Wow, what a meeting! The main event was the Rotary 4-Way Test Public Speaking Competition, and not only did we have 5 great speakers from Bowral High (2), Frensham, Moss Vale High and Oxley, but we had a swag of visitors from the Bowral Mittagong and Moss Vale Clubs  as well as teachers from the four schools. We were also graced with the presence of our District Governor Elect, Peter Ford, who came all the way from Murrumbateman to be with us. I suspect that, despite their excellent turn-out, RCBD members were significantly outnumbered in the end. After a tightly fought competition, the judges from each of the three Southern Highlands Clubs had a very difficult task in selecting the winner. My congratulations to Jade Gillis from Oxley College who was chosen unanimously as the winner, but only by a very small margin. Jade will now go on to compete at the District level and we wish her all the best in the next round. At the conclusion of the competition, Chris Young gave a very polished and informative wash-up by giving each speaker some pointers on how they might develop their public speaking skills for future presentations. Then Peter Ford helped me present Participation Certificates to each of the contestants. It must have been quite a challenge for each of them to stand up and speak to such a large and somewhat older crowd. In due course a suitable winner’s prize will also be delivered to Jade. My heart-felt thanks go to all those RCBD members who made this event such a success – Bridget Cosyn, Lyndall McGrath, Melissa Meredith, Chris Young and Richard Krohn in particular. Also I would like to express my appreciation for the positive support from the other two Highlands Clubs, and I hope this will be the first of many successful combined activities this Rotary year.
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es MAFO ships to the Democratic Republic of Congo every year. She is team leader of the Emergency Medicine Education Project, a RAWCS initiative sponsored by the Rotary E-Club of Greater Sydney. In 2015 Vera launched a far-reaching training program in the DRC, a nation of more than 80 million people with no paramedics and few ambulances. She has now trained more than 400 doctors and nurses in seven provinces and has moved on to help develop an academic program there in emergency medicine. She will be there again in October this year, despite the two outbreaks of Ebola virus that have occurred in recent months. As if all of this wasn’t enough Vera also managed to fit in the birth of her first child – a son, Marcus – in July.
spital, but this represents only a fraction of what she does for bowel surgery patients. Active in the Illawarra region she has run education days and acted as volunteer Ambassador for the Illawarra Combined Rotary Clubs bowel scan campaigns. For 15 years she has run a bi-monthly support service for patients and their families. In 2013 she volunteered to go to Kenya as a stomal therapy nurse and has made return visits over four years. For the last two years she was a delegate to the World Council of Enterostomal Therapists, most recently at the 22nd annual congress in Kuala Lumpur.
