Foundation Report, July to October, 2006

Committee and financial contribution to Foundation

Members of our 2006/07 committee met in June to produce a programme for this Rotary year (as covered below). We also recommended an increase in our per capita contribution to Foundation - the resultant total contribution will be further boosted by our increased membership. Our recommendations were agreed by the club at Assembly.

Ambassadorial Scholars and 2007 Garden Party

Three members of our club attended the gathering to 'Meet The Scholars' at Benson Village Hall on October 12th. We enjoyed hearing from the Ambassadorial Scholars coming to our District this year, two to Reading University and eight to Oxford, and being able to talk to most of these individually. We are inviting two to our Garden Party next summer.

We have scheduled a Foundation Garden Party for next summer on similar lines to those we have enjoyed in previous years - these are a tradition for our club (see separate report for last year's). There will be a hot buffet lunch provided by caterers as last year followed by talks by visiting Ambassadorial Scholars.

Group Study Exchange (GSE)

At our meeting with our Friends group on July 12th we were pleased to welcome Bonnie Martel of our District's 2005/06 Group Study Exchange team, which visited Australia in autumn 2005. Rotarian Alan French, the team leader, also kindly assisted in place of another team member unfortunately unable to attend. Alan gave us a short overview of the GSE team and the visit objectives. Bonnie then gave us a much appreciated forty minute presentation, covering both her own and other team members experiences -including various educational, personally challenging and amusing episodes.

This Rotary year there will be a GSE exchange with Hong Kong (details on the District 1090 website). We had hoped to have found a candidate for our District's team but this did not come to fruition. We have suggested a possible contribution to the programme for the visiting team.

Matching Grant

We are very pleased to have secured a District Simplified Grant towards a minibus for Kennel Lane school (see our club's Community report for details of the project). Thanks to the District Committee, especially to Carol Hall, for the help - and to our committee member, Rodney Hobbis, for his work on this.

Brian Millis
Foundation Committee Chairman
January, 2007