Service before Self is the Rotary Motto, and January saw us living up to it. Members dedicated time on a very cold January morning to collecting Christmas trees in support of St Margaret’s Hospice and at the following business meeting signed up to supporting new projects in ’25 that will very much be in the spirit of giving service to the community.

50 Trays of Bread

The first Monday saw us back at the Crown for supper, a little fellowship and a brilliant talk by local celebrity and baker, Bob Burns. Bob is a past Rotarian and was awarded a MBE in 2016 for services to the community. Born and raised in Glastonbury, Bob set up his first bakery in the early 80’s and has never looked back. With the next generation taking up the reigns, Bob is now concentrating on his baking school. Never one to miss an opportunity, he not only kept members enthralled with stories from his youth and the bakery, but also gave his new book a little bit of promotion – and the title, well, easy to guess “50 Trays of Bread”.

Collecting Used Xmas Trees

Not as crazy as it sounds. Members of the public are invited to register on a web site organised by St Margaret’s hospice for their ‘used’ Xmas tree to be collected and taken to a recycling centre for the princely sum of £15 a tree. Wells Rotary (more strictly John Lover) then organises members into teams to go round collecting them on a designated Saturday and transporting them to the recycling centre on the Mendips

This year four teams with cars and trailers collected over 110 trees, raising circa £1500 for the hospice. A splendid effort and well done to John and team.

Kerry from St Margaret’s has already written to express heartfelt thanks for everyone’s help with the collection this year, confirming that their time and effort made a real difference. Including the contribution from Wells Rotary, well over 2,000 trees were collected raising in total over £32,850 for the hospice, which will hugely impact the community.

Kerry will be joining us at the March business meeting at the Museum to update members on the work of St Margaret’s..

...and Back at the Museum

The third Monday of the month saw us back at the Wells & Mendip Museum for our monthly business meeting. A busy evening that kicked off with the judging of entries for the Young Photographer of the Year Competition. There were 3 categories. Post meeting the judging panel lead by Nick James ARPS from DH James photographic shop on Sadler St met to finalise the judging and confirmed the three winning entries as:

Junior Category                            Intermediate Category                         Senior Category

 Calming Ripples by Sonny       Morning School Run by  Kylie    Sunset Reflections by Heidi

The winning entries have been forwarded into the District 1200 competition and the entrants placed first, second and third in each category have been awarded a gift voucher to exchange at DH James.

Ray then took to the floor, presenting to the club the proposal that Wells Rotary should support the D1200 Rotary Kids Out project in 2025. This would involve members organising for disadvantaged children from local schools to participate in the Rotary Children's Fun Day at Longleat. The Kids will have a trip through the Safari Park and use of the various amusements. Subject to Ray being able to agree detailed arrangements on participation, the club agreed to the proposal. As many of the children are likely to have special needs, the project will require that a number of members give time to helping take the children there and helping look after them on the day.

Alan followed Ray with an update on the Postcard Art exhibition, to which he and other members of the club are giving substantial time. This project is in support of the Wells & Mendip Museum which, although it has excellent collections and full accreditation status, is struggling with its finances, particularly its routine running costs. Income is derived from various sources including one off fund-raising efforts by the Trustees.

To this end Wells Rotary club has joined forces with the museum trustees to organise an exhibition and auction of postcard art. Postcard size pieces of artwork donated by local artists are being exhibited and sold through auction to raise funds. The club has set up an on-line catalogue on the Wells Rotary web site to facilitate a blind auction for all pieces and will be helping the Trustees to set up and run an exhibition of the art pieces at the museum ahead of a live auction set for the evening of 22nd February.

Using the projector and main screen, Alan took members through a demonstration of the on-line catalogue and silent auction web pages.

Finally Angela and Mike presented the outline proposal for the club to join with Wells City Harriers in organising the Wells Festival of Running. If adopted as a club project, this would be a major undertaking for the club and would involve substantial effort but could become a significant annual community-facing event. Subject to exploring the proposal in greater detail the members present confirmed positive support for continued dialogue and discussion with the Harriers