R o t a r a c t C l u b o f B u r l e i g h H e a d s N e w s l e t t e r

Burleigh RotaractBugle

J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 0 | I S S U E 2

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Welcome to the second issue of the Burleigh Rotaract

Bugle . We are half way through the Rotaract year , which

is absolutely  crazy to think about . The past few months

have been a busy time for the club members and have

included lots of fun times , interesting discoveries and

we conquered  the mountain that was Interaction . This

issue is focused on the achievements  over the past 6

months and will show you just a glimpse of what we at

the Rotaract Club of Burleigh Heads have been up to . I

am thrilled to see where the next 6 months will take us

and what we will tackle together .

Finally to the members , I don 't know what life would be

like without you all . You inspire me every day and baffle

me with your brilliance on so many varying topics . I still

don 't know how I would function without seeing all of

you amazing individuals and sharing laughs over a

chicken schnitty / palmy / nachos at the Surf Club twice

a month .

Yours in Rotaract ,

Jordan Holdorf

Secretary

Upcoming Events:

13th January 2020First Rotaract Meeting of 2020

20th January 2020Rotaract Board Meeting

27th January 2020Rotaract Club Meeting

8th - 9th February 2020Australian Rotaract Conference

- Gold Coast

10th February 2020Rotaract Club Meeting

What a phenomenal way to start the Rotaract year off. Over the past six months

our members have strived to improve themselves and better our local

communities through several challenges and highly successful events. To name a

few, our club undertook initiatives such as Relay For Life, Interaction 2020 (a

district Interact conference) and Bunning’s BBQ’s, all demanding significant time

and energy by all involved. We could not be prouder of the results these events

brought us, and so a massive shout out to all our organising members is well

deserved.

 

The Rotaract Club of Burleigh Heads have been ecstatic to welcome 3 new

members to our growing family recently, with several potential members hoping to

be inducted in the new year. A massive congratulations to Alex, Finn, and Matthew

for joining our family, our community looks forward to helping you accomplish

incredible things over the coming year.

 

In addition to our membership, our relationship with Rotary continues to grow, with

many members attending Burleigh Heads Rotary meetings each week, as well as

socials and fundraisers held throughout the district. We are very proud that in

2020-2021 we will also have three of our members serve on the district leadership

team to further themselves and Rotary as an organisation, a first for Rotaractors in

9640.

 

Nevertheless, as always, no time in Rotaract is without its learning curves, and

these past few months have definitely taught us many lessons. As a club we have

learnt to further and grow our members potentials and utilise their skills sets

within our events. We have learnt to be understanding and empathetic towards

everyone, in all circumstances, and furthermore towards ourselves, especially

when facing the pressures of studies, work, and life. Finally, and most importantly,

we have learnt to be grateful for each other and the beautiful community we have

built.

Looking into the next six months, there will be no time to rest, as we plan to

execute the Australian Rotaract Conference in early February, along with many

exciting international opportunities, such as Do It In A Dress. Our club members

have already been working incredibly hard on these events, and I am very proud of

how much each of them has accomplished!

Stay tuned to find out more information on when these events will unfold and how

they run over the coming quarter.

Yours in Rotaract,

Caitlin O'Connor

President

Presidential Update:

On the 9th of December the Rotaract Club of Burleigh Heads celebrated Christmas together. We alljoined together to celebrate with friends and plenty of joy, cheer and laughs going around. From apre-meeting dinner to an icebreaker of pass the parcel - including our own little spin - to secret Santaat the end of the night, we all celebrated together in a truly unique Burleigh Rotaract kind of way,including some post meeting hangs in Mowbray Park. Thank-you so much to everyone that came tocelebrate with us including members and guests, it was truly a night of festive joy. Jordan HoldorfSecretary

Merry Christmas

Hoping that yourChristmas is full of cheer

and joy and your NewYear is prosperous andfilled with laughs. Here

is to hoping we crosspaths in the coming

year.

- Rotaract Club of Burleigh Heads.

Spirit of RotaractEvery quarter we celebrate the outstanding achievements of our members with theSpirit of Rotaract Award. This award is given to someone that upholds the spirit andvalues of Rotaract, sharing their passion and dedication with others, and for going

above and beyond to help their community and those in need.

Allyson Suarez:Allyson was awarded the Spirit of Rotaract in October 2019 for her constant work over the

first three months of the Rotaract year (July - September). Allyson is our marketing guru. She has been using her marketing knowledge from heruniversity degree to advertise our upcoming events. Her work is gorgeous and she isgoing above and beyond what we all expected. On top of all of her incredible work on oursocial media pages, Allyson is always putting herself in a position to help out, she isinvolved in organising nearly all of our club fundraisers and event and played a critical rolein the organisation of Interaction 2o2o. Allyson also coordinated her first club event byorganising for our club to participate in the Gold Coasts Biggest Tree Planting day. Hersmiling face and cheerful attitude is something that is infectious and it has been anincredible opportunity to see her grow over the past year of her membership within theclub. You might remember her as our Roary's Choice Recipient from our Change Overdinner in June.

