President reflects on difficult year
AROTARY club welcomed their new president for the next year during a garden meeting.
The Rotary Club of Rochdale East announced Graham Knox as their new president during a meeting at secretary Frank Hauxwell’s garden in Rochdale.
Fourteen of the 20 members were in attendance as Graham was handed the president’s chain.
Graham is no stranger to the presidency having taken up the role in 2015/16, and reflected on the club’s work during the past year.
He said: “What I did at the meeting was review the money we’d given out.
“We’d given £1,300 to various causes, including polio which is a big Rotary worldwide project, and a number of communitybased interests that we have had for a long time.
“It is difficult in the current circumstances planning to organise big fundraising events.
“We’re going to have to concentrate on activities that do not necessarily cost a lot of money.”
In normal circumstances the group meet every Tuesday at the Royal Toby Hotel in Castleton but during the pandemic have moved to having their meetings over Zoom.
Graham, who has been a member of the group for 12 years, also gave an example of one of the ways the group has adapted during the pandemic, including working with local schools.
“We are linked into a lot of schools especially for young achievers such as for photographer and chef of the year,” Graham said.
“We also found a lot of computer equipment that could be recycled for use by those children that didn’t have access to that equipment - that’s a big one.
“That’s the sort of thing we would continue looking at helping as we go on.”
Last year was the group’s 50th anniversary and a big celebratory dinner had been planned, which has now been pushed back to October.
The group also has close ties to Springhill Hospice and has planned a fundraising dinner for them for April next year.
Graham added that he also hopes his year as president will see an increase in members.
“I’ve always been interested in service to the community,” he said.
“We’re always looking for new members and our website is being revamped quite a bit at the moment.
“The fact we tend to be an older age group should not deter anybody from interest in us.”
When asked what a successful year as president would be, Graham said: “That we have a few new members and have succeeded in helping the community.”
More information about Rotary Club of Rochdale East can be found at: www. rotary- ribi. org/ clubs/ homepage. php? Clubid =317