Past District Governor Una Hobday describes herself as a proud Rotarian. She is married and has four grown children.  Una was a Registered Nurse and also held a Graduate Diploma in Health Education and a  Graduate Diploma in Professional Management.  She worked in Victoria, WA and Tasmania and retired as the Manager of Adoption Services in Tasmania. 

My Rotary Life

Why did I join Rotary International?

I had been a speaker on the changes to Aged Care to many Rotary Clubs in Perth WA, and I had heard about all the projects clubs were involved in, such as Polio Eradication, the Bali Eye Clinic, pre-school education and wheel chairs for the handicapped.  I decided that If I was asked, I would be privileged to join such a dynamic organisation.
 
A Rotary Club in Perth wanted to charter an all-woman Rotary club.   They approached me and asked if I could help them charter a club of 25 women.  After some work, the Rotary Club of Hollywood began in May 1990.

I was the first woman President in that district.  From there to Charter another Rotary Club in a town I had moved to for a job.

I was the First Woman Assistant Governor, District 9450.

I was the first female District Governor in Australasia - one of 21 women out of 540 Governors internationally, that year 1999- 2000

But why stay in Rotary?

Bali Eye Clinic
A DG came back from a holiday in Bali, being really concerned about the numbers of people that had cataracts in the poorer areas of Bali. He put a proposition to his Rotary Club that they look to providing a mobile van for the purpose of cataract surgery.  The Rotary Foundation assisted with this;

• first a Discovery Grant where a group went to Bali to look at all the political issues and community issues surrounding the idea.
• Then an application for a 4 Heath Grant- Health Hunger and Humanity Grant, which was approved. They bought a Mazda van from a school and the people in the club worked with and engineer in that club to build the inner parts of the van to enable eye surgery to take place.
• They worked with Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital and eye surgeons travelled with the van to educate Balinese surgeons in Cataract surgery. The van parked by a Puscas mas ( heath service) and worked from there.

 Communities were educated, and people came from miles around.
I was a member of that Committee as my first district Committee and helped with the training of nurses in sterilising instruments.
How could you not be moved by seeing an old lady brought by her granddaughter to the clinic and the smile on the old ladies face when she came out of the van and could see her granddaughter for the first time.
Now it is a community owned project. They have a Hospital which now does corneal transplants etc and it was the first hospital that took badly injured Australians in the Bali Bombing. - the power of 1 person to make a difference.

Polio Eradication

• We conducted Polio immunization in Mumbai, protecting 1.5 million children in one day

The Rotary Foundation

• I have an addiction to the Rotary Foundation and all the possibilities there are to assist people in the world.

I am now the International Chair of Food Plant Solutions Rotarian Action Group.  Daily, I think about this . . .3000 children died from malnutrition or malnutrition-related disease while I was asleep last night.  We can change that statistic!  You can hear more about that group when you attend the Rotary Conference this year in Hobart.

During my 29 years in Rotary, I have had an amazing opportunity to do more with my life than I had dreamed possible.  This is a quote from Clem Renoir, a past world president of Rotary International.
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And I would like to finish with a quote from Winston Churchill;
What is the use of living if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?

Another full and fulfilling meeting.  We had time for a lot of fellowship, which is always appreciated, we had three tables of Rotarians in attendance and two substantial reports as well as our guest speaker.  Plus it was Book List and we shared our list of what we've been reading lately.  Our speaker Jo Matthews is a music therapy volunteer for the Roy Fagan Centre.  Jo spoke eloquently and passionately about the value of music to unlock memories and assist in calming patients who are suffering from dementia.  Chair for the night Jim Colley heads our Community Service committee.  Jim delegated the management of the Dementia project to a subcommittee made up of Murray, Jill and Jenny, who each have professional experience and expertise to offer.

Jo was in a sense preaching to the converted as Rotarians elsewhere have been paving the way to show the value of music to assist in the treatment of dementia.  The Music for Dementia project was pioneered by the Rotary Club of Geraldton-Greenough in Western Australia, which gained national publicity for the cause.  As you can see on the banner in the above picture, they brought Jaycar on board as a sponsor, enabling us to immediately benefit from their good work.

The headsets purchased by our club have now been delivered to the Roy Fagan Centre.  Staff there are enthusiastic and keen to see how this project goes.  We can but wish them luck.

