Graham Clarke. A true English eccentric! Said the person sitting next to me in the Auditorium. I couldn’t put it better myself, so I’ll use those words verbatim. Graham entertained for 20 minutes, changing hats, telling his stories and poetry, playing some sort of mouth organ as a divider between scenes. I first heard of Graham about 5 years ago from his books and watercolour pictures. I gather he is a Rotarian in the maidstone area and his paintings feature on this years club directory, the confernce guide and I believe a calendar that is being sold. I’ve always liked his pictures for their simple, childlike detail that looks so simple yet I imagine would be so hard to create effectively.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
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Leonard Cheshire School 4 All.
This charity impoves the lot of the disabled children in the third world. If you think how important disability access to public buildings has become in the last few years in the UK, you might imagine the problems disabled children will have in getting to school in the third world. Couple this with generations of discrimination against those who have a disability and the result is very few will get an education. Leonard Cheshire has been working to change this.

They help fund and organise the renovation to school buildings to make access by disabled children possible. Equally important to the buildings, they work with the disabled children, the families and the wider community to enable the disabled children to be accepted into school.

This is another worthy charity but I couldn’t help feel sorry for the presenter, having to follow Help for Heroes.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
<--- Previous Post or Next Post in this series —>
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Help for heroes has been raising funds since last year to provide rehabilitation for soliders who are injured whilst on duty. While you might expect the MOD already provide this, they do but many people feel the MOD does not do enough. It appears the MOD agree, along with the government and royal family (link). They have raised 12 million pound in less than a year and already servicemen (and I guess servicewomen) are benefitting from better rehabilitation facitilities while recovering from injuries sustained while working on behalf of our country.

The presentation was exceptional and one of the best I have ever seen. They charity puts forward a strong brand, an easy to understand cause, emotional video’s of the people they are actively helping. Bryn Parry spoke clearly and concisely throughout and no opportunity was left for anyone in the audience to be without feeling for the cause. I personally felt I wanted to get working on a project in their name as soon as I left the hall. The charity is well organised too, with a commercial side selling merchandise that allows, if I remember correctly, 97% of the money donated to go to the cause. The commercial side now pays almost entirely for the overheads of staff and premises.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
<--- Previous Post or Next Post in this series —>
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