Community

Every July, every Rotary club throughout the world gets a new president.

On the first of July Sean Usher became this year’s president.

Sean has been with the club since 2001.

A local businessman, he formerley owned two resturants in Farnborough, but now concentrates on internet marketing for local businesses.

Each president of the club brings something different to the club and there have been 51 previous presidents of Farnborough Rotary Club.

Sean wants to make sure that he has a fun year, but at the same time carrying on the good work of Rotary locally.

“We want to recruit new members, in fact we are always looking for the right kind of people to join us. We want men and women from 40 years upwards who want to give something back to the local community”.

The club consists of nearly 50 members, from all walks of life. “The common view held by the public is that rotary clubs are filled with posh bankers, in fact we do not have a banker in our club at all, yes we have an accountant, a couple of lawyers, an architect and other “professions” but we also have a driving instructor, signwriter, aero engineer amongst many other men and women from all walks of life”.

So if you are interested, please contact us through the website for more information and give something back to the community.

Ice and frozen snow hs stopped our street collections for the 6th night in a row.

There is disappointment at Farnborough Rotary club today because for the sixth day in a row we have had to cancel our nightly tour of the streets of Farnborough collecting money for local causes.

All collectors have been asked to stand down.  The main reason that the collections have to be canceled is safety.

Although most of the roads are clear following the snow downfalls over the last week, the foot path are treacherous and extremely slippery.

In the 8 years that I have been with Rotary, I have never known so many canceling of nights.

Rotarian John Grenham, who is the the coordinator of the collections is also extremely disappointed, not because of the work that has gone into the organising of the collections, but because we will have less money to distribute this year, to those that need it locally.

Today I along with rotarians Neil Wilson and Andrew Clarke played interviewers at Oak Farm School.

These were mock interviews. It gives the teenagers, aged 15-16 a chance to take part in an interview as if they were applying for a job. This is an annual thing that members of our club attend to.

We interview 6-8 teenagers for around 20 minutes each. We cover all areas, their background, ambitions, the grades they hope to achieve and then give then an analysis on how the interview went.

Although not a pressure interview, it does however make some of them nervous as they are marked individually and a mini report is written by us to pass back to their careers teacher and then back to them.

I believe they get a great deal from this, however although we may hold the sessions next year, the school is closing within 18 months and they may not get the opportunity again.

I think all schools should at least offer an opportunity for teenagers to brush up on their interviewing skills.

At Farnborough rotary club we have been involved for several years. We can hope that other schools will take up the baton and run with it.