Welcome to our Club!
Service Above Self
We meet In Person
Wednesdays at 6:15 PM
Mt Gambier Community RSL
16 Sturt St
Mount Gambier, SA 5290
Australia
Mount Gambier, SA 5290
Australia
Rotary Community Book Fair Every 12 months, the Rotary Club of Mount Gambier holds a huge Book Fair in the City Hall. This event will be held on Saturday and Sunday the 12th and 13th of October 2019.
It takes a lot of preparatory work, arranging the venue (thanks to the generosity of the Mount Gambier City Council), lining up sponsorship with many helpful local businesses and spending many Sundays sorting through, categorising, pricing and packing literally thousands of donated second hand books. The Book fair committee are in the process of organising, arranging meetings, working bees, pick up of empty fruit boxes, delivery of donated books and generally rounding up Rotarians to help out.
Donation to Drought Appeal
The full profits from the 2-18 Book Fair were donated to the Rotary Club of Longreach Drought Fund, to allow them to continue the wonderful work they do in Central and Western Queensland, helping local communities to survive the recent years of debilitating drought.
Rotary Club of Longreach Treasurer, Damian Arthur, indicated how much the members of his Rotary Club appreciated the support from our members and this donation from our Book Fair.
Damian wrote “We make a concerted effort from late November onwards to do something in each of the communities we support. Last night Windorah had its Christmas Tree and while none of us could make it we sent down hams and meat for the BBQ. We looked after the bar at the School of the Air Awards Night last night and contributed funds to help the school produce its fourth full school musical; absolutely amazing.
Tomorrow afternoon we will present a cheque to the Longreach School of Dance to help cover overheads during the Christmas recess. Prior to the drought the school had 150 students, now it has less than 100. It is the only surviving school of dance in Western Queensland.
This Saturday we head about 155km down to Stonehenge where we will cater and cook the BBQ as well as distribute a ham to each family. Some other members will head up to Lake Dunn (north east of Aramac) and show a movie with our blow up screen as well as cooking the BBQ. Round trip to Lake Dunn is about 480km.”Books in Homes Presentations
Previous Rotary Community Book Fairs have raised funds for the very worthwhile “Books in Homes” program, which aims to donate a pack of high quality new books to primary school children; especially in more disadvantaged areas. The sad fact is that in many homes, children do not have any books to call their own and in fact some homes have no books at all!
It’s really important to get youngsters into the “reading habit” in their early years, and to generate a life long love of reading.
Books in Homes really helps here.
Last year, Rotary Club of Mount Gambier sponsored the program for kids at the Gordon Education Centre in Mount Gambier. Gordon Education Centre caters for students with special needs, and is the only facility of its type in the Limestone Coast region.
The first hand-over of book packs took place at the Mount Gambier Public Library who are partners in the project. Julian Mattay acknowledged Trevor Buck, Ian McDougall, and Alan Richardson for joining with him at the library for the presentation. In response, one of the students gave a warm and heartfelt speech thanking the Rotary Club for its involvement.
The final presentation to their students was held on Friday 26th of November, and Rotarian Julian Mattay was “blown away” by how enthusiastic the students were about receiving their precious books.
