At our last Dinner Meeting of the year, 24 members and 15 guests enjoyed a full, interesting and entertaining agenda. Below are more detailed comments, but first a summary of club notices as shared by President Hugh.Club Notices:
- Our last meeting of the year will be a breakfast meeting this week on December the 10th. A great speaker has been arranged, (more details below) and please note RSVP's are required.
- The collection of items for the Glen Innes Foodbank is all set to run on December the 12th at New World Lunn Ave and thanks to Penny's persuasive efforts all volunteer duty slots are now full.
- David H. announced that a new sponsor for the annual St. Johns Rotary Golf Tournament has been found - New World Lunn Ave & New World East Ridge have joined forces, with the possibility of New World Remuera also joining. The Tournament will be held at the Whitford Golf Club on April 9th. To make this event the huge success it needs to be, we will need a field of 25 teams plus other sponsors. All members are asked to start thinking of possibilities and to feed any leads on to David H. as soon as possible.
- Last weekends club visit to Rotoroa was a great success - a separate story follows below.
David Stone:
We were delighted to welcome Honorary member David Stone to the meeting. David was a key initiator of the Water Testing project under-taken by Glendowie College so it was great that he could be present for the students' presentation.
David and his wife Jill recently lost their home in the Ohau Lake fire, loosing everything except the clothes they were wearing at 3.10am when they were woken by a neighbour of the impending disaster. We wish David and Jill our very best wishes as they begin the rebuilding of both their lives and their home.
Water Testing Project, Glendowie College:
This project was launched 4 years ago when the RCSTJ purchased a water testing kit allowing for water samples of streams in our district to be collected analised and measured. The club would like to thank the School, Science Teacher Thais Nafissi and students Mai, Zoe and Lulu for completing the project and for sharing their story with us. We look forward to expanding this work based on their findings in the future.
Guest Speaker Holly Suitch:
Holly shared with us her journey, with her partner Brad, of conceiving an idea for a natural, clean alternative energy drink (Phoric) through to its current status as a rapidly expanding start-up business. This was a truly inspiring story which began nearly a year ago when they were witnessing first-hand thousands of university students consuming countless, artificial energy drinks. This motivated them to begin their own mission to create a natural, clean alternative. Promoted as a natural energy drink for the new generation.
The pair were the Overall Supreme Winner, and Winner of the Social Enterprise category, at the AUT X-Challenge, winning a $35,000 investment to develop their idea.
The drink is now available in 130 stores and supermarkets throughout the country, and growing, as they continue to introduce their very strategic growth plans. There were many questions from the floor, all answered in detail highlighting the research and planning that had been undertaken. Holly was kind enough to bring along some samples for members to try and the reactions to the tasting were very positive. A refreshing new taste.
We wish Holly and Phoric best wishes as they continue to develop and grow their distribution.