2018 - 19 Trevor's Year

28th June 2018 - Handover to Trevor was a brief, low key affair with none of the usual confusion - other than Trevor dropped his chain of office, Maggie & Jane looked bewildered when Trevor asked that they both join him to receive the regalia for Senior Vice president. The usual "photo call" took place and the meeting was closed at just after 8.30.

At the beginning of Trevor's year he said:

"Our New Year, will it be a good year? I hope so.

Ours is an innovative Club, we take on many challenges and help people in our Community and Internationally.

I hope our work with the Community continues, particularly the newly established RotaKids, with Robert Miles Primary School in Bingham. The School has an enthusiastic group of pupils who have shown they can come up with good ideas. We will support them, where they want us.

The Memory Café continues its work with those experiencing memory problems. It is good to have a strong group of Rotarians and family volunteers, who run and present monthly entertainment.

As I write this the detailed planning work for the 9^th Vale’s Got Talent Show, has already begun. Each year the competitors astound us with their talents. Sponsors and advertisers in our Programme help fund the event, which also raises money for our Community and International work.

Our annual Charity Programme will shortly be confirmed. This year, more than ever, we will need to balance the effort required to raise Charity Funds and the Programmes of donations we can afford to support.

There are already procedural changes in hand to review how we assess the work of charities we may support. Ensuring that we introduce Conflict of Interest in the way we work will be important for now and in the future. There may be other new requirements to consider. Internally we have had to adopt new forms of working within our Club to ensure day-to-day management continues to run smoothly.

During the recent, visit by our new District Governor, Dr. Cheryle Berry, she recognised that we were an inspirational Club, and one which has a positive attitude. I know this spirit will continue.

Thanks to the Members of the Vale of Belvoir Rotary Club for their hard work."

Our first 2 months(July-August 2018)

Our Second 2 months(September-October 2018)

Our third 2 months(November-December2018)

Our fourth 2 months(January-February2019)

2 May 2019Our 29^th Charter Night Our 29th Charter Night was held at The Nottinghamshire Golf and Country Club. There were 70 of us for dinner and President Elect Maggie gave us a heartfelt toast to Rotary International, mentioning our Child Aid Uganda involvement and the solar Lighting project. DG Cheryle gave the Club a glowing report for our establishment of the first Rota kids Club in the district at Robert Miles school, Bingham. She explained that this had inspired other Clubs and she was anticipating about a further 18 Rota Kids Clubs to be announced this year.  A special mention was also made about our Memory Cafe that takes place each month in Cotgrave and to this end President Trevor announced the award of a Paul Harris Fellow to Mrs Gerry Thompson. She has been involved from the start of the Cafe, about 4 years ago and drives all the organisation and teamwork in maintaining an interesting programme for this successful activity at the Cafe. Following the standard speeches we were entertained by Grace H-Y, the winner of our ninth Vale's Got Talent, with powerful renditions of "I didn't Plan it", "The Wizard" and "She used to be me", which were much appreciated by all. Grace has recently successfully auditioned for the main role in ”Sister Act - The Musical" which will be staged at the Playhouse on 12th & 13th July 2019. 

All in all another very successful Charter                                                                                                                                                                                                                AR

9 May 2019Visit to Anaerobic Digester at Stoke Bardolph ‘The Concrete Cow’ – John Jackson, Farms manager and Plant Manager

Rob Gray organised a superb visit to this interesting site, where we were presented by John with a very informative video and slide performance followed by a tour of “The Concrete Cow”, as John referred to it.

