Avishen Saurty, is a psychologist, author, and the founder of Wellbe Health Services, a practice that has been innovating in the service provision of mental health for 10 years.

Under its community banner 'Soapbox', the organisation thrives on incubating new initiatives, with the aim of keeping service design not only current, but ahead, by exploring new methods of service provision.

Today they have a workforce of 100+ practitioners and provides services Australia-wide to approximately 3000 clients weekly. These include a number of face-to-face clinics in Sydney that enable access to mental health regardless of location, language, or financial status.

Wellbe also plays a part in training the mental health workforce (psychologist, mental health social workers, and counsellors) and sees it as a chance to strengthen the next generation’s professional values; they advocate self-care, and that any mental health practice should, ethically, have an eye on the systemic causes of the need for it services

Our guest speakers for this evening will be TJ Jethi and Joel Devlin who were sponsored by The Rotary Club of Castle Hill to attend the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards recently held in Sydney.

What is RYLA?

RYLA is an inspiring program aimed at empowering Australia's next generation of superstars. Meet life changing people, be enthralled by inspiring stories and develop skills through challenges and activities that put your leadership into practice, in a supportive and encouraging environment.

Come along and hear about this exciting initiative which our club is supporting to develop future leaders for our community

Please join us for the Australia Day Flag Raising Ceremony at Heritage Park, Castle Hill at 8am on Wednesday 26th January 2023.

This year we will be joined again by distinguished guests from Hills Shire Council as well as local Members of Parliament.

In line with club tradition we will again be putting on a true blue Aussie Brekkie Barbeque and will be asking for volunteers from the club to help after the ceremony to provide this to the public.

The January Home meeting is a special social event which is held at the home of a different club member every year.

This year it will be held at the home of Dr Juanita Ruiz and her husband Mario, in Epping, at 7pm on Wednesday 18th January.

The event is BYO beverage and address details will be sent directly to members and non-members who are already on our circulation list.

If you are not on our circulation list and would like to attend, please contact us through the link on this website to seek more details.

Invitation to all Members, Honorary Members, Friends, District Team and Prospective Members. Partners, friends and family are all welcome to come along and celebrate after a huge year.

We are planning on celebrating Xmas on our normal club night Wednesday 21st December.

Depending on indications we get for numbers, we will confirm the venue shortly.

This is the night of our Annual General Meeting, Board Elections for 2023/24 year and Club Assembly.

The board will also summarise the great progress already made in the current year with some amazing project

As always guests are welcome but due to the full agenda there will no guest speaker for this date.

After a 3 year hiatus, the 2022 Cross Country Challenge returned as a massive success. Please join us for this special appreciation event where we thank our sponsors, supporters and volunteers.

We will also formally award funds to the recipients of the funds raised which will go towards Youth Mental Health in the local Hills community.

Robert is former CEO of the Australian Red Cross and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs

He will be speaking of a thought-provoking overview of why 'jailing is failing' and why we need to reduce over incarceration in Australia. More information is on the website:

https://www.justicereforminitiative.org.au

Facebook: JailingisFailing

$25 Per Head includes 1 Raffle Ticket.

$80 Family 2 adults 2 children

For Bookings Contact Dr Sushil Bandodkar - sbbandodker@hotmail.com

Year 10 Oakhill College Students and Baulkham Hills High School Students, were fortunate enough to participate in Rotary’s Model United Nations Assembly (MUNA) event in May and July this year, respectively.

On the evening of 14th September 2022 we will be welcoming some of the participating students to talk to us about their experiences.

In 2002 The Rotary Club of Castle Hill, supported by Hills Shire Times readers and The Appliance & Limb Centre, helped to organise a great humanitarian project, when a severely disabled 21 year old Kamala Shrestha from Kathmandu Nepal was brought all the way to Castle Hill. She was fitted with prosthetics to replace 2 arms and a leg lost 10 years prior in a catastrophic High Voltage electrical accident while flying a kite.

20 years later in 2022, her arms need of replacement. Our club has again agreed to fund the cost of providing the new arms to give Kamala much needed new lease of life.

