Papanui Rotary Club Chat 3 Nov 2020 (Nov 02, 2020)

Milk Bank Trust

Rotary Community Breast

Milk Bank Charitable Trust

Liz

The Gift of Liquid Gold

Last Thursday night a small group of us visited the RCBMB (Rotary Community Breast Milk Bank) where midwife and Chair of the Milk Bank, Rotarian Yvonne Hiskemuller, gave a very informative talk while enjoying a glass of wine and a delicious array of finger food.

The RCBMB was initiated by Yvonne 5 years ago when then District Governor Liz Courtney, asked clubs in our District to look for projects that were centred on the Rotary International Maternal and Child Area of Focus.

It was begun by a dedicated group of Rotarians with the support of Lactation specialists and Midwives in Canterbury to help mothers supplement their efforts with milk donated by other women. This group of women took up the challenge and formed the Rotary Community Breast Milk Bank Trust.

The aim of the Rotary Community Breast Milk Bank is to provide easily accessible, short term donor breast milk to mothers while they establish their own milk supply. The donated breast milk is frozen, pasteurised, checked and given to parents and caregivers free of charge.

Background

It took almost 4 years of negotiating with the Canterbury Health Board and the Neo Natal group to finally be taken under the wing of St. George’s Hospital support. This is the first free community Breast Milk Bank in New Zealand offering breast milk to new-born babies up to 6 weeks to help mothers establish a good milk supply.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health recommends babies ideally are exclusively breast fed until aged six months. Breast milk is full of antibodies which help to develop a baby's immune system making it such a special commodity. Breast might be best for babies, but getting feeding underway can be a struggle.

Previously, the only babies in the country with access to a pasteurised milk bank service were premature or sick babies at Christchurch Hospital's neo-natal unit. The Rotary Community Breast Milk Bank extends that service. To date we have provided 360 babies with 300 litres of Breast Milk from 63 Donors since 2018.

The Rotary Community Breast Milk Bank opened in July 2018 and was given a room at St. George’s to work from. Specialised temperature controlled freezers, computers, donor kits and furniture were all supplied and sponsored by four Rotary clubs, Christchurch Garden City, Papanui, Riccarton and Christchurch Rotary clubs who gave funds to begin this free service.

A large fundraising dinner and auction began the $ 30,000 required to set up the initial first year of running costs with a concert, specially printed tea towels and quiz nights following on.

It is completely staffed by over 20 volunteers many are Rotarians, nurses and retired midwives.

What do we Need and Why?

The Milk Bank is situated at St. George’s Hospital and with their support, and an anonymous donor, they recently provided a pasteuriser for the Milk Bank which means that donated milk can be sterilised immediately. Previously, all the donated milk was pasteurised through the Neo Natal Unit run by the CDHB.

This has reduced our running costs but has increased our volunteer time. We are now looking to raise funds to staff the pasteurising of the donor milk and to extend our reach to encompass a wider geographical group in the community.

How can you Help Us?

The Trustees of the Rotary Community Breast Milk Bank now include a number of Medical and Scientific based Specialists who give their time free of charge to assist us with growing this free service.

Rotary would like to grow this free service throughout the country but can only do this with public and corporate support. It costs us approximately $ 25,000 pa to run this service to meet the growing need for mothers and babies who want to breast feed.

For more information on the Rotary Community Breast Milk Bank Charitable Trust visit their Facebook page or their Give a Little page.

St James Park Halloween

Halloween at St James Park

Liz

In partnership with Ray White Real Estate, this event took place in St. James Park last Friday 30th October from 4:30 – 5:30pm. Set up began at 2.30 with a group of willing Rotarian workers putting up the Gazebo and assembling the 5 Scavenger Hunt stations.

Before it opened we had people queuing at the gate and with the smell of the BBQ on a wonderful balmy evening wafting through the air over 420 children and families raced around the park pencils and paper in hand to claim their bag of sweets.

Many of the families had costumes, faces painted and all the Halloween accessories to conjure up the scariness of Halloween. It was a very colourful event and we received many positive comments from families who were appreciative of having a safe and fun event to attend.

Working alongside the Ray White team makes this a winning combination as they enable Rotary to have greater exposure when advertising on their social media site and we collaborate very well bagging up sweets, setting up the stations and sharing the publicity.

A big thank you to the team of helpers who made it so much easier to bring some good old fashioned fun to the families in Papanui.

