AS the Christmas celebrations kick off in Tavistock with our Dickensian evening I look back with pride at the club?s achievements over the past year. We were able to donate £2,500 to Macmillan nurses from money raised at our charity golf day in May; over £1,100 was collected in aid of victims of floods which devastated many parts of the country in July. Enough money was raised for six Shelterboxes, which are sent out to disaster areas around the world, and donations have been given to a number of local causes, the Memory Café, Youthwize and the proposed new athletics track to be sited at Tavistock College, to name but a few. Our annual dinner for senior citizens was held in June and attended by about 100 people who were entertained with music by Blowzone. The club sponsored Amy Petts, a student from Tavistock, for the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards course which took place in July. Rotarians are just ordinary people who achieve extraordinary things and over the past year our Tavistock club has spearheaded a campaign designed to assist both the carers and sufferers of dementia. This has now been taken up regionally by District 1290, which includes 39 clubs covering the whole of Cornwall and West Devon. Funding is now in place for the website to be up and running in the new year and will include practical information on a variety of subjects, ranging from help with financial matters to who might be available nearby to come and put up a shelf or change a tap washer. This will also be linked to the Alzheimer?s Society. Other regions around the country have expressed an interest and we have high hopes that the programme will eventually be networked throughout the whole of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland. All of this could not have happened without your generosity and Dickensian Evening is when our club starts its Christmas collections by bringing Father Christmas to Bedford Square. I know that you will be as generous as ever and I shall have the opportunity to thank many of you personally in the coming weeks, disguised as my alter ego, from the club?s Santamobile as we tour the streets during our house to house collections. To those that are missed and on behalf of all Tavistock Rotarians a big thank you for your charitable support, enjoy the celebrations, have a Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous new year. Tony Whitehead President The Rotary Club of Tavistock
l This item should have appeared in full in last week?s Dickensian Evening supplement but due to a technical error, only the final section was published ? apologies.