Thank-you Allyson for you continued and constant amazing work in the club, and welook forward to seeing what you do next.

Club Member Shenanigans

At the Rotaract Club of Burleigh Heads we are avery social group, and can often be foundhanging out together after club meetings in thepark until midnight, catching up for dinner,board games nights and many other activities.We also love to theme our meetings, dress up,have floor meetings (any excuse to wear PJ's).How social we are is a major defining factor of ourclub, and just one of the many things that makesus truly unique.

Social Events

JFK Pizza Night

Lion King MovieViewing Party

For our first social of the year, JFK WoodfireKitchen and Bar seemed to be the perfectchoice. Our club members love food andsocialising and so on Sunday the 14th of Julywe all met up to eat as much pizza as possibleand of course socialise with each other.  The event had an amazing turn out with a largemajority of our members as well as our mascotRoary attending and having a great timehanging out with each other, eating way tomuch food and a few sneaky drinks.  When the official social event ended, the clubdecided that it wasn’t home time yet and so adessert run to Oh My, Waffle in Burleigh wasrequired. Here, we of course ate some morefood and indulged in some fancy hotchocolates all while taking over the in-storeseating area and filled it with the sound of happychatter. All very full and still in the mood the chat wenot unexpectedly ended the night in MowbrayPark - like we do after every meeting. The nightwas filled with many laughs, smiles and a lot ofpizza and waffles. Michael WhitfordProfessional Development and Social Director

Anyone who has ever attended one of our clubmeetings knows that it is definitely no secretthat almost everyone in our club loves Disneyin one way or another. So when we heardabout the Live action adaptation of Disney’sThe Lion King was near, it became fairlyobvious that a social event involving the moviewas needed.  On the 3rd of August those of us who couldmake it, travelled to Event Cinemas Robina towatch the much-anticipated movie. A few of us who could caught up for a pre-dinner at Grilledbefore the movie. The harsh critics in our club gave the move athumbs up and proved to be just as much of asuccess as the original. With all our membersheading home with a smile after having a greattime with each other. We couldn't leave ourbeloved mascot Roary at home, so he joined uson the night and even got to sit on Pride Rock. Michael WhitfordProfessional Development and Social Director

On the 24th of August 2019, 5 of our members (Allyson,Michael, Caitlin, Blake and myself) participated in theGold Coasts Biggest Tree Planting Day at NuminbahValley. Along with around 1,200 Gold Coast locals weassisted in planting 15,000 native trees in approximately3 hours. The day was organised by the Gold CoastCatchment Association and SEQ Water and was amassive success. The team had a great day out, lots oflaughs were had and we learnt that Blake knew thewedge tail eagle who was there on the day personally -his name was Dez. Congratulations to Allyson fororganising such an amazing event and we look forwardto the tree planting day next year. 

Jordan HoldorfSecretary

Gold Coast's Biggest TreePlanting Day.

R U OK DAY MeetingOn the 9th of September, our club along with guests from the Brisbane River City Rotaract Clubattended a themed meeting for RUOK Day. RUOK is a voluntary organisation that helps promotesuicide awareness by attempting to remove the stigma that comes with mental health. On the nightwe all came dressed in yellow and had a fun night of ice breakers, a guest speaker, a raffle and anaward for best dresses according to the theme ‘Hello Yellow’. At the beginning of the night, we all worked together to complete the ice breaker, which involved amini puzzle which was revealed to be the RUOK Day logo. Following this we had a guest speakerfrom Head Space to talk about mental health, how to seek help, the signs that someone aroundyou might be suffering and how to help them and yourself. Following this the real fun started whenwe had all those that wear competing for best dress get up and participate in a mini fashion show.With lots of laughter and silly behaviour. Best dressed went to our professional developmentdirector Michael for his hand dyed yellow morph suit with the RUOK logo added to it. With all thefun and silliness we managed to raise funds to donate towards the RUOK Day organisation. It wasan amazing night and we all had an incredible time with our members and guests. Candace LeeCommunity Service Director

Sometimes all it takesis 3 little words.

ARE YOUOKAY?

This year our club participated in the Northern Gold Coast Relay for Life at Coomera AnglicanCollage on the 26th of October. Our club members and guests dressed as fantasy charactersincluding some fairies, Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent. Along with the other Relayparticipants we spent the night walking laps around the field, however were committed tospending a night under the stars – thanks to a miss hap with the tent. Happy accident though asone of our members got some great life action photos with the tent cover!

