Rotary – The blog of Steve Root

Amazing Stories of Polio – in a shop window

One reason I’ve posted less and less to my blog this year is because I’ve joined a Rotary club. Rotary has been a tremendous amount of fun and given me a real big buzz of feel good factor seeing the difference my effort, combined with others, can make as we ‘Do good things‘.

The best thing for me this year has to be converting an empty shop window in Canterbury to an educational display about Polio, re-using enlarged images from a comic called “Amazing Stories of Polio”. I’m going to unashamedly claim credit for the idea of this window display, or at least, I joined ideas from other places to come up with this one. However it wouldn’t have happened without the help, both in time, effort and resources of friends who shared the vision.

We’re not talking a small effort either. From getting permission to re-use the artwork, to finding the shop, to the managing agent agreeing, to the graphic design, the printing of the large panels (which in itself took many hours) and the hours spent hanging them carefully in the window of the empty shop.

I’ve still a lot of things to write about the window project and I’ll probably never be satisfied with anything enough to put it here in full. So, without further ado, why not follow this link to the artist, Steve Buccellato’s blog to read all about it.

Other ideas are in the pipeline. I expect I’ll be posting less and less to this blog as a result.

Are you in Medway on Friday?

If you’re in Medway on Friday evening, 17th July, please consider going to to this event organised by some friends of mine.
Thanks everyone!
– – – –

Dear Steve,

Only a week to go until the big event which promises to be the biggest of its kind ever seen in Medway.

As you know, our group of volunteers, attached to the Rotary club of Medway, is aiming to raise funds to End Polio Now once and for all.

Its still infecting hundreds of children and adults in some parts of the world and its presence is still here in Medway; among the audience next Friday night will be local people who know first hand how the disease affects patients.

We need your help, so please let me know how many tickets you want and whether I should post them to you or leave them at the reception at Dickens World.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Best wishes

Clive Lawrence
Rotary Club of Medway

PS And if you know anyone else who might be interested in supporting the campaign, please point them in my direction!

DATE: FRIDAY 17 JULY
TIME: 7.30pm
WHERE: BRITANNIA THEATRE, DICKENS WORLD, CHATHAM MARITIME ME4 4LL
COST: 10 PER TICKET
CHEQUES: ROTARY CLUB OF MEDWAY
ADDRESS: c/o 1 SOUTH AVENUE GILLINGHAM ME8 6EG

Rotary International Convention 2009 – Volunteering

The afternoon of the first day was my turn to volunteer. There was no pressure to volunteer but no good reason no to. There were two perks of volunteering, the first was an orange cap with the Birmingham convention badge upon it (Believe me, it’s a perk, one American asked wher eto buy them from) and the second was meeting Rotarians from all over the world as I gave out the goody bags.

One of the noticable traights of Rotarians is their age, most Rotarians are over 60, many over 50. Being the only male volunteer that looked youthful (now I’m the grand old age of 33). Immediately I was given the job of moving boxes full of goody bags from the back store into the distribution area. Having moved all those in fairly quick time, I had to get bags from the ‘container’. No problem I thought, these boxes are easy to move and they told me there was a pallet truck – just like being at work really. Well, not quite. All the bags that were boxed had already been moved in, all the remaining were loose. Some small attempt at bundling them had been made, strapping them in groups of 20, but most of these fell apart if not when carried when the whole pile would collapse. Still, there was no point moaning about it and another Rotarian, Colin, who came from Scotland was helping too, so we had a good chat about the differences in our clubs and the projects we’re involved in.

Giving out the bags, we had one returned from an Australian lady who (rather appropriately as she said herself) had been given an incorrectly printed bag. All the text and logos were printed upside down! So, I gave her another and suggested she tell all the local media back home how we Brits had made merry fun with her by giving her the misprinted bag, and that they can use it as an excuse to recruit more people into the great environment Rotary is. She went away happy. Rotary really is as much about fun and fellowship as “Doing Good Things“.

The next post will be about the Opening Ceremony that was held this morning but that will have to wait until later. Shortly we leave for the Medieval Spectacular at Warwick Castle.