Pictures from Events taken throughout 2024

We helped the Inner Wheel club of Reading Maiden Erlegh when they hosted a MacMillan Coffee Morning on 28^th August. The event was held in Cathy and Alan Howe's garden and raised over £1,000 from donations and a raffle. Cakes were baked by members of both clubs. The cakes and coffee were enjoyed by friends, neighbours, Rotary and Inner Wheel club members.

One of our enjoyable social activities is a monthly walk followed by a pub lunch. Our August walk was from The Queen's Oak, in Finchampstead. It was 3.6 miles long and apparently Catherine of Aragon and her entourage travelled along part of it in 1501 on the way to meet and marry Prince Arthur. We all enjoyed a good meal at the Queen's Oak afterwards. The photo shows the happy walkers.

On Saturday 17th August, in perfect weather, a group of us thoroughly enjoyed the Rock the Manor concert with about 2000 others at the John Lewis Odney Club in Cookham. We were guests of Rotarian some of our group. We are a very social Rotary club and in addition to our support to the community we have a regular programme of events such as this to enjoy throughout the year.

Some of our club's members went to the Junction Kitchen and enjoyed an Iranian meal, met some Iranians and were entertained by a guitarist playing Iranian music The kitchen is based at Wycliffe Baptist church near Cemetery Junction to celebrate our diverse community. The kitchen also operated on 20th and 21st August. Wycliffe Baptist church's Foodshare is a separate project to help the local community and it receives food and financial support from our Rotary club. 

On Wednesday 3^rd July a group of us From Reading Maiden Erlegh Rotary Club enjoyed a visit to the gardens at Eton College. As well as a fascinating tour of the college and its museum, we walked around the extensive gardens and enjoyed coffee and cakes in a marquee. The event was hosted by the National Gardens Scheme (NGS), raising funds for the Thames valley Hospice charity, whose volunteers did an amazing job of catering.  To see a full set of photos showing views of the college and its gardens, please consult our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ReadingMaidenErlegh

Every year the Rotary Club President hands over to a successor in July. This year President Richard handed over to Scott Trathen and Steve Luckhurst who will share the role. They are pictured here with their wives who are also joint Presidents of the Inner Wheel club. At the meeting, the new team presented their plans fro the 2024/2025 Rotary year.

On Wednesday 3rd July a group of us enjoyed a visit to the gardens at Eton College. As well as a fascinating tour of the college and its museum, we walked around the extensive gardens and enjoyed coffee and cakes in a marquee. The event was hosted by the National Gardens Scheme (NGS), raising funds for the Thames valley Hospice charity, whose volunteers did an amazing job of catering. 

Our club has donated £1,500 to a project in support of Ukrainian people. The project, organized by Swaffham Rotary Club, aims to raise £20,000 to fund the purchase of a rugged ex-military vehicle, its maintenance and running costs for a year, and the training of local people to operate it. The lorry will be used in Ukraine to distribute humanitarian aid from warehouses to individuals and locations that so desperately need it. 

For an early celebration to mark Richard Nicholson's year as President, we enjoyed lunch on a river cruise from Henley.

We helped with car parking duties during the Sonning Scarecrow Festival which was held over the late spring bank holiday weekend. There were some spectacular scarecrows.

Camp Mohawk was one of the local charity partners for the Reading Half Marathon. They had 15 runners who ran to raise sponsorship for them. We provided a cheer point (pictured) to encourage all the runners, especially the Camp Mohawk team. There were runners of all ages and abilities, and it was wonderful to see the people who were raising money for charity really pushing themselves for their chosen cause.

We celebrated St George's day with a meal cooked by our own chefs and there was entertainment throughout the evening including from Rotarian Tim Pascal, acting as St. George.

On 10^th March we helped at the Wokingham Area Schools' Music Association concert in the Reading Hexagon. Children from 28 primary schools across the Wokingham Borough took part in the concert which had a theme of 'Lights, Camera, Action!'. It was a fascinating performance of singing, dancing and narration of many well-known film themes. Programme sales and donations raised over £900, the bulk of which will go to the Soulscape charity and the remainder to community activities supported by Rotary. 

We donated £400 to Yeldall Manor to purchase a couple of PCs to improve productivity in their office work. Yeldall Manor is a residential drug and alcohol recovery centre near Wargrave for men struggling with addiction. The picture shows Campbell, Head of Therapy at Yeldall with Robin Edwards, one of our club members.

Just before Easter we staged some fun for children and parents at the Winnersh branch of the British Garden Centres. This included an Easter bunny, guess the number of sweets in a jar, a Splat the Malteser game and a giant Easter poster with holes for faces. Four Rotarians took advantage of a lull to pose for a "humorous" picture. 

On Thursday 1^st February we organised the local competition of Rotary Youth Speaks at the Abbey School. Teams of three students from local schools competed in debating a wide range of  topics.Teams were allowed 15 minutes including the introduction, the argument in favour of the motion and the opposition then a summary by the chair. The Intermediate team (11-13-years) from Abbey won with their debate about "Is Rivalry beneficial?" and the Senior team (14-17), also from Abbey, won with a debate on "Science is a threat to mankind". They both progressed to the Rotary Thames Valley Final and the Abbey Intermediates will take part in the national final.

On 15^th January, we started delivering 2,300 frozen meals funded by the Reading Charity Art and Craft Fair. The meals are being prepared and frozen at Leighton Park School by the school's catering company Thomas Franks under the direction of Executive Chef Alessandro Albanese. The nutritious, microwaveable meals are being delivered over the next few weeks to many local food banks and food shares by volunteer Rotarians from our club. Click the thumbnail photo above to see some of the deliveries.

On 26^th January 48 players enjoyed an afternoon of bridge and refreshments organised by our club at Charvil Village Hall. The event raised about £700 for our club's Community charity fund. The images show our volunteers ready to serve tea and a view of the hall with some of the players.