Throughout the night we did some fundraising by selling chocolates, baked goods and doingface painting. Although these didn’t go to plan it didn’t stop two of our members indulging alittle too much in highlighter while trying to drum up customers!! It may not have brought in allthe customers but we were definitely happy and blinding, which is all the counts right?

As the night progressed our members and guests gathered around for dinner and to play cardgames to pass the time until the much awaited event of Mr. and Mrs. Relay. Dan, the former vicepresident of the Ballina on Richmond Rotaract Club, braved up and took one for the team andwith a bit of makeup and many, many layers of highlighter was transformed into "Jasmine with aY", to compete for the coveted Miss. Relay title. For Mr. Relay, our member Vishnu took on thepersona of the French Tourist "Claude" and put on one hell of a funny accent and had us allnearly in tears from laughter. As always Relay was an enjoyable and rewarding event which wehope to participate in again in 2020.

Candace LeeCommunity Service Director

Relay for Life

In June DGE Andy proposed the  ambitious  task ofrunning a district Interact Conference. As a pastInteractor I was beyond excited at the prospect ofhaving a district Interact conference and from thatmoment Interaction 2020 was born. Firstly, thisincredible event would not have been possible withoutmy amazing co-chairs Caitlin and Harrison,  as well asthe amazing organising committee that put in countlesshours of their time into organising and running thisevent. The goal for the conference was to allow the studentsand Interact mentors (teachers) to meet, formingconnections with other schools and projects, inspiringfurther networking which Rotary is all about.Additionally, a critical goal was to help provide skills inteamwork, leadership, professional and personaldevelopment to the students whilst highlighting awholistic view of the world and that each and every oneof us are global citizens. I am pleased to say that wedelivered this and much more on the day with even themost sceptical of attendee leaving with a smile on theirface and saying it was an amazing opportunity and theythoroughly enjoyed the day. Students packed shoe boxes full of supplies to be sentto East Timor during the 'Give to Learn' portion of theday.

JORDAN HOLDORF - CO-CHAIR

INTERACTION 2020This district wide joint Interact / Rotaract service projectwas a roaring success with around 400 boxes beingpacked on the day full of stationary and adorned withmessages of support and friendship. We will be shippingthe boxes with Donations in Kind in the new year. Thisproject is the first large scale joint Interact project in thedistrict. After all was done and dusted the organising committee- tired and exhausted from a very long day and missingthe caffeine  that the coffee van had provided thatmorning - joined together to celebrate in the best way weknow a well deserved board games night. Thank-you so much to all who attended on the dayand/or supported us in any way. Your support helped usso much and we are looking forward to the conferencenext year.

"It's about getting out there, being open tonew opportunities and ideas and seeingstories of what other people have done."

- Bianca Perry (Miami Interact Club Member)

District Rotaract Representative Update

Steven Coffey

DRR D9640

It has been a wild ride as DRR since my last report in the first issue of the Newsletter in EarlyAugust.. in August District 9640 Rotaract members attended a joint district training day withmembers of District 9600 and 9630. The training day was organised by myself and fellowDRR’s Kim Elston (D9600) and Kim Kerslake (D9630). The day had around 30 membersacross the three districts in attendance. Some of the topics covered at the training wereself-care and reducing Rotaract burnout, blue card legalities, ARC and board positions. Some bad news came in the form of the Rotaract Club of Ballina - Richmond having to handin their charter due to decreasing membership and the club slipping under the minimummembership requirements. The club was chartered in July 2015, which I had the pleasure ofattending. The club contributed a great deal to the local community, assisting with theannual Ballina Food and Wine Festival, running their own highly successful events andbeing some of the most incredible all round good people. Some of the members are notlost to the Rotaract community with Catherine Kopp and Dan Snart deciding to join theRotaract Club of Burleigh Heads. The Burleigh Rotaract Club is excited to welcome twohighly experienced Rotaractors and are looking forward to learning from their experienceand know-how. In November, I was offered the position of District Rotaract Chair for 2019-20, which I haveaccepted. Along with Jordan Holdorf, who will be the District Interact Chair (CONGRATS),we will be the first Rotaractors to serve on a district board in Australia. The DRR will also beon the district leadership board, and with two Rotaractors filling the District Interact andRotaract Chairs, there will be three Rotaractors on the district 9640 Leadership team. It willbe a privilege to serve in this position and the aim will be to grow Rotaract in our district,with the help of Caitlin O’Connor who will be taking over my position of DRR and taking herup a positon on the District Leadership Team alongside Jordan and myself. To prepare forthe position, I attended the Pre-PETS session in November, which was attended by theincoming Rotary and Rotaract Club Presidents, Assistant Governors and the districtleadership team. The day had some great presentations and allowed for some networkingwith the incoming presidents and planning for the role of Rotaract in the coming year. My last and most recent good news occurred last week, when my application to be one of50 Rotaractors around the world to attend the Rotary Assembly in San Diego in January wasaccepted. I look forward to network with fellow Rotaractors around the world and gain agreat amount of Rotary and Rotaract knowledge for next year, oh and also get to see a bitof the US west coast.

