Safer Communities

The weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy was held at the Dean Park Hotel on Tuesday 12^th December. There were 21 members and one guest in attendance.

President Dallas mentioned that over the weekend Club Members had been busy fund raising at local supermarkets in aid of the annual children’s Christmas party, £808 was raised at Sainsbury and £974 at Asda.  Dallas thanked Ken and Zahid for their help in sourcing the presents for the party and to Sharon and Caroline who would be preparing the food.

PP Iain Gow mentioned that the Club’s donation to Equal Voice had been used to pay for a Christmas party, this is often the only social occasion the participants have all year and is therefore very significant in their lives.

This year Kirkcaldy took part in the Rotary Young Chef initiative. A number of pupils from Balwearie High School took part and the judges comments were indeed complimentary. The winner and runner up both deserved to go to the district finals, however there was only one place available for Kirkcaldy. Fortunately as one of the pupils happened to be from Burntisland the Rotary Club of Burntisland and Kinghorn were able to assist enabling both young chefs to go through to the final.

The speaker was Lisa Taylor from the Safer Communities Team at Fife Council. Community wardens have been in place across Fife since 2004, while they did a great job their powers were restricted and they often had to refer cases to either the environmental departments or the Night Time Noise team. In recent years all three services have been amalgamated and the new team of 34 officers have greater diversity in the role they perform and also greater powers. The officers have wide ranging duties from policing dog fouling offenders to assisting the police and emergency services, as well as providing proactive and preventative work in areas such as road safety and home safety.

President Dallas thanked Lisa for enlightening the Club on the role  of the Safer Communities Team.