Bulletin for July 2024

                                                  Rotary Club of Cheltenham North 

                                                               July 2024 Bulletin 

From our outgoing President Kevin Gwilliam Rotary AGM/Handover Report – June 17 2024. 

Dear Fellow Cheltenham North - Rotarians. 

My year is now ending, and I will hand over the baton shortly to Nigel. 

My presidency certainly started with a bang and without any warning, the club had to look at alternative venues due to several factors that The New Club wanted to impose on the club, restrictions in terms of use of space, a huge price increase and no choice in the meal. 

After a lot of research Maureen and her team did a fantastic job in securing the Queens as the new venue, which the club endorsed. Initially there were teething problems, but these have since been ironed out and I personally think we have a very good venue which suits the club’s needs. 

Maureen continues to do a grand job of liaising with the Queens and the club over the venue and meals and I am sure it will go from strength to strength. 

As you know my main charity is to continue to support National Star’s new facilities, following Janets generous donation in her year. When it comes distributing raised monies, 

I would also like to continue to support Gwynne’s Community and Youth and Rosanne’s International work with their various sponsorship and support of local groups. Lots of thanks to both and their committees for the support throughout the year.

As Linda’s report say various small donation amounts totalling just under £4,000. have already been given out I must also thank all participating Rotarians in their support of the children at Rowanfield and Belmont schools, Young Carers, Hamper Scamper, Shelter Box, School in a Bag, Kids Out etc throughout the year. 

Organised fund-raising events has always been at the heart of the club’s programme. 

I believe the club has done well in these tough economic times to attract participation and more importantly parting with har hard earned cash. 

The first being the Wine Festival which had to be cancelled at days’ notice due to structural issues being discovered at the Pump Rooms. Steve and his committee manged to let all parties know in a very short space in time with most exhibitors returned on April 13th which was at the new venue the Fitness Centre of Cheltenham Ladies College. It was the unknown how successful it would be due to the change of 2 date and venue, but it turned out to be well attended and exhibitors were happy. Although monies raised were slightly down on last year, we still raised £6300. So well done to Steve and team. 

The Carol Concert again proved to be popular raising £4700 so my thanks go to Gill and her team. We were delighted that Alex Chalk MP for Cheltenham (Secretary of State for Justice) could attend along with several other dignitaries. It was a great evening and I do hope Nigel will continue to develop this evening. 

Thanks, must also go to Richard in rallying the troops for Fireworks and Love Thy Turf event where our support was needed for both events which raised £2690. 

We were fortunate to be able to again take up the offer of hosting teas and cakes at the Snowdrop weekend. It has been several years since this took place due to Covid. Again, many thanks to all your hard work on the event and to the master bakers! An incredible £2965 was put into the charity pot. 

About 170 people attended the Pendyrus Male Voice Choir concert held on May 18th which raised £600. My thanks go to John and Beth for organising this thoroughly enjoyable evening. 

With everything going on in the country and a tough economic time we still manged to raise just over £17,000 in total for the year for all events. My thanks to all. 

Regarding membership of the club, I am pleased to say that three new members joined during the year, bringing membership up to 40. Unlike many clubs we have a healthy club, but we must continue to try and grow Rotary. It is proving to be hard to attract new members which from my various District and National meetings appeared to be the sad case also. Thanks goes to Tony as membership officer. 

The club continues to support Cheltenham Future Club with several of our members joining their various meetings with Tony taking the chair. Sue must be congratulated in designing and managing their Garden project at Whaddon. I am please to say that this has now been built and officially opening. 

Organising the various speakers is almost a full role. A role David has taken up with gusto and I would like to thank him for this, it is not an easy role. 

Lastly, I must thank all fellow Rotarians in their support toward my year as President. It has certainly been a wavy ride during 23/24 with the various items that needed to be addressed but overall, it has as far as I am concerned been a good year and all Cheltenham North Rotarians must be congratulated in working together to resolve the issues, raise monies for our various charities and supporting the local community. 

My Thanks and my Best Wishes to Nigel in his year as President to whom I will support as much as I can.

Kevin Gwilliam President Cheltenham North Rotary Club - 2023/24

Capitation Fee for 2024/25 Linda Pawley 

As approved at the AGM, our club capitations will be £130.00 this year. 

National and District will require their share by the end of July so please pay before then but NOT before the 1st July. And it is your choice whether to pay the full amount in July or spread the payments to £65 in July and £65 in January 2025. 

I can accept payment either by bank transfer or by cheque. 

As normal, I am asking those who wish to donate something towards Foundation this year to add the amount onto the July payment. Thank you. 

General A/C details are as follows:- 

A/C Name Cheltenham North Rotary 

A/C Number 20231770 

Sort Code 20 20 15 

Gloucestershire Young Carers Vivien Barr 

On June 23rd five members of the Community committee volunteered for 2 hour slots to help at the Glos Young Carers gazebo at the Montpellier Food & Drink Festival.

We persuaded visitors to take an interest in this organisation by handing out helium balloons and stickers to children and Newsletters for adults. 

We also had a competition with a new ipad as the prize, with the entry fee being taken by Zettle technology which was a bit challenging at first but soon mastered! We had quite a steady trickle of visitors to come and see us. 

We were delighted to meet a former Young Carer who had looked after her mother with a brain tumour. She was then able to go on to teacher training with the excellent support of the staff. Her husband also was considering involving his workplace in fund raising activities as their chosen charity. 

It was heartening to know how much the Glos. Young Carers organisation had influenced the lives of many over the past 30 years. 

While we were doing this there was another celebration event taking place at Over Farm Park, near Gloucester. One group of families in the morning and another group later were taking part in all sorts of fun activities and competitions, and our Community funds had purchased prizes for the Tombola for this event. 

I would like to thank the volunteers very much for cheerfully helping with this event, it was quite an experience! 

Tour of Beards David Rees 

On Monday 10th of June 13 of us, enjoyed a most interesting visit to Beards Jewellers, where they have been located for over 60 years and which they have recently extensively updated and fitted out beautifully. 

On their first floor, they have a wonderful in-house jewellery design and remodeling facility which seems to be the cornerstone of their business. We were told that frequently people come to see them, with assorted pieces of jewelry, that they had been given or had left to them, which whilst being beautiful, may not now be in fashion, - but how by remodeling these valuable family heirlooms they are able to reincarnate them, so they become “ fashionable “ and ready to be loved and enjoyed by the next generation. 

First We were introduced to their design expert, Mike, who explained how he would discuss with the client the various possibilities of the piece of jewellery they had brought in, and who would then design for them a modern design that they could really like. 

He would then draw some beautiful illustrations of what could be made using the gold and jewels of the original piece These would then be fed into the CAD machine, (computer-aided design), and using a 3D laser printer, produce a perfect wax replica of the item that was to be made. 

This, once having been approved by the client, would then be cast in gold ready to be sent to the fabrication team ( up yet another flight of stairs ) who would set in the precious stones and do the final polishing and finishing, thus creating a beautiful, individually designed, upto-date, piece of jewelry art that would have a new life and hopefully give pleasure to someone for another many years. This is one they created earlier ! 

From there, we went back down to the watch repair department, which was beautifully laid out, resembling a cross between a laboratory and an operating theatre. 

They have recently taken over a repair agency for Omega, as well as the various other quality timepieces which they also handle on a daily basis. Their resident horologist Simon