Rotary values education so in National Science Week, Rotary Club of North Hobart took the opportunity to make the purpose of our meeting this week to celebrate Science.  We were delighted that in such a busy week, two highly distinguished educators were willing to make time to come to our meeting.

Deborah has for many years used Science Week to celebrate science as a whole school effort and recounted how in her Cosgrove High days her top students included members of the Claridge family.  At Elizabeth College, Science Week now has fifty different workshops in the program so many that the "week" has had to be extended.  In his introduction and vote of thanks, Chairman Ian Geard affirmed what an honour it was to have Deb come and visit us to share her passion and enthusiasm for science.  

Diana came to teaching from a background of science advocacy and management, where she had had previous exposure to Rotary's programs that extend and motivate science students. 

Thank you to both of these inspiring guests for identifying worthy and promising students for Rotary to support through the Science Experience, The Science and Engineering Challenge and the National Youth Science Forum.  We believe that the meeting this week has strengthened the bonds of professional support and mutual respect between our club and "our" schools.

... but for Rotary Club of North Hobart, there was more ... 

Wednesday saw us back to the Black Buffalo for a family friendly bonus Rotary event, a Brain Break Morning Tea, ninety minutes of Science demonstrations and "blowing the cobwebs" off our conceptual grasp of a few interesting Science topics.  This was a success thanks to demonstrator Ralph Teirney's preparation and the support of some club members, notably the two Ians, and a dozen guests.  

Rotary International President Mark Maloney has called for Rotary events to be family friendly so for the Brain Break we included some activities simple enough to engage a toddler.  Thank you to attendees for allowing family members to join in.  

One-off events like the Brain Break give an opportunity for us to invite people who may later join Rotary or tell people about our programs.  Two of our non-Rotary guests on Wednesday had reasons to feel connected to the Rotary Club of North Hobart.  We had sponsored a family member of Lynne to NYSF and Chris was the sister of Past President Ruth.  

The Brain Break quizzes and answers are available if you would like to have a copy.  Youth brochures can also be downloaded from the Rotary Tasmania website.  

Thanks to all attendees, Black Buffalo staff, our sponsor George Kalis of Island Chai and especially to Ralph for a most enjoyable change of routine on Wednesday.

​The raffle yielded $24 for Youth Projects.

At Rotary this week, we didn't linger over our delicious Black Buffalo meals, as it was down to the business of deciding which projects would be supported this year and sorting out budget requests and practical plans.  This week it was Committees and Board meetings - in other words, the directors working with their committees then the board listening to all the ideas and discussing priorities and actions.

Traditionally, Rotary Club of North Hobart committees have been structured around the five avenues of service in Rotary - Club Service, Community Service, Youth Service, Vocational Service and International Service.

This year we have had to restructure, to be compliant with Rotary International's instruction to have a director of Membership and a Director of Public Image and committees to support those directors.  We now have our 27 members spread over six committees rather than four, but we are trialling a "paired" set-up, to take account of the freedom members need to come and go from meetings.  

So we now have Club Service (chaired by Immediate Past President David Emmett) paired with Membership (led by President Elect Brian Claridge, who is also our club's Treasurer).  Youth and Vocational Service (led by Past President David Clinch) is working alongside Community Service (with Tony Thompson as director).  Then our Public Image committee (led by Past President Jenny Kerrison) is paired with International and The Rotary Foundation (which has Past President Howie Oh as director).  Although the link between these two may not be so obvious as the other two, given the major projects our leads overseas, it makes sense that the people publicising the work of our club are well informed on those.

sA big thanks to our members for all their contributions and deliberations this week.  Read the board minutes in the Members Only section of the website.  

As president, I just "floated" during the committee meetings, doing my best not to interrupt, but going home, it was more like "floating on air" to know the club is in such great hands with this team.

A request has come in to list all members of all committees in each club bulletin, so we get used to knowing who is on which team this year.  Any more suggestions to improve club systems are most welcome. 

Finally, a note that our Director of Public Image, Jenny Kerrison, is missing in the above photo as she was in Melbourne.  She's pictured elsewhere on this site, in the About Us section.  Jenny is very busy as National Chair of RAM (Rotarians Against Malaria).  Their national conference is in only a few weeks.