Rotary Zoom meeting on 12 May
Graeme Titcombe provided us with an opening thought on the use of PPE, the new norm in hospital care dealing with Covid 19 cases around the world. Graeme with his background in public health management traversed the issues around staff protection and the debates worldwide on the rapid advance of Covid 19 and health protection. He said the debate was still live on the use of masks outside the hospital environment an issue which members were no doubt following through the daily reports on the virus from the Director General of Health.
President Phil welcomed Lizzie Wilson our guest speaker, Senior, Comms and Engagement Advisor to the Environmental Protection Authority, EPA. Lizzie, who grew up in Karori, covered a wide range of environmental issues facing people at home and in the work and recreation areas and used a series of power points to cover her key messages.
She spend some time on the question of chemicals safety in the home environment and cited statistics for young children 1 in 3 under the age of 5 admitted to hospital were for chemical related injuries. The safe handling and storage of chemicals was a crucial issue. She opened up a debate around “green cleaning” methods and a published list of recipes the EPA had received from sustainable management workshops for application on surface cleaning. This raised issues with members around the viability of some products and methods in dealing properly with significant viruses the public were confronting. In response Lizzie offered to return with other work colleagues to further engage with the Club on some key environmental management issues.
Members welcomed this further dialogue later in the year.
Club messages to members included the National Rotary programme for tree planting. This will involve opportunities to plant trees at Ben Burn Park.
The new partnership Rotary has established with Toastmasters in Wellington will give members an opportunity to improve public speaking.
Members were invited to attend the Zoom meeting on 19th May as a social event and to bring a glass of wine or coffee to that session.
