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We're closely linked with our community.

Hadrian's Wall Charity Walk raises over £8000

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To celebrate the 1900 years of Hadrian's Wall, 20 Rotary Clubs in the North of England joined together to walk the 84 miles of Hadrian's Wall in 3 hours on the 22nd April 2023. The 27 teams from the 20 clubs each walked their section of the wall starting at 10am and all had finished by 13.19 in just over the 3 hours. Six Alnwick Rotary members took part, walking the Chollorford to Brocolitia Section in just over 2 hours, and were joined by some members of the Washington Ford Club and partners and friends, including Peter Walton from Berwick Rotary Club and Charlie Smith from Amble and Warkworth Rotary Club. Over £8,000 was raised for charity and the Alnwick share is going to help Ukrainian Refugees.

Competition Success!

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Students from Duchess’s Community High School supported by the Club achieved spectacular success in the District level finals of five of the RGB&I non-face-to-face youth competitions. Congratulations to go to Kate Deacon who won the District level Young Artist competition; to Jack Rowley who won Young Writer (intermediate level), to Emmy Burgess who one again won Young Writer (senior level), to Astrid Jones who won Young Photographer and to Eleanor Robinson who won Young Environmentalist. All of their entries progress to the National level competition finals.

2023 Young Musician & Young Chef Competitions

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The Club was delighted to support the 2023 Rotary Great Britain and Ireland Young Musician and Young Chef competitions, both of these being face-to-face events. Congratulations go to the Solo Vocalist winner, Eloise Barber and Solo Instrumentalist winner Billy Clayton (on guitar), and also to Owain Hatfield, winner of Young Chef. Eloise went on to represent the club at the District level final of Solo Vocalist and Owain represented the Club at the Regional Level judging of Young Chef.

Day of Service 2023

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Rotarians joined with Friends of the Club and students from Duchess’s Community High School to engage in a spring 2023 ‘Day of Service’ in and around the centre of Alnwick. This event also formed part of the Environmental Impact Challenge the Club is supporting in the High School. Teams of Rotarians and students set off complete with bags and litter picking sticks, and a very busy morning of hard work was had by all. The town Market Place and local streets and areas were much tidier when all the litter had been removed.

Environmental Impact Challenge

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We support an Environmental Impact Challenge, which encourages young people in the High school and our RotaKids schools to plan and implement projects which improve the environment in some tangible ways or which encourage people to adopt pro-environmental actions and behaviours. The first ‘Dragons’ Den’ was held at Duchess’s School in early December where teams bid for funding for projects that would increase environmental awareness and impact. Joy and David Cooper from the Club were joined by our Corporate Member Craig Ellis from the Alnwick Garden in ‘the Den’. Four teams presented excellent project bids which will be taken forwards over the next few months, with great emphasis on dealing with the problem of waste in and around the school. One team is planning to establish a litter picking club and will work not just on collecting litter but also on ways to prevent people dropping it. Another group is making ‘plastic pollution art’ and will construct a shark made entirely from waste plastic. This model will then be displayed in school and in public places in town to draw attention to the horrors created by micro-plastics that end up in food chains. A third group will engage in a substantial research project which focuses on the need to reduce the number of plastic drinks bottles used and discarded in school. The final team plans to establish an eco-friendly garden in the school grounds which will contain tyre stacks, bird feeders, plant holders and flower beds, all designed to encourage wild life and promote environmental responsibility.

Catch 'em young!

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Young people lie at the heart of many of the activities of Rotary Alnwick. We have very warm relationships with Duchess’s Community High School and the primary schools in our town and district. The Club supports RotaKids Clubs in Swansfield Park Primary School, St Michael’s Primary School and Whittingham Primary School and an Interact Club in the High School. We support seven of the RGB&I youth competitions, namely Young Artist, Young Chef, Young Environmentalist, Young Filmmaker, Young Musician, Young Photographer and Young Writer. We congratulate Owain Hatfield who won the Young Chef with Max van Shalkwyk in second place. The Young Vocalist winner of the Young Musician competition was Eloise Barber with Amy Miller Trotter in second place and the Young Instrumentalist winner was Billy Clayton on guitar with Adam Johnstone in second place on saxophone. Winners of these competitions will go on to compete in the District level heats in spring of next year.