Steven CoffeyDistrict 9640 Rotaract Representative 

When is it?8th - 9th of February 2020

Where is it held?Conference - Griffith University

Dinner - Crown Plaza

Who can attend?Rotarians, Rotaractors, Interactors,

General Public

KEY INFORMATIONThe Australian Rotaract Conference (ARC)preparations are currently in full swing. Earlybird tickets have come and gone and firstrelease tickets currently on sale. The committeehas been working hard behind the scenes toprovide the best experience for Rotaractorswho attend the conference. As previouslystated, this will be the first time ARC has beenhosted by a non-capital city, so we’re trying toshowcase the best that the Gold Coast has tooffer. This includes some of the best speakers,like Bruce Sullivan, Kay Danes, DavidPattermore and Keith Abraham, some amazingbreakout session and having a fun filled‘Hollywood’ themed Gala Dinner. The conference is being held at GriffithUniversity Gold Coast Campus and the GalaDinner at Crown Plaza. We are aiming toshowcase the beauty of the Gold Coast withsocial events that will show off the beauty anddiversity of the Coast. ARC has been my favourite Rotaract eventsince I have been attending them way back atBrisbane’s ARC in 2015. If you have not attendedone before, there’s no better one to attend thenthe one set in your own backyard. You certainlywon’t get a cheaper one.

Steven CoffeyDistrict 9640 Rotaract Representative 

Conference Only Ticket:$85

Dinner Only Ticket:$115

Combined Conference andDinner Ticket:

$170

Current Ticket Prices

Get Tickets at:

https://events.humanitix.com.au/australian-rotaract-conference-202

JOIN US FOR A MEETINGWe meet on the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month at the

Mowbray Park Burleigh Heads Surf Life Saving Club in one

of the function rooms with arrival  at 6 .45 pm for a 7 pm

start .

For any further information on the club , when our next

meeting is or if you have any questions please contact us .

Find us on

Contact usEmail:burleighheads@rotaract.org.au

Phone:0459 836 889

(Sectary Jordan Holdorf)

Website:https://www.burleighrotaract.org

MEET OURMEMBERS:

Cute little Steven, if I may say so myself, was born on the 23rd of October 1992, inSydney, to Larry and Judy Coffey. My family is a little complicated, as I considermyself an only child, but I do have two half sisters and one half brother, but I did notgrow up with them as they are 20+ years older than me. When I was 9 I moved to thebeautiful Gold Coast. I attended Caningeraba State School and then Robina State HighSchool, from there I went to Griffith University where I studied a Bachelor of ForensicScience (Majoring in Chemistry) at the Nathan Campus, then I graduated with aBachelor of Biomolecular Science with Honours - Gold Coast Campus. From 2015-2017, I worked as an Assay Chemist at Morris and Watson, a precious metal refinery,until it burnt down and I was made redundant. For the past 18 months I have been aStability Chemist at Mylan.

As you probably tell by now, I’m a little bit of a nerd. I love most ‘geeky’ things like StarWars, Comic book movies and TV shows, collecting coins and stamps and routinelyplay extremely long board games. I also like to learn things about space and history,through podcasts. I’m also a Lawn Bowler, having taken up the sport as a 12 year old,due to everyone in my family playing the game. I’ve played my whole bowling careerat Burleigh Heads Bowls Club, which actually makes me one of the most experiencedbowlers at the club now. Another passion of mine is travelling. I have been to 26countries and counting as of December 2019, and looking to increase that number. Myfavourite country that I have been to is Japan, and I would recommend everyonegetting to that beautiful country at least once in their lifetime.

As far as Rotaract is concerned, I was a charter member of the Rotaract Club ofBurleigh Heads since 2013. I have held the positions of Club Service Director,Professional Development Director, President, Vice President and currently for thepast two years I have held the position of District Rotaract Representative. I have seena lot of people come and go through the club and have forged many great friendshipsthrough this club and Rotaract/Rotary as a whole. I certainly would not like to knowhow much money I have spent due to Rotaract, but it has definitely been worth all ofit.

Well I hope you’ve found my life up until this point interesting and I look forward toothers providing their life stories in the future.

STEVEN COFFEY

We meet here