Invercargill Rotary club ready for its second century
With 100 years of community projects to mark, the Rotary Club of Invercargill is not about to let nostalgia trump impetus.
Invercargill and Southland are full of examples of the club’s achievements since it was founded on February 25, 1924, but president Chami Abeysinghe is no less enthusiastic about the work lying ahead.
The anniversary was an appropriate time to reflect on past achievements, she said, but the club also aimed to “reinvigorate long-held community partnerships from years gone by”.
Its purpose, from the outset, was about service above self for the good of others, and this remained at the heart of Rotary community projects.
In past decades this had included lighting the city’s water tower and contributions to the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, gardens at Southland Hospital, and the paddling pool, play equipment and shelter facilities at Queens Park.
Among its continuing projects were annual working bees at the Deep Cove Hostel in Doubtful Sound, and supporting the development of young people through Rotary youth leadership awards and school partnerships.
The increasingly large-scale Rotary Book Sale, now in its 43rd year, had raised more than $1 million, which was donated back to the community through local charities.
Recently, Rotary had strengthened its focus on the environment, reflected in the reinstatement of a pond at the Omaui camp for environmental education.
The continuing work at Omaui connected the present with the past, Abeysinghe said. One of the club’s first working projects had been conducting working bees at the health camp, and the club and the YMCA had maintained a connection since 1929.
An anniversary dinner was being held in Invercargill today, and a new booklet was being prepared to update club histories written for the 50th and 75th anniversaries.
It took the club until 1992 to take a historic vote to allow women to become members. The first to enter was Christine French, a Rhodes scholar who is now a justice on the bench of the Court of Appeal.
The club’s lunchtime meetings have drawn speakers from all walks of life. Among the most notable was an honorary member, Addie Adamson, the city’s former mayor and a himself a centenarian, who had walked there to give his impromptu talk.
It has also maintained the hard-case tradition of imposing lighthearted fines for offences real and perceived.
Mostly perceived, that is. In one case the sergeant-at-arms had the cheek to disregard a tradition of not fining guests, and hit up Sir Alec Douglas-Home, referred to in the club’s history as Lord Home, for a little something.
His cited offence, regrettably, is unrecorded. But his public standing seems to have withstood that wee whiff of scandal. He went on to become Britain’s prime minister.