The Rotarians offer these annual awards in recognition of people in our community worthy of special attention. The three awards presented on the evening covered the categories of, ‘a young person’, ‘a civil or public servant’, and ‘an Elder’.
Also joining the gathering were many of the Speakers who come along to Rotary weekly meetings and help make these so interesting. Over the course of the last twelve months the Club has had the pleasure of being enlightened on a wide range of subjects, too many to mention!
Hosting this year’s event, Tony Nation, President, said ” Thank you for giving up your time to come and talk to us. You have all been wonderfully interesting and we are pleased that as a Club we have been able to help some of the charities and organisations you support. A toast to the Speakers”.
He then went on to introduce the first award of the night. The Youth Award. “This year’s recipient is Sean Frendo” Mr.Nation announced.
Sean was kindly nominated for this award by Johanna Ferrari and Karen Gomez from Sponsored Patients GHA.
We congratulate him on his bravery, courage and spirit in enduring his problems.
The Civil Servant Award was presented to Melvyn Farrell.
Melvyn has served as Clerk to the Gibraltar Parliament and has been Gibraltar's electoral Returning Officer for several years. that Hansard is now made available within days of a Parliamentary session being held.
In both roles he has always conducted himself with great integrity and dignity, even in the most trying of circumstances. For this reason we are pleased to present him with the Rotary Club of Gibraltar Civil Servant of the Year Award."
The final presentation was the Elder Award. This year the award has had its name changed. Tony Nation explained “Before we proceed to present this award, I would just like to inform you that this award has had a name change. It used to be called the Honoured Elder Award, but this year, in recognition of a very good friend of ours, who was a long-standing
Rotarian and Past President of our Club and who sadly passed away earlier this year. With the kind permission of his family, this award will now be referred to as the Joe Gaggero Honoured Elder Award This award is presented to an elder member of our community who continues to offer help and support to others within the community, mainly through voluntary work, and we hope by doing so, they keep themselves young.
So, the person who this year receives the Joe Gaggero Honoured Elder Award I am pleased to announce, is Mr. John Garro.
John is a volunteer who works with the Gibraltar Society for Cancer Relief, who has for years been dedicated to the service that this charity gives. He thoroughly deserves recognition and thanks.
Helen White who is nurse manager of the Lady Williams Cancer Support Centre kindly submitted John’s nomination. Please join with me in congratulating John on his unselfish and supportive work to those, who for no fault of their own, find themselves in need.”
The evening ended with the presentation of a picture of Gibraltar painted by Vin Mifsud to a fellow Rotarian, Nigel Hawes.
Nigel returns to the UK to be with his family Nigel has been an excellent example of what Rotary is all about – Service Above Self – and has put in a lot of hours and hard work during the time he has been with us, and he will be sorely missed. We send him on his way with our very best of wishes and good fortune for the future, he is to of course come and see us occasionally, and we sincerely hope that he finds a Club to his liking near him in Sussex where he can keep up the good work.
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