23 Members and 7 guests enjoyed last week’s Breakfast meeting, with a very interesting guest speaker and a snap-chat from Simon Jones. Our guests were;
Deslie Simpson - Auckland Councellor, Tess Porter - Remuera CAB Branch Manager, Gail Romano - Curator Auckland Museum, Jim Mitchell - Mentor/Advisor (past) CAB Remuera, John Farrell JP - Advisor CAB Remuera, David Finn (a prospective visitor, checking us out), and our guest speaker Kate Anderson - General Manager Citizen Advice Bureau Auckland City.
In this role Kate oversees 10 CAB Offices across Auckland, who;
- Provide free, confidential, independent information and advice,
- Help people know and understand their rights and responsibilities,
- Help people find community services they need and
- Work for positive social change.
At the CAB, members of the public who utilise the services can expect to;
- Be treated with respect,
- Have their privacy respected,
- Be listened to and not judged,
- Get correct information and be offered options,
- Be supported to make their own decisions and
- Get help with next steps
The CAB also operate the Food Banks out of their offices and it was amazing to see just how needed and important this function is, particularly in Glen Innes. Hearing this just days after St Johns Rotary undertook a very successful Food Bank Collection was eye opening and Kate restated just how appreciative the CAB organisation is, of St. Johns Rotary efforts in this regard.
Volunteers are critical to CAB’s success. They currently have 400 volunteers across Auckland, but they are always looking for more. If you are interested and;
- A good listener,
- Willing to learn,
- Confident using a computer and like the idea of doing a bit of research to help people find the information they need, then you are a potential CAB volunteer.
Volunteers are provided with training, the tools and the ongoing support necessary to provide the required service. Interested?? Find out more at www.cap.org.nz/getinvolved
Our snap-chatter at the meeting was Simon Jones who took the opportunity to again brief members on the role of the St. Johns Rotary Charitable Trust. Our Trust allows us to receive and distribute funds without tax implications.
The 2018 / 2019 annual trust accounts, (which will shortly be distributed to all members), have just been published, and we can all be very proud to know that in the past year our trust distributed $179,000, into the community via the numerous projects, events and programmes that we are involved with.
Other Rotary business and important dates raised and discussed at the meeting are covered off elsewhere in this edition of the Bulletin…read on for more details.