President's Column
By President Joyce Mak
Good News - Part I
The District Conference was successfully held on 21 & 22 Feb in Macau, The Venetian Hotel. A great turn up this year, almost over 500 participants registered to the event and close to 150 rooms were occupied. This year, the host club is RC of Macau and they have done a great job in organizing the entire event and definitely it has not been an easy task to coordinate different parties for the past 6 months. Our club has a great turn up and a total of 8 members and 1 guest attended. They were CP John, PDG Alex, AG Peter, PE Michael, VP Stephen, PP Raymond, PP Dominic and myself. We had the privilege to have the Honourable Edmond Ho, Chief Executive of Macao Special Administrative Region as the keynote speaker for the opening ceremony. Other speakers such as Past RI Vice President & TRF Trustee, John Germ. Inspiring speech and information was given by others such as Ms Echo Chan, Executive Director, Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute, Mr Paul Chan, MH, JP, Legislative Councillor, HK Special Administrative Region, Mr Wolfram Diener, Vice President, Convention & Exhibition, Venetian Macao-Resort-Hotel and Professor Simon Ho, Dean, School of Business, HK Baptist University. This year's theme is "Realize and Manage Change" and all the speakers expressed their opinions about 'change' from their professions and perspectives.
PP Raymond, VP Stephen and PP Dominic would agree that the highlight of the conference should be the "Billion Dollar Sale" which was being held next to the conference ballroom. This is an added attraction to the conference this year and all of us enjoyed much for the 2 days.
On the first day of the Banquet, our CP John was presented the "Service Above Self" Award from RI, where each year, this award would only be given to no more than 150 members around the world. This award recognizes Rotarians who have rendered exemplary humanitarian service with an emphasis on personal volunteer efforts. We should feel proud and privileged as Kingsparicans to be at a club with two very outstanding members who achieved this highest honor recognition from RI. The other members who received this achievement is our PDG Alex. One would question whether this award be only awarded to PDGs? The answer is no, as in the past, recognized individuals from our district who received this award and they were not PDGs. We have no doubt why two PDGs in our club were being recognized as they have participated and led several notable projects in the districts which a large population of people who are in need were benefited through these projects. On behalf of Kingspark, I would like to congratulate PDG Alex and CP John for their great contribution to the community and uphold the spirit of 'service above self'.
An update on the progress on our 'Rotary Bring Me a Book' project. We successfully delivered our first read aloud session to the children on Saturday, 28 Feb. We went to one of our library recipients, Mr. & Mrs. Thomas nursery. I would like express my gracious thanks the Associate Members of our Rotaract Club: Vivian, Jacqueline, Rosenna, Teresina; Rotaractor Rachel; and 2 other Interactors from HoTung Secondary School, Nadia and Tammy. We sure had a great time telling a few story books for children from age 2-6 and also their parents too! The event last for about 4 hours and close to 250 children and over 80 parents participated. Not only the children, all of us were in love with the stories, one of our favorite books is "The Caterpillar" - an easy to read, colorful with great drawings and an educational book which triggered children to proactively answering our questions about the story. Apart from reading stories, we also sang some children's songs with them, our favorite ones: 'Head and Shoulder, Knees and Toes" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars" We will be visiting another recipient soon, will keep you all posted.
I have to admit that as of today, our club still hasn't met the presidential citation in different areas and I tell myself that I should be upset, but I'm very grateful in my year of presidency, a lot of happy news happened among our members. Last year was Anwer and Lily's wedding in August and very soon he announced Lily's pregnancy after his Honey Moon! We're all very excited and can't wait till April to see the results!
And regarding the other piece of news¡K stay tune for my next President's column and I'll also tell you more about our 3 Sister Clubs Alliance trip to Bangkok, Chiangrai and Chiangmai in Thailand!
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