The video was good background information on ‘Delivering the future of Water’, which put into perspective their main regulated water business and their ‘renewable Energy’ businesses of CHP and Severn Trent Green Power Ltd. John questioned the audience on their views as to whether ‘Climate Change’ is a real issue or just a business driven opportunity.  The majority convinced it is a real issue.  Currently the Anaerobic plant at Stoke Bardolph is fed from crops: 80% maize silage and 20% Rye silage, but in the future there will be a Government Driven strategy to use food waste. The history of this site was outlined going back to 1880, when it was compulsory purchased and used for dumping sewage for Nottinghamshire.  As the regulations were not as stringent as present times, over the years there has been extensive use of the farm land for the recycling of sewages the ‘business/industrial/ community, so no crops for ‘human consumption’ can be grown on this vast farming area due to elevated metal levels within the soils..  So the crops for feeding the anaerobic digester on this Severn Trent land at Stoke Bardolph are used to feed the concrete cow  and currently supplemented by about 36 local farmers. The crop feed goes through the 3 ‘stomachs’ over about 70 days at a temperature between 38 and 42 oC and 7.8 PH, allowing the ‘bugs’ to do their work to release 54% methane gas.  Some of which is used to go through the CHP engines to feed electricity into the grid and the rest is ‘upgraded’ to ‘town’ gas at 98% methane content, supplemented by some propane to produce the required calorific values demanded by Cadent and the gas grid.  The plant is manufactured by Schmack, a German company as they are the leaders in these systems with about 8000 operating in Germany, compared to 350 in the UK.  John shared their business plans with us with 15.2 GWh being generated in the first plan,, rising to 23GWh pa in 2013 to 2016 and currently targeting 44 GWh pa.

We were then transported by tractor trailer to tour the actual plant, which operates 24/7 mainly automatically, other than the diggers that feed the crop stock into the feed tank. A number of questions were put to John regarding costs, operation efficiency, crops for human consumption v crops for energy generation, all of which he handled effectively with great knowledge and professionalism, which was much appreciated by the 22 Rotarians present.

Rob provided a Vote of thanks and a ‘bottle’ and we all trooped off for our supper at The Earl of Chesterfield well prepared after this “appetiser” with its mouth-watering aromas!       AR

16 May 2019Scatter night

23 May 2019Committee week

30 May 2019 Hedgehog Rehabilitation – Angela Hall

Before the meal started President Elect Jane made a cheque presentation to 15 year old Marth Harris, who despite her disabilities has been competing in wheelchair tennis and has the ambition to reach the next Paralympics.

Next Past President Adrian explained that his daughter Jennifer had started running, losing over 4 stone in weight and completed the Edinburgh Half Marathon last week end.  Naturally Dad Ade and brother Peter joined her to give her support and a Sponsor sheet was circulated to be donated to The Notts/Lincs Air ambulance, which was well supported by members present.

Rob reported on his visit to Mapperley RC Charter and also mentioned that he and Chris had helped the Robert Miles Rota Kids with their Litter picking on the Bingham Linear walk last Thursday.

Angela Hall, a Bingham Chiropodist, has been helping orphaned and injured hedgehogs for 14 years after her husband found an injured hedgehog on their front lawn. Angela qualified as a registered Hedgehog Rehabilitator at the Vale Wildlife Hospital in Gloucestershire. She is one of around 700 such people in the UK. The animals are closely related to the vole/shrew, have poor eyesight but have good hearing and sense of smell. She explained that these animals are becoming endangered due mainly to the reduction in the number of hedgerows/use of pesticides. In 1950 there were estimated to be 30 million and the figure is now nearer 1 million. With great enthusiasm and humour she talked about some of the issues faced in trying to rescue and release back into the wild rescued hedgehogs. In particular she recounted the magical experience of feeding young at 3.00 in the morning and the dangers of flying poo! Often it is dehydration that is the issue with ‘poorly’ hedgehogs and the remedy is 2 or 3 injections of saline solutions, which is not an easy process alone as you have to pinch the skin in which to insert the needle. If we encounter a hedgehog in our gardens she told us not to feed it with bread or milk and definitely not fish but instead put down cat or dog food. This was a very entertaining and informative talk appreciated by all at club.                                CN

Thursday 20^th June - Document Management System John Carr

Rotarian John Carr DG for the Derwent Group and next year’s District secretary spoke about the introduction of DMS (Document Management System) for administration in Rotary.  This system replaces APAC. John was very informative, enthusiastic and confident that this was the best system for the way forward in Rotary. He guided us through the system step by step and explained its advantages.  All Rotarians can use DMS but need to log on with their Rotary password.

Once we all understand DMS it will be easy to use. It has lots of new features and will be time saving for club secretaries and presidents.  This next year there will be no District Handbook so Rotarians will need to access DMS to acquire information about other clubs and we will be able to make our own club handbook at the touch of a button. . As long as club secretaries regularly update new information the system will always be more accurate than the yearly handbook information.

John brought the greeting of his Bretby club and best wishes from President Carol Moralee.   MBC

Thursday 27th June - Handover