Week 6 of the new Rotary year

Welcome to edition two of our newsletter.

We are 6 weeks into the new Rotary year and 3 weeks (half-way) into Stage 4 lock-down in Melbourne, Victoria.

The consensus is that this second round of lock-down has been harder on most than the first round.

We are trying to provide some support to the community at this tough time by way of connection.

One such initiative is the In Balance Wheels of Wellness Webinars that was launched at the start of round two of lock-down.

Additionally, this week we offered our first free live mindfulness session. These sessions will be run weekly by Dale Cosgrave during lock-down. We hope this additional support will provide our community and ourselves with more tools to get through this challenging time. This third week of Stage 4 restrictions started to take a toll on me as there are a lot of stressed out people out there and the pent up negative energy from others (isolation) can affect us. It is important to stay calm and breathe and focus on our sphere of influence and control and on self-care, inner peace and gratutide and a good night sleeps works wonders too. This week I had to infuse more positvity and motivational readings into my routine and get more sleep. I took this selfie yesterday after putting on some make-up for the first time since face-mask wearing became mandatory and it felt good to experience the normality of that daily ritual again (self-care).

Another initiative we launched recently in the face of the current pandemic is the face-mask fundraiser.

We are selling Rotary branded face-masks for $12.00, and they are good quality and much more affordable than most cloth face-masks on the market and will help us fund some future club projects. Please share the below link with your networks and encourage them to purchase a Rotary branded face-mask from us. We are offering discounts for bulk orders.  https://www.southbank.org.au/face-masks.html.

Last week members from Rotary Club of Southbank participated in a trivia night hosted by North Side Provisional Rotary Club and helped raise funds for Steps Outreach and we also attended a meeting hosted by the Rotary Club of Subang, Malaysia. Rotary International President-Elect Shekhar Mehta was the guest speaker at Rotary Club of Subang and spoke about various topics and initiatives in the membership space given its membership month. One initiative he introduced at the meeting was 'each one, bring one', that encourages each member to bring another person to Rotary each year in an effort to grow membership.

We are currently scoping a range of projects including international projects and have some exciting meetings and presentations coming up. Now more than ever we will continue to be people of action, in innovative and exciting new ways.