In February Roger & Judy Snell will be visiting District 3360 in north Thailand, an out bound team of seven being hosted by three Rotary Clubs, each member/couple staying with three host families for four nights. This is the first RFE visit to be experienced by Roger & Judy and at our Club meeting last week Roger encouraged other members to also get involved in RFE activities. He suggested you talk with Ron Haberfield, Graeme Maddox, Dennis Hickey or Roger Beardwell in that regard. Now these RFE visits are reciprocal and normally a return visit would take place the following year, at times even later. However, on this occasion with the RI Conference being held in June in Sydney the Thai inbound visit has been arranged for 12 days late May. In our District, representatives are from RC of Tatura, Yea, Euroa and Albury Hume. RC Albury Hume is now expected to host 4 or 5 couples for three (3) nights on Wed 28 May to Friday 30 May, their team departing from Albury to Sydney on Sat 31 May 2013. Thus we are seeking cooperation from 4-5 Club members and their family to host a Thai visitor for those 3 nights. Whilst the daily program carries a small part of transfers to arranged educational/entertaining visits these duties can be shared by non –host families. Please give serious consideration to this reciprocal responsibility – we need your help!! For further information please contact Roger Snell on 0409 137 833 or email dunnsnel@bigpond.com.au

DEAR ROTARIAN,

This past year was one of exciting achievements and forward momentum for Rotary, as highlighted in the 2012-13 Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation Annual Report.
We launched a bold new chapter in our partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that makes your contributions to the vital polio eradication end game work three times as hard.
We also finished preparing for the global launch of our new grant model, boosting our ability to help more communities secure and sustain a better quality of life. And we carried out our first projects with Mercy Ships, while building on our work with Aga Khan University, UNESCO-IHE, the Rotary Peace Centers, and other partners.
In addition, The Rotary Foundation earned top marks from several independent charity evaluators, including the American Institiute of Philanthropy, Charity Navigator, and the Wise Giving Alliance.
I encourage you to review our annual report carefully, and to share it with others who may be interested in joining, partnering with, or donating to Rotary. You can order print copies of the report at shop.rotary.org. For those who want a more detailed look at Rotary finances, the audited financial statements are available for download.
Thank you for the important role you play in Rotary’s work to help meet critical human needs, strengthening the groundwork for a more peaceful world.
Sincerely,
John Hewko
General Secretary

Highlights from the Third Quarterly Report
We have received the Report for the third quarter covering August to October 2013, A summary is as follows:
The objective of the Preschool is to promote early childhood development of Maasai children to enable the following outcomes
• Provision of early education for up to 40 children – now in excess of 50 children.
• Teaching national language, Swahili, in readiness for primary school
• Provision of two healthy meals each day
• Employment of 6 local people
These objectives have been achieved.
This term there were 53 children enrolled – 27 girls and 26 boys. They are aged between 3 and 5 years. The current program includes teaching spoken Swahili, learning Swahili words and the alphabet each day. During the year to the end of this term the children have been taught 367 hours of Swahili, with 149 hours in the third term. English and numeracy skills are also taught. The preschool is committed to providing daily nutritious meals to support early childhood development and encouraging attendance. The cost of food has risen in Tanzania because of a significantly dry period and as a result meals were reduced to two per day on 3 days a week and one on the other two days. We have now provided further funding to have the two meals every day restored. A total of 13,622 meals have been provided since the preschool recommenced in February this year, until the end of October.
The success of our support for the preschool can be measured by the fact that at least 22 children will progress to Primary School in 2014. There are already a further 21 children pre-enrolled for 2014 – which means there will be over 50 children enrolled next year. The preschool has operated within the budget of A$3000 per term – notwithstanding the depreciation of the A$ and the increase in the number of children and the cost of food. A budget is being prepared for 2014 which on early indications will be well within our committed fundraising.  The year will finish early in December and we have provided funding for an end of term “feast” for the children and staff.

Greetings to all Kitenden Preschool Class Sponsors. Deborah ,and I visited the Preschool on Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th. It was an amazing and at times emotional experience. Deb was overwhelmed by the transformation of the school since she was there 2 years ago. We were greeted by the children, their parents, village elders and the staff. There are now 52 children at the school – 29 girls and 23 boys and you will see from the photos They have a uniform – so cute – which is in the Tanzanian national colours. They all look very healthy – they have liquid porridge for breakfast and rice with vegetables for lunch. Their smiles are just so captivating. Kitenden is actually the name of an area – say like Table Top – and the children walk to school and home. Some of them walk as fair as 6/7 Kms so not surprisingly they are often late. As they are only 3/4/5 years of age they need to be escorted. They all bring a piece of wood for the kitchen fire – some so big they drag it! We camped overnight in the school grounds and on Tuesday morning we were with the children in class. They start with Assembly outside the classrooms – say prayers with their little heads bowed, sing the National  Anthem and then sing Swahilli songs – very loudly- as this keeps their interest and helps retention. They are also taught English with many of there teaching posters in English as are all the numeracy posters. The classrooms now have the Australian Flag and our Rotary Pennant hanging up. We all should be very pleased and happy – the contribution we are giving is making a huge difference for the future of the children. Thank you all  …..   Deb and Howard