Important: Apologies/Guests to Rtn Joe Flynn by Mid-day Thursday.

                        Joe’s email is: mary.flynn4@bigpond.com

As we must pay for the meals ordered, please notify of the non-attendance of yourselves or partners.

Meeting Venue:  Rochester Wine Bar

 Following the traditional opening, President Heather welcomed Rotarians and Partners of Members to the weekly meeting.

Apologies: Joe Flynn, Russell Anderson & Bryan Griffiths

Guests: Carli Windridge, NYSF student and Andrea Windridge

ROADEC:  Trainers will meet at the ROADEC classrooms next Wednesday, 14^th May to discuss the training programme.  PP Graeme is to make a presentation at the District Assembly in support of ROADEC, a D9800 Endorsed Project and has the promotional dvd’s ready for distribution.

Court House:  Progress continues slowly.

PP Ray is to arrange for kitchen plans to be completed.

PP Russell has arranged storage for the new chairs and tables and they are to moved from their current site over the weekend of 24 -25 May.

District Assembly: The Bus will leaving the Rochester Railway Station at 6.00am sharp and will travel to Melton via the RC Eaglehawk Mechanic Institute.

Pie & Port:  Pres. Heather thanked all involved in making this event a success. Although numbers were down, those present enjoyed an evening of fellowship.

(With Change-Overs coming up could all Rotarians make an effort to reply to invitations. It makes catering for events very difficult when final numbers are not known.)

Making a Difference:  Pres. Heather now has 6 students committed to the December tour to Cambodia with 2 others expressing interest.

Guest Speaker:

Members were pleased to welcome Carli Windridge who had just returned from spending a day attending the VCE Expo being held in Melbourne.

During January 2014, Carli was one of 430 students selected from 1200 applicants to attend the National Youth Science Forum.  Her adventure began when she joined the busload of students at Glenrowan, finding that many new friendships had been formed by the time the group arrived in Canberra for their two-week experience.  A total of 140 students were in Carli’s session along with 15 international students mainly from Germany and Canada. Carli found that her perception of ‘science’ was considerably expanded from the traditional concepts of biology, chemistry and physics as she attended workshops, lectures and visits to places such as the NASA Centre where students were informed of the problems encountered by the Mars Explorer. Of particular interest was the course information including entry requirements made available from universities from throughout Australia.  For most country students this information is not readily obtainable.

Social activities such as the Bush Dance and attendance at a Rotary meeting were opportunities to get to know fellow participants while the home hosting weekend was a chance to relax and visit the local swimming pool during Canberra’s heat wave. A highlight of the second week was the address by a Rhodes Scholar and former NYSF participant who spoke of the experiences and options that NYSF had opened for him.

A career paths expo was a feature of the final day and Carli was amazed at the number of corporate bodies, sponsors of the programme, who include science amongst their enterprises. As a NYSF participant Carli is eligible to apply for the international programme and is waiting to hear if her application to the American NYSF has been successful. Carli has also attended the Next Step programme held in Melbourne that took participants on a tour of various science-based industries, mainly pharmaceutical companies.

Carli concluded her address by answering a number of questions from members and thanking all present for giving her the opportunity of attending such a prestigious programme as NYSF. She also gave a brief insight into her participation with the December 2013 Making a Difference tour to Cambodia with Pres. Heather.

(All present were very impressed with Carli’s address made without reference to notes.  As Bull Ed I hope I have given it justice.)