The 6th Annual World Polio Day is next week 24th October 2018. While Rotary and our partners have already reduced polio cases by 99.9% worldwide since 1979, there are still a few people with polio in ISIS occupied territory in the Middle East.
How does this affect us in NZ?…well, according to the World Health Organisation, polio is a highly contagious disease and failure to eradicate it could result in as many as 200,000 new cases every year, and within 10 years- all over the world. There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented. With the ease and accessibility of flying around the world, prevention does matter and it can affect us here in NZ as well!
To help support this Rotary cause, we will donate this week’s Sargent’s session to help continue the good fight.
Speaking of fights, our guest speaker was Julie Read, Chief Executive and Director of the Serious Fraud Office in NZ. Julie and her team are fighting the good fight against corruption and fraud in NZ. On average her team works on 50 serious cases that have negative impact on the public and community. Some of the most recent ones include the Emily Projects property/hotel development where shareholders and banks were defrauded of $40million.
Julie shared with us some positive news as well: that New Zealand has maintained the #1 position (over the last 13 years) of least perceived levels of public sector corruption from amongst 180 countries around the world, based on the Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International.
Please note there is NO MEETING next week due to Labour Day, so enjoy a sleep in on Monday night or perhaps attend one of the social events happening next week (Oktoberfest meal, Rotaract Halloween party). Take a look at our website for the latest details: https://rotarydowntownauckland.club/
As part of the Auckland Heritage Festival on Saturday 6th October, four Downtown Rotarians (Phil Caughey, Mike Campbell, Karyn Spencer and David Graham), assisted with the Hillary Leadership Centre's Open House.
The house is located on school grounds near the entrance to the Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate Senior School in Franklyne Road, Otara
One Trustee was a Senior teacher who spoke about his upbringing in Capetown as a young coloured South African during ‘Apartheid’ days. His story had particular parallels with the story told by our President Elect Byran Theunisen.
He also spoke of his experiences as a modern day teacher in a multicultural NZ High School smack bang in the middle of South Auckland where 95% of the students are polite, well-behaved young people wanting to learn and succeed.
Mike Campbell was particularly interested to hear how he dealt with a 15 year old student who was caught on Google during his computer studies lessons searching ‘How to rob a bank and get away with it’. The student failed that lesson and was expelled.
The Trustees are looking for guidance and ideas as to how they can further utilise the valuable resource they have by expanding leadership training within their community and suggestions from Downtown Rotarians in this regard would be appreciated. If you would like more information on this, please contact Phil Caughey or Mike Campbell.
Child and adolescent mental health is a very serious problem in NZ. New Zealand has the highest rate of teenage suicides amongst all OECD countries.
Led by our Champion Graham Hendry, we are striving to support positive change by funding programmes that give clinicians access to the best practise solutions to help with their diagnosis and treatment.
Our Club proudly supports the following projects:
1. SPARX
Downtown Rotary has contributed over $170,000 to fund a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Auckland University School of Psychological Medicine to develop a treatment programme for teenagers suffering from severe depression. The computer-based SPARX electronic game was the result. This interactive tool has been hailed internationally for its continuing success in addressing this disorder.
2. A National Research Network:
75% of mental health issues commence before the age of 25 years. 15% of children and adolescents are known to suffer from mental health but only 3% of them actually get to see a specialist. We cannot fund increasing the number of clinicians (as it is the responsibility of Government). However we are aiming to make the current number of child and adolescent mental health practitioners as effective as possible.
Therefore our objective is to develop an online network to improve communications among academics and practitioners specialising in CAMH to:
Detail the skills and resources that are currently available
Determine the areas of greatest need
Keep practitioners appraised of current proven mainstream research
Collaborate on clinically meaningful NZ-wide research projects
Share outcomes of research projects amongst practitioners
Provide access to visiting specialists
Downtown Rotary is helping with the funding of this national research network.
At present a national survey is being developed to inform the design and use of this network (website). This will be run in October 2018.
The next stage will be to design the website and then to populate it and run an initial ‘test of concept’.
Research into prescribing for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder
The services over summer 2018-9 of a student to help run this project have been secured, subject to funding and ethics approval by Auckland University. Once approved, it is expected that this project will run from Nov 2018 till Feb 2019 with the results to be presented at an Autism education day in March 2019. A contribution to funding by Downtown Auckland Rotary will materially assist here.
On 13th Oct, Gareth and Kat did a shift at RMHC – Domain House and assisted with Duty Support. They received some lovely feedback from RMHC. RMHC is always looking for more volunteers to help support the families of sick children. If you are interested to learn more or would like to volunteer, please contact Kat Trevor or Gareth Juddery.
Rotaract Club of Auckland City is hosting a SPOOKTACULAR Halloween Party on Saturday 27th October at 7pm. Come dressed in your best costume and you might win a prize!
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