On 31st August 2022 there will be a special “International Fundraising Dinner” which will be in support of Kamala. All proceeds raised from the dinner will help fund the replacement of her arms which is planned later this year.

We are pleased to welcome Dr Mark Ho who will be coming to speak to us about the ANSTO Reactor and nuclear medicine.

Dr Mark Ho works at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) , Lucas Heights, specialising in reactor thermo-hydraulics. He’s interested in reactor design, computational fluid dynamics, coding and boiling dynamics. He is the current Vice - President of the Australian Nuclear Association which is an organisation of professional scientists and engineers based in Sydney and with a branch in Adelaide.

ANSTO is the home of Australia’s most significant landmark and national infrastructure for research. Thousands of scientists from industry and academia benefit from gaining access to state-of-the-art instruments every year.

For more information please go to www.nuclearaustralia.org. or www.ansto.gov.au

A special night to induct and welcome new members to the club. We will also hear from a mixture of new and current members. Come along and listen to their personal stories and why they wanted to join Rotary and make a difference.

Melanie Russo from the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation spoke at the club about the amazing work this foundation does for the children in our community. The foundation makes a significant contribution to many aspects of children’s health ranging from research through to assisting with rehabilitation.

If you would like to know more about the foundation please go to the website by following this link:

www.schf.org.au

We were pleased to welcome Brooke Collins, Managing Director of Staying Alive Health who spoke to our club about a very important issue for our community. Staying Alive Health was born in 2019 when Brooke saw first-hand, as a local Councillor in The Hills Shire, and whilst involved with a very large little athletics club, the urgent need for more defibrillators, public accessibility, increased public awareness. But more importantly he noticed the lack of monitoring for defibrillators. He also saw a high number of defibrillators being misplaced in an emergency and defibrillators that were not rescue ready due to flat batteries.

www.stayingalivehealth.com.au

Each year we recognise the efforts of the board from the previous year and induct the new board for the next 12 months in a special Changeover Dinner celebration.

This year we thanked Immediate Past President Raymond Wooster. He welcomed the new board headed up by our youngest ever Club President Amanda Firkins, seen here giving her acceptance speech.

For more details and photos please follow the link.

www.castlehillrotary.org.au/ourcelebrations

Our annual excellence in teaching awards work with local schools to recognise great teachers.

For more details about the 2022 Awards please follow the link.

www.castlehillrotary.org.au/our-projects/vocational/2022-excellence-in-teaching

We were pleased to hear from our guest speaker Darrin Batchelor who heads up the Hills Area police team based at Castle Hill Police Station. Darrin has had an extremely interesting career spanning emergency services including Ambulance and Police. He has been in this current role for 10 months and he shared with us his vision for policing in the Hills Area. We have had an enduring relationship with the Hills Area command over many years. Each year, on behalf of the community, we recognise the efforts of key individuals of the Hills Area team through our Rotary “Excellence in Policing Awards”. These are presented annually in September each year.

An impressive presentation from Anthony at Thread Together.

Clothing communities in crisis with donated clothing from retailers including P.E Nation Camilla Aje. They partner with OzHarvest Anglicare Australia Orange Sky Laundry Street Side Medics to support the homeless in communities, new arrivals in Australia, most recently women and children seeking safety from Ukraine.

Residents in Lismore affected by floods are also being supported by Thread together to get them back on their feet and moving forward with their life.

For more information please follow the link to the website

www.threadtogether.org

We welcomed Professor Robert Booy as our guest speaker on Wednesday 13th April.

Professor Booy is Head of the Clinical Research team at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance. His is in Paediatrics, Infectious diseases and Epidemiology. Before returning to Australia in 2005 he was Professor of Child Health with the University of London. Robert’s research interests extend from understanding susceptibility to, and severity of, serious diseases (eg meningitis, septicaemia, influenza and encephalitis), to the clinical public-health, social and economic burden of these diseases, as well as means by which to control serious infections through vaccines, drugs and non-pharmaceutical measures.