Venue:                      Damien on Fisher

 

 

Guests:                    Rtn Margaret Maloney, Dianne Duke, Genese Mullins, Fran Schultz, Ross Smith, Ging Tadiar

 

Attendance:           27  Members    7 Guests

 

David Middleton welcomed guests in fine style and introduced our guest speaker in his normal fast and furious fashion.

David Schultz was born in 1944, was educated at St Ignatius College and graduated as a vet from Sydney University in 1966....married Fran and produced 4 children. He developed a special affinity for birds and wildlife and won a Churchill Fellowship in 1979 to study Avian Medicine and Surgery.in the USA and UK. He became known as the 'Birdman of Adelaide'. 2020 saw an AM bestowed on him. 

 

Tonight he spoke about the Southern Brushtail Rock Wallaby, a highly endangered species found in the Snowy River Gorge and Grampians of Victoria. It is quite small and weighs only 5-8 kg.  South Australia has the yellow footed brushtail rock wallaby and the black footed brushtail rock wallaby which are still surviving with depleted numbers, unlike the southern which was almost extinct in the 1990s. In 1996 the Victorian Government provided 3 young wallabies (siblings) to SA to help with a  captive breeding program after failures in Victoria. 

The gestation period for a rock wallaby is only one month and, 24 hours after each birth there is a re-mating, with the embryo created staying dormant until the weaning of the joey 4 weeks later. One of the SA females produced 8 times in one year. Fast work! 

 

To speed up the breeding process the team at the zoo transplanted the young joey from the southern  into a yellow footed rock wallaby, replacing the newly born joey in its pouch. There was a constant stream of joeys back and forth across the border. Meanwhile in Victoria, releases into the wild were not going at all well. Between 2008 and 2012, 22 were released and only 3 survived. In 2013 only 7 animals were alive and from those released between 2013-2015 only 4 survived. The program was a failure and the Victorian Minister declared no more releases from captivity. In 2019 a survey of scat by uni students revealed only 8 southern wallabies. In 2021 the male was replaced in SA...too much in-breeding.

Meanwhile the Parks and Wildlife service of Victoria has been experimenting with deployment in areas which have low feral concentrations (best achieved through aerial baiting). Producing wild-born as distinct from captive-born is having more success. Rock wallaby predators include wedge tailed eagles, tiger quolls, foxes and cats. Victoria continues to maintain captive colonies. And so the struggle continues!

 

David was applauded for his highly entertaining enlightenment of the life and death struggles and sexual proclivities of southern brushtail rock wallabies

 

Patsy Beckett announced that a slap-up changeover will happen 6.30 for 7.00pm on Tuesday 28 June here at Damien's.

 

Chris Davis advised that the Unley Road Pride of Work and Small Business award ceremony will be held 5.30 for 6.00pm on Tuesday 31 May at Barzaar. After considerable delay the venue for the South Australia Police Officer of the Year Awards has been confirmed as the Adelaide Show, which is pleasing, but the time frame is very tight.

 

Brenton Judge needs help on 2 fronts, namely packing materials for Treasure Box on Thursday 2 June and assisting the Salvos at Mitcham and Unley Shopping Centres for the Red Shield Appeal later this month.

 

Rhonda Hoare reminded members of two upcoming events:

Rajat Nagpal provided a video from his daughter Jeevika who has been accepted into a Bachelor of Dental Surgery course at Adelaide Uni. She thanked club members for their support.

 

Paul Duke advised that Symphony by the Sea will be held at Brighton High School on the afternoon of Saturday 18 June with raffle proceeds to ROMAC.

Chris Davis won the filthy lucre and Ging Tadiar the fruchocs 

 

The meeting closed at 7.55 pm

 

Lessons in generosity from rural Africa

Posted on May 12, 2022

 

By Helene Dudley, past president of the Rotary Club of Coconut Grove, Florida, USA...excuse the acronyms

                    

 

My eyes filled with tears as I attended  a Zoom meeting of the Yumbe, Uganda provisional Rotary Club discussing a service project they were planning to help a nearby village. I reached out in chat to another participant of the meeting who admitted she too was tearing up. The club is not yet officially recognized by Rotary International and the women are well below the poverty line but they are already doing service projects.

The 22 members of the Yumbe provisional Rotary Club are all leaders of Women’s Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) groups receiving funds from TCP Global to increase their loan pools. With regular loans to improve their businesses, their incomes increased so they can keep their kids in school and provide three meals a day.

Feeling they are already blessed by their regular access to loans (averaging $150), they decided their first service project should help a less fortunate community. After soliciting proposals from nearby villages, they opted to build latrines for a community that lacks sanitation.

I am continually surprised and sometimes shamed on my Zoom calls with Africa. I underestimate. I never stopped to question my initial assumption that VSLAs, made up of market vendors and subsistence farmers, lacked capacity for or interest in community projects.

These women are always ready to help others and CCEDUC is using its earnings to help them do just that.

While the usual TCP Global partner is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), the VSLAs are 30-member groups that combine their savings of $0.50 or so per week to provide loans to each other. They see the value of loans and want larger and more frequent loans, but without a bank account and internet capabilities, TCP Global could not work directly with them.

Care Community Education Center (CCEDUC) in Yumbe offered to serve as fiscal agent at no charge. In my mind that arrangement failed both the “Fair to all Concerned” and the “Beneficial to All Concerned” tests so I suggested that CCEDUC receive part of the earnings that usually go to the organization directly managing the loan program. If everyone benefits in some way from program success, everyone works hard for that success.

Although this arrangement proved to be fair and beneficial for all concerned and we now have 34 VSLAs receiving micro-loan funds with CCEDUC as fiscal agent, my underlying assumption was clearly wrong. These women are always ready to help others and CCEDUC is using its earnings to help them do just that.

Videos from African micro-loan partners include frequent requests to provide similar services to VSLAs in other communities. Within nine months of opening the first two loan programs in Yumbe, CCEDUC opened two loan programs in the BidiBidi camp for Sudanese refugees, 15 kilometers away. In these communities only 13% have home latrines, 48% have access to a safe water source and the average income is less than $2 per day. Yet their embrace of these refugees stands in stark contrast to the reaction of affluent U.S. citizens. We have a lot to learn from Africa. 

About the author: Helene Dudley is Executive Director of TCP Global and a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer: Colombia 1968-70, Albania/Slovakia 1997-99

 

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The Tale End.....