All in purple for Purple Pinkies!

Purple Pinkies Pub Crawl Picks up Prize!

This year London Rotaract brought home the World Rotaract Week prize for best End Polio Now event, against hopefuls from across Great Britain & Ireland.

Every year World Rotaract Week takes place in March and Rotaract in Great Britain & Ireland hold a competition in support of the End Polio Now $100 Million challenge. All across the nation clubs are encouraged to be creative and find new ways of raising awareness for End Polio Now and to raise a minimum of US$100. The more people who get involved the better.

This year the Rotaract London clubs decided to join forces to raise awareness and funds for End Polio now. We chose a strip of pubs in Hammersmith, arranged permission in advance and went from pub to pub handing out leaflets, answering questions and collecting donations. Did we mention that we were all wearing purple? Yes, as part of the theme everyone had something purple so we were a large purple mass moving from pub to pub, attracting attention for the cause. We collected more than our US$100 target and more than that, we handed out lots of leaflets and answered questions about polio and spoke about the work of Rotary International. Rotarians showed their support too, helping us with the Tabbards, Buckets and End Polio Now flyers and we even had a Rotarian join us for the event. It was great to have the clubs uniting for a common cause and the night was a success! The District 1130 Rotaractors were named this year’s competition winners – a great start to a great year.

Look out for us in next year’s competition!

On the move!

 Taking a break before we hit the road again!

All in purple, including our Rotarian, Sarah.

District Rotaract Officer Celine Pasty with Immediate Past Rotaract District Chairman Lydia Johnson, accepting the Presidential Citations from Immediate Past District Governor Storrie

Rotaract Rewarded!
The first Rotary in London District Council Meeting for this year saw four of the London
Rotaract Club’s awarded Presidential Citations.

Immediate Past District Governor David Storrie presented awards to the Rotaract Clubs of
Ealing, Putney, Westminster and Hampstead Hendon & Golders Green. Projects undertaken
by the Rotaract clubs last year included a chicken farm for a community in Kenya,
rejuvenation of a school library in Romania and fundraising to build a bridge for a South
American community. These are in addition to the numerous bucket collections, breakfast
mornings, soup kitchens and other community events the Rotaract clubs organize each year.
Last year Rotaractors also engaged in hikes to the Peak District, a historical tour of Carfe
Castle and excursions to Weymouth and Saffron Walden. The clubs are elated to receive
Presidential Citations.

The awards follow the former District Governor’s visits to each of the clubs during his
term last Rotary year. The visits were part of the District Governor’s message for the year,
which included promoting Rotary’s support in New Generations and building long term
membership for Rotary clubs.

At their January 2011 meeting, the RI Board of Directors took two decisions that affect Rotaract in our district:
1) Rotaract clubs should appoint Rotarian mentors to the Rotaractors in the Rotaract clubs they sponsor. This will help Rotaractors increase their professional and leadership skills and improve the connection between the Rotaractors and Rotarians from the sponsor Rotary club.
2) Beginning in 2011-12, Rotaract club presidents must submit updated Rotaract club membership lists electronically to RI twice a year. The lists must include the names, e-mail addresses, and gender of each club member. Rotaract clubs that do not submit this information to RI in a two-year period will be terminated. Specific information about the new system for updating RI with Rotaract club and membership data will be sent in a future communication.

Celine Pasty

Our new District Rotaract Officer is Jesse Lambe (Rotary Club of Putney). Sarah Ball is taking leave of absence from 1 February and so queries about Rotaract should now go to Jesse.  Rotaract questions can also be directed to Lydia Johnson, the Rotaract District Chair.