absolutely positively altrusa · president julia stevens – [email protected]...

Altrusa International of Wellington President Julia Stevens – [email protected] Absolutely Positively Altrusa c/o 85A Freyberg Street, Wellington 6022 October - December 2018

Absolutely

Positively Altrusa

October - December 2018

In this Issue

CAN Challenge

Welcome to our new members

Little Sprouts art auction

Christmas party

Donation to Petra

Altrusa Christmas tree

Altrusa Wellington out and about

Upcoming events

Presidential Pondering

District Fifteen News

International News

mailto:[email protected]


This has become an annual event for our club, this year we held it at Countdown Newtown on Saturday 14 October and had 10 Altrusa members help out. Pictured here are Stella, Louise and out president Julia. We collected 17 boxes and three bags of food generously donated by the public for the Wellington City Mission. A big thank you to Margaret who helped with organising the venue, setup and roster. Some of this food will have made it into Christmas food parcels - a great feeling.

Welcome to our two new members Lynley and Louise were installed as official Wellington Altrusans at our business meeting on the 1st October. We are already enjoying their contributions and friendship within the club.

Can Train challenge



Little Sprouts Art Auction

Little Sprouts held a rather fancy art auction on 27 October at Pataka Art Gallery in Porirua. A group of Altrusans helped out on the evening with door admissions, coat check and serving canapes. It was a long but very successful evening. Little Sprouts raised $32,000 with sales of the donated art works and having us as extra helpers to make the night run smoothly meant they did not need to hire further staff and more money can go towards putting together care boxes for families and children in need. The boxes have everything a baby will need in the first year of life and are distributed through social agencies making sure they go to those who need them most. It was a pleasure to help out though hard work especially for those of us waitressing between two levels and Tricia who had to keep track of 100+ coats and umbrellas on a wet rainy night without a coat rack! Pictured are Ming-chun and Stella ready for waitressing duty, Sue and Louise with the full spread ready to serve, and Tricia and Lorene who were on coat check and welcoming guests/checking tickets respectively.



Christmas Party Members of our club enjoying Christmas dinner on 3rd December at Fratelli’s and celebrating another year of community and good work done. Naughty secret santa was held again with Margaret dishing out the goodies and it was apparently quite naughty this time around with no holds barred on our new member Louise whose gift is reported to have been stolen twice.

Christmas Tree appeal

Altrusans helping to set up our annual Christmas tree appeal at the Kilbirnie Children’s bookshop. We have been running this fundraiser for many years and it continues to be a success, attracting book donations from generous patrons that go to children staying in women’s refuges around the country on Christmas day. This year we distributed 362 books. Pictured are Pela, Louise, Margaret, Tricia our wonderful project organiser, Georgie and Ming-chun. We also invited along Petra pictured on the right and presented her with a cheque for $1000 that we raised through the Sileni wine fundraiser that was held from September - November. This will go towards her next book “I’d rather be a football star” to help children understand what friends and family with cancer are going through.



Members of our club attended a range of events over Spring and the early summer months, getting out and about in

the community and representing Altrusa and our values. In October Julia, Louise, Lynley, Stella T and friends formed

a quiz team to compete at and support Ohariu’s quiz night fundraiser. The newly formed Ohariu club raised over

$1000 from the quiz night for their Christmas hamper project to benefit families of the Grandparents raising

Grandparents Trust NZ.

Pictured below are Ming-chun and Patricia attending the Sailability new jetty launch in Porirua harbour in

November. Sailability is a charity that enables people with disabilities to get out on the water sailing. We have been

involved with a few fundraisers for Sailability over the years most notably buying a mother boat and trailer back in

2006 and as you can see it’s still looking good.

On 13 December some of us attended Ohariu’s charter celebration dessert evening. It was a wonderful evening of

celebration for the new club and the 15 recipients of $1500 that was raised for to 15 local charities through an online

campaign on Kickstarter.com and presented on the night. Pictured below are the members of the new Ohariu club,

Altrusa International President Leanne Milligan and District 15 Governor Christine Melville officiating. The

Wellington contingent also got a sneaky photo with Wellington mayor Justin Leister as seen on this newsletter cover

page. We didn’t get any photos of the desserts but I can attest that it was an absolutely delicious home baked

spread.

Wellington Altrusa Club out and about



In December a group of us were honoured to attend a different kind

of celebration, the celebration of a truly inspiring life well lived at the

memorial of our friend and former club member Signe who passed

away on 23 November. Signe was a bright and bubbly member of

our club and the wider community volunteering for a wide range of

community organisations and she is missed.

Upcoming Events

Sunday 27 December - Social lunch from noon at Lorene’s

Monday 4 February - Business meeting with District 15 Director Marvynne attending

Monday 18 February - Cooking at Ronald McDonald House

Monday 4 March - Business meeting

Monday 18 March - Information evening



Happy New Year to all Altrusans, followers and friends! The start of a new year is always a good time to

reflect on resolutions, new ideas and goals, and also to consider our achievements and challenges

throughout the year that has just ended. I look forward to working alongside Altrusans to continue

supporting various organisations throughout the Wellington region and further afield over the next year,

making a positive impact and gaining new friends and skills along the way.

Our club ended the year holding our annual CAN challenge, volunteering at the Little Sprouts Art Auction,

donating 56 books to Miramar Central School, presenting $1,000 raised through our Sileni Estates wine

fundraiser to Petra to put towards publishing her next children’s book about cancer, and holding our annual

book collection for Women’s Refuge via our Christmas Tree at the Children’s Bookshop in Kilbirnie. We ended

the year with a dinner out together, and plan to kick off the year with a social lunch at the end of this month

where we’ll also be making Love Letters to be used to decorate children’s hospital rooms with their name.

We have a busy and exciting year planned in 2019, with a combination of our annual events and new ideas.

We’re lucky to have Vice Governor Marvynne Ashley attending our first business meeting of the year, and she

has asked if there are any particular topics members would like her to talk about - please let me know if you

have any suggestions.

We’ll be cooking a meal for the families at Ronald McDonald House in February, holding an information

evening in March to help grow our membership, working with Little Sprouts to pack their life changing baby

boxes and using our international foundation grant towards these, and hearing from some speakers in April

to determine how we may be able to help their organisations. We’re also planning a Mother's day high tea

fundraiser event for early in May which is an exciting new event for us to run, and we’ll be able to utilise the

amazing cooking and baking skills of our members for this.

Planning for the 2020 District 15 Conference being held in Wellington is underway, and we’ll be discussing

this further at our upcoming meetings. Registrations are now open for the 2019 conference being held in Te

Awamutu and the 2019 International Convention being held in Reno, so please contact me if you require any

further information on these events or are interested in registering.

I look forward to catching up with Altrusans and our friends at our upcoming social lunch, and welcome any

visitors who are interested in learning more about Altrusa and getting involved this year. Thank you to all for

your ongoing contributions to your community, I hope together we can continue making a meaningful impact

and have another fun and successful year together.

Yours in Altrusa,

Julia Stevens

President, Altrusa International of Wellington

Presidential Pondering



District 15 and International News

Keep up-to-date with the latest news from Altrusa Clubs around New Zealand by liking the District Fifteen Facebook page

absolutely positively altrusa · president julia stevens – [email protected]...

Documents