Rotary at the Convent

The Rotary Club of Gibraltar recently held a ploughman's lunch fund-raising event in the Convent Cloisters. The afternoon was part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations and Rotary thanks the Governor for his hospitality. The lunch was well attended by members of the public who enjoyed a lovely sunny day in beautiful surroundings with entertainment by popular local musician Wally.

Mr Pepe Rosado kindly provided guided tours of the King's Chapel to those present. Pepe is well known for his wealth of information on the history of Gibraltar and in particular that of the Convent and the Chapel.

There were also a number of stalls. These included a bookstall from Childline, a selection of fabrics and items from Denville Designs, homemade cakes provided by Mrs Anne Nation, lamps kindly donated by the Governor's wife Lady Johns and a tombola to raise funds for the Water Barrels for Africa project.

Five models from the recent Fashion Week Show also made a bfrief appearance wearing creations by Reene Weston, renowned international designer.

The Rotary Club confirmed that the whole event was extremely successful and the funds raised will be used for local charities.

ROTARY GRANTS COMMUNITY AWARDS

The Rotary Club of Gibraltar held its annual Vocational Award Presentations and Speakers Party recently at the Royal Calpe.

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.

Lord and Lady Prescott launch Roll Out the Barrel for Africa

Former Deputy Leader of the U.K. Labour Party, Lord John Prescottt and his wife, Lady (Pauline) Prescott were recently in Gibraltar on a private visit. The couple enjoyed an informal lunch in a local Restaurant, The Landings, with their friends of many years, Gordon Vickers, owner of the Mill & Spa Hotel in Chester and a local Rotarian and Joe Bossano, Minister for Employment. Also present were the Chief Minister, Fabian Picardo and Rotarian, Lyana Armstrong-Emery.


Lord Prescott was so interested in learning all about the project 'Roll out the Barrel for Africa' he donated and autographed the first barrel. No sooner done he jokingly said "you had better make that two!" A reference to the various sobriquets (nicknames) made by the media during his political career and referring to 'two jags Prescott'.

Gordon Vickers said "The project is being organised locally by the Rotary Club of Gibraltar. It involves sending as many as possible 40 litre water barrels to Africa so that families can roll the barrels of water instead of carrying the water on their heads over great distances.The barrels only cost £30 each. I'm delighted that Lord Prescott has sponsored the barrels and am sure that it will bring joy to a family or two in Africa." In support, the Chief Minister very kindly added his own barrel.

Fact: Over 2.4 billion people in the world have to collect and carry water from wells, pumps, taps, streams or rivers in containers as small as a bottle or as large as a small oil drum. The average distance that women and children in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world walk to collect and carry the water is six to ten kilometres every day. the average weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads or backs can be anything up to thirty kilos (children as young as four years carry five to ten kilos!) - the equivalent of your airport luggage allowance. For more information visit http://www.rolloutthebarrel.org/

Anyone wishing to sponsor a barrel or make a donation should send a cheque made out to Rotary Club of Gibraltar and write on the reverse side 'water barrels'. Cheques should be sent to P O Box 676, Gibraltar.

Fun Day Outing to Esteves Bodegas - Jerez

Saturday 24 March at 09.00 saw 13 Club Members with their 5 guests trooping through the frontier on their way for a ‘fun day’ outing to Jerez. We had an excellent tour of the Real Tesoro bodega with a very charming guide.

We were shown barrels galore, horse-drawn wagons and tack, the horses themselves, (which Jane went googoo over) and witnessed a rather strange gathering of domino players.

We then got down to the important ‘bit’ of having a taster!! This was soon followed by a buying frenzy in the shop, so some of us (well most) could re-stock the sherry and brandy content of our individual booze lockers.

Then it was all off for a long leisurely Spanish lunch in Puerto San Maria. A very enjoyable day’s outing.

December Casemate Stalls

The Rotary Club of Gibraltar held a music and fund-raising morning in Casemates on Saturday 10th December. The event was based just outside Burger King from 10a.m. onwards. The stars of the show were The Calpe Rooke Band who played a special selection of seasonal music including many old favourites.


Everyone was welcomed to join in, to help boost the Christmas spirit in Gibraltar and share the Rotary motto of “service above self”.

People were asked to donate a winter coat which was distributed to people in need and also give a toy if they could. Santa collected these and gave them to needy girls and boys in local hospitals and homes.

Rotarians set up three stalls in Casemates. Two of them provided bric-a-brac and books and the third featured a useful gift-wrapping service so people could take their presents along for a professional 'wrap' and save themselves the work while helping to raise funds for local charities.

KGV Christmas Party

The KGV Christmas Party went off very well and our thanks fo to Jennifer for organising the event. There must have been a record number of residents this year as the dining hall was packed, so much so that when we were entertained by Vicente and his dance troupe they hardly had sufficient room to give us a twirl and show their talents!
There was plenty of goodies to eat and drink and President Tony thanked all those who helped with making and providing it all. Santa didn't let us down and made a timely appearance to cheer up everyone and of course to hand out the presents.

The mystery of  Rotary's disappearing pineapple is finally resolved,....... Rudolph the red nose reindeer, seen hiding in the kitchen, ate it !!

Past 1120 DG's Himansu Basu Visit to the Club