnett talking on “A Journey of A H Hook from Gloucestershire to Rorke’s Drift” the host will be John Phillip