Rotary Club of south Wairarapa 

In September the Club continued to support a wide range of activities, both local and international.  

As part of reaching out to the local community one of our members who has been involved in setting up the Greytown food pantry explained to us how it works. The principle is give what you can, take what you need.  The pantry is located at the Greytown Medical Centre.

Our club is also a supporter of cultural events and we had a very interesting presentation on Kokomai from Kathryn Seagrave who is on the festival board. She explained that the programme has been carefully designed so that events do not clash with one another as much as they did last year. 

Kokomai organisers were keen to include family oriented free events and as part of our 50^th anniversary the club has sponsored two free events for children – String Bean Puppets and The Paper Shaper. In addition these shows have New Zealand content as String Bean Puppets is a Wellington puppet company and the Paper Shaper has music by Wellington composer Gareth Farr. 

Another aspect of our cultural involvement is links with Kuranui College whose students have excelled at drama and dance performance. Drama teacher in charge of performing arts, Juanita McLellan, went to the Globe in 2018 to study performance and this year they asked her to return as a chaperone for the students. She gave a most entertaining, well illustrated and at times hilarious description of her experiences in London and nearby. 

Shakespeare of course featured in all of these. She and the students saw all aspects of the Globe including the high tech equipment behind the scenes and “Hell” which was a dark space underneath the stage. They worked 14 hour days and had to rehearse late at night because they were not allowed to use the theatre at times when it could be earning money from performances. It was obviously a most valuable experience.

On the international front, our club is supporting the Rotary Club of Carterton in their fundraising to end polio and the Rotary district to which we belong is organising a train ride to raise funds for this very worthwhile cause. 

World Polio Day is on Thursday, October 24th and the district is marking it by a challenge of a different sort – ride all the commuter trains in the greater Wellington region from Palmerston North to Masterton visiting all 62 stations. If you see people in red T shirts jumping on and off the train, that is part of the fundraising to help eradicate polio. You can look at our district website https://rotary9940.org/stories/ride-the-train to find out more.