Snippets

Mitre10 BBQ raises funds for Special Needs Camp

Thanks to some Club members giving up their holiday hours on the Sunday of Labour weekend we were able to generate a $590 profit to go towards the Papanui High School Kimi Ora Special Needs Camp which runs over 3 days.

Some events we support make a real difference to the young people we are trying to help. The Kimi Ora students have a chance to get out in the fresh air and enjoy nature with some innovative fun activities.

The Year 12 students who accompany them learn about spending significant amounts of time with students less fortunate than themselves. It is a real bonding experience for all and exposes students to parts of life you don’t see every day in the classroom.

The Rotary BBQ is also a bonding exercise for those who participate. There is another one on December 13th so we look forward to seeing some new faces.

Gary

Hanmer Halloween Event

A small keen team or Rotarians and partners went up to support the Hanmer Halloween event at the end of the week with crowd control and the BBQ. Similar to last year their Grotto was one of the biggest hits with the kids.

Liz’s daughter taking her 1^st ever shot

As noted below by Janice, our club hosted the District Target Shooting Tournament down at the Bangor Street clubrooms of the Chch Target Shooting Assn last Tuesday evening.

A great time was had by all.

Trailer Raffle 2020 Roster

In aid of Ronald McDonald House & Children in Need Trust

The Trailer Raffle begins next Saturday. We need the first week's roster filled by this weekend.

You can find the roster here. Any time you want to check it out just bring up this link, or refresh it on your computer to get the latest version. You can also view it on your phone with the Google Sheets app.

Please contact Lois 021 735 404 or Deryn 021 161 5861 if you need help to put your name on the roster.

Thanks for your help to turn the yellow to white!!

Also, a Reminder to those who went on the Breast Milk Bank visit, please pay your $15 into our bank Papanui Rotary Inc. Account # 03 1355 0892268 00.

Thanks:

Deryn

The President’s Blurb

It has been a very big week for Papanui Rotary.

On Tuesday evening our club hosted the District Target Shooting Tournament down at the Bangor Street clubrooms of the Chch Target Shooting Assn. Our club has hosted this annual event for over 35 years. 13 Teams competed and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Many thanks to the volunteers/shooters that came down and assisted on the night. The Ashburton Men's team took out the top men's award, the Avonhead Women's team took the women's award as we couldn't field a women’s team this time and Arie was 2nd top shot with a score of 93.4.

The district movie night in support of Polio Plus was attended by only 8 from the club. The event was a sell out and the tickets sold out too quickly for many of our members. The profits from the evening will of course be matched on a two to one basis by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. If there are members that were keen to make a donation to the Polio Plus cause please makes the arrangements with Deryn.

On Thursday in place of the club meeting we went to an evening at the Chch Rotary Breastmilk Bank. 14 members attended and were impressed with the service offered by the breastmilk bank. It was explained in very clear terms as to the difference that breast milk makes to the health of new born babies.

The unit was established by Rotary and looks to Rotary for continuing support as no money is set aside in the CDHB budget for this purpose. The running costs are approx. $30,000 per year. We thank Liz for her involvement in the establishment and ongoing management of this unit and for being a constant champion of the breastmilk bank.

On Friday many of us participated in the Ray White/Rotary Halloween event at St James Park. Over 400 children and parents turned up on a fine afternoon and had a good time.

A group of 15 Rotarians, partners and family members came down and helped set up the Rotary gazebo, helped run the BBQ and manned the stations dotted around the park ticking of the activity sheets of the children. The evening was lovely and many families queued for sausages and drinks and had a picnic.

The final event of the week was the Halloween event at the Hanmer Springs Forest Camp. 7 Rotarians and partners/family members travelled to Hanmer to help out with crowd control and manning the BBQ. Once again the weather was great. Over 200 children came to the camp with their parents and went through the Halloween grotto which camp management and staff had gone to great lengths to set up.

A really pleasing aspect to the evening is that most of the children had dressed up for the occasion. We hope at some point to establish a satellite club in Hanmer so these events help build Rotary's profile in the village as well as our involvement with the camp.

To all those wonderful people that came out to help us during the week a big “thank-you”. Some of you came out several nights in a row and to you an even bigger thank you.

This Thursday night we have the community awards evening which Lois and her team have put together. Come along and support Lois on this evening.

Deryn has posted on the internet the rosters for the trailer raffle which kicks off this weekend. Please have a look and put your name down for a handful of shifts because we need as many helpers as we can get for this project.

Cheers

Janice

Food for Thought