If I could write the word ‘Rotary’ in every sentence I would.

In the “Helping This Way” section you will read of the origins of the ‘schools’ idea in the Villages and initial approaches to Rotary.

There are no praises too high for the Rotary Club of Beaudesert.

This photo was added on September 13 2011. Its of Linda Jackson, this years President of Beaudesert Rotary – and me, John. We are in the Rotary ‘van’. The van is a good restaurant kitchen on wheels. In this case its the ‘cleaning day’, the day after the Beaudesert Agricultural Show. We make and sell thousands of burgers and chips. This is our clubs major fund raiser. (So we need your donation, please).

Rotary Club of Beaudesert – meeting 20.9.11:

I am in Australia right now to talk about our projects and raise much needed money. What we do in Cambodia is a project of the Rotary Club of Beaudesert. I am writing from Beaudesert in the State of Queensland. Beaudesert is one hour south of Brisbane – one hour west of the Gold Coast.

These five photos were taken at Beaudesert’s Roatary Club meeting on 20.9.11.  Every meeting is always special with different topics and guest speakers. This night was particularly special sice we had the District Governor and his wife and also the Assistant District Governor and his wife. The Districts of the world are numbered; ours is District 9640 and covers the Gold Coast region of Queensland and Northern New South Wales – that’s 55 clubs.

The District Governor Gaham Jones is second from the left with Marion, his wife next to him, then Linda, our club President the Warren on the right. Far left is Mark, Chairman for the night. Meetings involve a meal and lots of talking about many projects from around the District and the world.

Graham Jones, District Governor gave an inspiring talk about each individual making a difference – he talked of many things including the quality of whats done, not just quantity of time spent.

1000s of clubs around the world are involved in Youth Exchange. That means that young people spend a year with a Rotary family in a foreign country, going to a local school and being part of a new family and their Rotary Club. Our student at the moment is Jack from Taiwan. Jack has just arrived, he’s 15. In this photo Jack is giving hios flag and framed information about his town and country to club President, Linda.

This photo by Burleigh Heads Beach was taken and uploaded today November 4 2011. The President of Beaudesert Rotary Club, Linda Jackson and I took Jack the Exchange student (see above) to The Gold Coast to catch a bus to a Rotary Camp in Grafton New South Wales. Jack took this photo.

There are a number of Rotary photos and short articles from Rotary Clubs around our District and Phnom Penh Metro within the “Blog” section.

Inserted December 2011. It is me, John, giving a strong plea for money; but in Beaudesert (the venue) I am preaching to the very converted.

Back to the very beginning:

Within days of hearing of the plight of our villages, Beaudesert Rotary promised to help. Since then, everyone has been extremely helpful and published an article and given a handsome donation…check out the article:-

http://www.rotaryeclubone.org/articles/2009-Rotary/0209-Cambodian_Village_Builds_Rotary_School.htm

At about the same time as the above article a radio station – BeauFM – borrowed a movie that had been made of the opening of our first school – The Rotary Club of Beaudesert School, Chuor Ph’av. It is an interview with me John over the eight minute movie. It also gives a good tour around one of the villages:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW9F3S8MBt0

Rotary is only a collection of individual people who on their own realise that they can make small differences…TOGETHER we can MAKE DREAMS REAL. Most of the money that Rotary raises is individual help from people just like you and me from all over the world.

Near Beaudesert in a tiny little shop in a village called Laravale we have the display in this photo, selling donated and second hand goods. Every dollar makes a real difference and Rotary is very much ‘one person at a time’ combined together.

Here’s the shop;

Rotary Club of Beaudesert shop Australia. It’s tiny but YOU and EVERY dollar combined together makes the difference.

Since planning the first school, many individuals have given money because they love what we are doing AND it’s an official ROTARY PROJECT. Other Rotary Clubs have joined us and the TOGETHERNESS is getting bigger and better.

Every Rotary Club in the world has to help INTERNATIONALLY every year.

When a Rotary club wants to help another country, the club is required to ask a local (in our case, Cambodia) club if they will be their partner. This provides a wonderful and essential safety check. I’ll explain:

Our partner club is the Rotary Club of Phnom Penh Metro and we approached them with the concept and then details. If it had been a bad or unnecessary idea for Cambodia, then the Phnom Penh club would have refused to help us so ending the plan. In our case RCPPM liked and like our projects. Again, in our case, I. a Beaudesert Australian member of Rotary, attend as many RCPPM meetings that I can in the capital, Phnom Penh and am very much a part of Rotary generally in Cambodia, in my turn, giving advice to new comers to Cambodian aid.

This is a photo of a 2009 meeting of The Rotary Club of Phnom Penh Metro.

There are, currently September 2011, roughly the same number of international aid members as local Cambodian members and together can give a broad range of good opinions on aid work in Cambodia. In the ‘blog’ section you can find several entries with photos of meetings of the Rotary Club of Phnom penh Metro. We have a new venue – Villa Khmer, a restaurant. Theres a photo below of the entrance with our Rotary wheel. 

If you are a Rotarian reading this and you like what you see and you feel good about it, then please contact us and join us. If you are not a Rotarian then join us anyway, we are all on an equal footing, simply helping Cambodian children and their families.

January 2009. Beaudesert Rotary members, local elders, police, senior politicians, monks, and families gather at the official opening of our first school. Chanthou our local and chief helper and translator is at the front.

another group of Rotarians in the same place a year later, January 2010.

this is one of the two photos on this site that I didn’t take.

Captains Choice is a Melbourne based Travel Company and they paid for this school so have naming rights. Just out of site is a graphic of the Rotary wheel. This school is sponsored by Captains Choice through the Rotary Club of Croydon in Melbourne, Australia.

As stated in the Donation page, every single individual donation is recognised and all donations above $500 will be recorded on a wall plaque on the school. Donations made from within Australia are tax deductible. (Other tax deductibility rules may apply in all other countries).

None of this could be happening without Rotary. Even if you have no interest at all in ‘Rotary’, I am sure that you are reassured by the knowledge that all donations however big or small go into a Rotary Bank account for use solely on the projects within this site.

There are a number of links in this site to other Rotary projects. If you are not a Rotary member and quite like what you see and want to find out more about “ROTARY’ then there will be a club near you. Give them a call – they’ll be happy to hear from you.

The following three photos were added today, February 26 2012. I attend Rotary Club meetings whenever I can. When I’m in the villages or Prey Veng town I can’t attend meetings. There are several meetings of both the Rotary Club of Phnom Penh Metro and of Beaudesert Roatary reported on through the BLOG. I’ll insert these three photos here in the Rotary section.

The first photo was taken on January 23 2012 and is of a meeting of  Phnom Penh Metro Rotary. The two rather white haired Australians to the left are Corrinne and Peter who had just – two hours before – arrived ahead of the rest of the Beaudesert contngent for a trip to our schools and a subsequent short holiday to Kratie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second photo was taken on February 6 2012 at Rotary Phnom Penh Metro. It’s a great little group and includes Cambodias Rotary Assistant Governor, Peter and the President of the Club Tom in the foreground and immediate past President Chris to the far right. The man on the near right is a member of our Rotaract Club (young Rotary). Sophea is a wonderful local member and Chris in bright blue is next years president.

This photo, with baloons, was taken on February 14 2012 (Valentines Day) in Beaudesert Australia. All the Beaudesert Rotarians had just returned from Cambodia and are around these tables.

 

(ADDED 19 April 2012: Please look at the BLOG dated 19 April 2012. There are 26 new photos and notes added from our stand at the Rotary Conference for District 9640 (Rotary) at Jupiters Casino, Gold Coast, Australia.)