Guest speaker delivers powerful message
On Wednesday an old friend of the club, Paul Morton gave the club a talk on one of the many areas where IFYS is working hard to improve our community. IFYS has been going now for 44 years, and has 950 employees, all working on various areas of community support.
But there's one program within IFYS that has no staff...but more about that later.
Paul received a Paul Harris medal from the club pre-covid for his work with community aid, and youth services. He consults to IFYS in the area of communications and marketing, and very active in getting community projects off the ground and providing practical help to folks from Noosa to Caboolture and out to Toowoomba. So the club invited him to come along and chat with us about how Alex Rotary could help in a practical and financial way with the work that they are doing.
One such program caught the attention f the club. This program, which has been going for 13 years now is Inclusive Kids, is a independent fund under the IFYS umbrella that works quietly away in the background making a difference to folks everyday lives. It has no staff. But as Paul points out that means that folks just get Inclusive Kids work attached to their normal workload. And its not limited to IFYS programs. The fund helps all sort of worthy initiatives, many "filling the gap" from other suport programs.
Paul gave teh club a story or the purchase headstones, for a pair or orphans who would otherwise not have a place to grieve.
In that time the fund has delivered over $1M to kids programs such as Fostercare, Youth homelessness, Youth Development and Disability services. More recently the program is moving into food support at schools and Paul spoke about an exciting new program about be launched on the coast to put some fuel into kids who would. otherwise be running on empty.
We were reminded that Urban Angels, another part of IFYS delivers 15,000 meals a month and even that does not satisfy the demand on the coast. So when you consider that, and the other folks such as meals on wheels, and The Shack etc. etc. you begin to get a picture of the coast that is not so rosy.
See of Paul's slides below..some very concerning numbers
Following Paul's presentation, the club spoke to him about how Alex Rotary could help, and we'll have some exciting news on that in future newsletters. So stay tuned.
Feedback from Lilly on her Scientific Journey to NYSF
On Wednesday we also heard back from Lilly Thomas who we sponsored to go on the Rotary National Youth Science Forumin Brisbane. Lilly is a student and school captain at Mountain Creek High School and is set on a career in science, possible a chemical engineer, but it's fair to say that her time at the NYSF has given her a much broader outlook on what various science careers are available to her.
Lilly was very appreciative of the assistance from Alex Rotary, and we are so pleased to be able to assist future leaders of the community. I am sure we will be hearing a lot more about Lilly as she progresses to Uni and whatever career she chooses.
And we hadn't forgotten what a help Lilly was at our Xmas at Alex BBQ, so Graeme was pleased to provide Lilly with a voucher for JBHiFi which we believe is going towards a new laptop.
This is the cohort that attended the NYSY in Brisbane.
..and here's Lilly meeting one of the presenters at NYSF who demonstrate the latest in science / advanced manufacturing and how these developments are turned into commercial reality.
District News and dateclaimers...
