Christmas Dinner - at the College

Well, not quite end of the calendar year but it is in Rotary terms. 

Thursday saw a good attendance for our final meeting of the year and I was pleased to welcome as guests Valerie, Margaret and Stan. Richard said grace. We presented usual gifts to the college staff and students who supplied a lavish spread for the night. No-one could have gone home hungry. 

During announcements I reported that we have received £550 from District to support W4W. I also reported that £826 was to be paid to Foundation as the Rotary proceeds from Quadrant evening; for those interested the finance summary was as follows:

Tickets sold, at £10 per head, less food at £5 per head - 221x 5 = 1105 plus raffle, 358, payback from co-op energy, 155, and minor bits, 35 makes total profit £1653, which has been split 50/50 between Rotary Foundation and Chelmsford & Southend MIND. 

We noted that Leila has volunteered to lead this across the 5 clubs for 2016. I reported a note from Stan about Holocaust Memorial day on Thursday, 21 Jan. 

Jane reported that she had recently visited Dorothy and taken some flowers on our behalf. 

After the comfort break, Richard organised some anagrams and we performed our traditional 12 days of Christmas.

We had 2 raffle prizes, Stan won the wine and Jan P took away 4 cans of bitter. I levied a few fines.

On Sunday many club members, supported by some friends and other Rotarians, entertained Xmas shoppers with our Carol "singing"; Bill has reported a take of £565 which will support our eventual donation to Barrow Farm. Well done and thanks to everyone.It is hard work (I can vouch for it being very hard in the Olaf suit!) but hopefully we tick 3 boxes: raise funds for a our local charity, entertain shoppers and have some fun ourselves. 

Whilst the past 6 months have brought some down times, generally I hope the club is in good shape. We have increased our membership, by 1, and continue to have good attendance at most meetings and other events. We have had some excellent speaker meetings and when we have social evenings our games organisers never fail to conjure up good fun. Our programme of evenings and events for the new year has taken shape and looks as good as ever. We have the possibility of making some good progress in publicising Rotary within the locality: the potential regular slot in Essex Chronicle looks as if it may finally come to pass, the Chelmsford Community Radio project has provided another opportunity and the 'shop' for a week in February gets us more exposure. The 'shop' is actually a space within a community shop so will be a fairly small area to manage. The shop is open 10-4 Monday to Friday only and the Joint Presidents have agreed that each club will be responsible for a day each; we have Tuesday so will need some volunteers who can help staff this on 23 Feb. Also if people have ideas about what we should attempt to do in the shop, please let me know. 

It might be argued that our Achilles heel is in the area of fundraising, despite the valiant efforts of Bill, and we have agreed that our meeting on 14th Jan will be given over to discussing how we should move forward on this. There is of course no absolute requirement on us to do anything but I would hope that members do not want us to be solely a social club so we have to make some efforts. Bill and myself are drafting some notes to prompt discussion on this.I will email that to everyone well ahead of the meeting and I hope that all members will look at it. If you are not going to be at the meeting on 14th, please let me have views and responses ahead of the meeting so that it can be played into the discussion.