The Rotaract Club of Vancouver has had a good start to its 10th year
 

ImageAs it does every year it started off with recruitment of members during UBC’s Imagine day and Clubs Days. This year the response was fantastic and over the two recruitment opportunities, we have added about 30 new members and even more are on our email list.

The Club then focused on filling the remaining spots on the executive team. After an application and interview the executive team was filled. The team consists of Gurinder Walia- President, Huong Pham- Vice President, Keshav Kochhar- Treasurer, Chang Liu- Director of the Professional Development Conference, Mild Rung- Director of International Service, Bianca Yeung- Director of Fundraising, Matt Saunders- Secretary, Anhad Gill- Director of Social Events, Eunice Choi- Director of Community Service and Aviral Garg- Webmaster.

Our first event of the year was “Rotary on ICE”. About 8 members attended this event, along with other clubs in the district, and the outcome was fantastic. Together, we managed to raise a lot of money for New Generations and the comments from members about the event were overwhelmingly positive. Every member that attended said they had a great time, not only getting to enjoy some hockey (in a season where we might not get the NHL) but also because they got to yell “50-50 tickets” at the top of their lungs.

We have also held our first fundraiser of the year. On UBC campus, we sold krispy kreme donuts with the funds raised going to buy candy for the kids at Kiwassa Neighbourhood House. Both the member response to helping sell the donuts, and the response from the UBC community when it came to buying the donuts were fantastic. Over 6 hours we sold 30 boxes of donuts, selling out both early and getting greater revenue than expected.  After buying the candy, and bagging it at one of our meetings, it was delivered to Kiwassa where it will be given to the kids during their annual Halloween carnival. We will also be participating in the set-up and the running of the carnival on October the 26th, and 27th.

A few upcoming events that we have planned are:  Pulling of pest plants from Pacific Spirit Park, a fundraiser for our international service trip, a  Christmas pancake breakfast at Kiwassa (along with distribution of presents- some of which we are hoping to provide), and volunteering at a soup kitchen in early 2013.