April is? Or was?

Well, blow me down: Maternal and Child Health seems to have got the flick. 

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver” as Mahatma Gandhi said. 

But according to My Rotary Calendar,  April 2024 is Environmental Month, and ClubRunner now tells us about it:

April is Environment Month in Rotary

Supporting the environment is Rotary's seventh area of focus. It joined peace-building and conflict prevention; disease prevention and treatment; water, sanitation, and hygiene; maternal and child health; basic education and literacy; and community economic development.

Rotary is committed to supporting activities that strengthen the conservation and protection of natural resources, advance ecological sustainability, and foster harmony between communities and the environment. We empower communities to access grants and other resources, embrace local solutions, and spur innovation to address the causes and reduce the effects of climate change and environmental degradation.

The Rotary Foundation in Foundation global grant funding has allocated 18.4 million USD to environment-related causes in the past five years through their support of community economic development and water, sanitation, and hygiene projects. Our Water and Sanitation Global Grant with International partner RC of Fig Garden addresses sanitation issues which affect the environment in twenty-one remote villages in Northern Thailand.

Some of the ways we can work on environmental challenges by:

Protecting and restoring land, coastal, marine, and freshwater resources

Enhancing the capacity of communities to support natural resource management and conservation

Supporting sustainable agriculture, fishing, and aquaculture practices

Addressing the cause of climate change by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases

Strengthening ecosystems and communities affected by climate change

Supporting education initiatives that promote behavior that protects the environment

Advocating for sustainable consumption to build an economy that uses resources more efficiently

Addressing environmental justice issues and public health concerns

 Our AG Sandi Fulcher kindly provided us with new “April is Environment Month” images, and added that Maternal and Child Health have been moved in the Rotary Calendar to July.  

You can refer to the D9800 site for the remaining months: https://rotarydistrict9800.org.au/sitepage/public-image

Thanks, Sandi.

Footy Tipping

Apart from the fact that this is a really exciting competition, we have nothing to report. 

Your Comments

Here at “The Bulletin" we love reading your comments. Did you know there is a dialogue box at the foot of articles where you may add something for others to read?

But we wonder why some readers don’t see this feature. Ian Bentley throws some light on the subject:

“I just logged in on my iPhone. There was no option for comments until I logged in to the Member Area. Then at the bottom of the article there was a grey button with the label “Load Comments”. I clicked the button and then could insert a comment. I usually use a desktop and there is no need to activate the comments via a button. Hope this helps.”

So there you go: perhaps you also have to log in to the Club Website to get the benefits of this ClubRunner feature. 

Scottish word of the week: Radge

Are Scots a nation of radges? If you’re not from Scotland, and had only a passing knowledge of Scottish literature, then perhaps you might think so.

The Bookworms are reading “A Country of Eternal Light” by Paul Dalgarno, which has smatterings of Doric, the dialect of North-East Scotland. They will of course come across the word there. 

Like it or not, there seems to have been a bloom in the use of words to describe mental Scottish people, and the crazy things that they apparently get up to.

Who is the archetypal radge: wild, unpredictable, and violent?  A man you do not want to spill a pint on.

As well as being a radge, you can also go radge: a prolific, sustained bout of swearing or a violent outburst ought to do it.

It’s also used as a casual term of endearment, predominantly in the east coast (“come here, ya wee radge.”). 

A word that dates back to the late 19th century, radge is probably a morphing of “rage”. According to Scots Magazine, it was adapted from radger, a seemingly extinct term for an uncontrollable creature.

We searched PEXELS, which has over a million royalty-free pictures, for one of a radge. Their reply? “We couldn't find anything for Radge with your filters. Try to refine your search.”

So we searched for “angry Scottish man” to get this image for you.

Thanks PEXELS for your Royalty-free images.

TTFN