Rotarians at work with 8,000 crocuses

Image by Jasmin Junger
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Hopefully the area on Column Field, adjacent to Alnwick Infirmary, will be ablaze with purple crocuses next spring. The flowers will line either side of the pathway that runs alongside the sensory garden outside the hospital. Rotarians from Alnwick partnered with members of Alnwick in Bloom and the Town Council to plant 8,000 crocus corms, helping all concerned to raise awareness of World Polio Day. Amazingly, the whole task was completed in less than a day. Hopefully the many local people and tourists who walk in this area will enjoy the purple ‘carpet’ and with its plaque in place, and learn the significance of Rotary in the global polio eradication programme.

Gardening for the community at Whittingham Village

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With the aid of £100 awarded from the District Grant provided for Clubs for community projects earlier this year, pupils of Whittingham Church of England Primary School set about the task of greening their school for the benefit of the school and the village community. This project had significant involvement of the school’s newly established RotaKids group. A wide variety of flowers, and edible plants were put into planters and grounds, with a focus on red and white flowers to represent the colours of Northumberland. Over the last few months, the school has been beautifully ‘decorated’ and much enjoyed by the village. The potatoes and herbs in planters will soon be ready for harvesting. Alnwick Rotarians are delighted with the success of this project and to know that already the Whittingham RotaKids and staff are working on plans to further enhance the village environment in the autumn.

Beautiful Beau

Image by Massimo Negrello
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When Joy Palmer Cooper was elected as President of Alnwick Rotary Club in 2019 she chose to support Canine Partners as her Presidential charity, an organisation which trains and provides assistance dogs for people with disabilities. She set a target of raising £1,000. Three years later, the incredible sum of £7,500 has been handed to the charity, which was then doubled to the magnificent total of £15,000 by an anonymous donor. Rotarians in Alnwick raised the £7,500 through fund-raising events such as the Club’s Golf Day, and through supporting Joy’s garden parties and ‘at homes’ for canine support. Honorary Member of the Club, Mary Nisbet, contributed a splendid £2,350 earned through her boot sales and sales of hand-made items. We have received a special introduction to our ‘adopted’ Canine Partners puppy Beau. This beautiful little yellow Labrador dog has been assigned as our Club’s special assistance dog in training as a result of the fund-raising achieved during the Rotary years 2019-22. Beau was born on 24th May 2022 and is now being trained in Hull for her future life as an assistance dog. Canine Partners report that she has settled well into her training home and is making excellent progress. She knows her name and is beginning to understand her routines. We look forward very much to following her progress through regular reports from this special charity which does so much to help people with disabilities.

Rotakids enable access to reading

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In the autumn of last year the RotaKids of St Michael’s School in Alnwick received a District Grant for a project which aimed to re-establish the Club after the pandemic and focus on enabling access to reading for their school and community. Promoting reading for pleasure was made a school priority and the RotaKids designed and led a hugely successful project. The first part of the ‘reading for pleasure’ plan was to purchase some books for their Christmas shop. The hope was that if young children saw their older role models reading it would inspire them to read more. It did! The second part of the plan was to purchase books to give to children from disadvantaged backgrounds as gifts for Christmas. The books were chosen by the children themselves and in their own words when the books were given “the delight on the children’s faces was a worthwhile sight”. Finally, books were added to the school library and the library itself was repositioned into a more user-friendly space. Many of the older pupils, boys especially, developed a new-found love of reading. Books and enthusiasm were shared at home with siblings and friends, resulting in community awareness and impact. The teacher who leads the RotaKids group commented “St Michael’s Primary School are extremely grateful for the grant they received for promoting reading in their community and look forward to many more years of working with the Rotary Club”

Hospice care appreciation

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Rotarians in Alnwick are regular donors to the outstanding work done by the Clinical and support staff of HospiceCare North Northumberland which supports patients and their families throughout our town and district when faced with life-limiting illnesses. Alongside financial donations which are always desperately needed, the Rotary Club has showed its appreciation for the tremendous work which has been done by the Hospice throughout the dark and difficult days of the pandemic. A ‘Certificate of Appreciation’ for all of the community support and clinical care given was handed over by Rotary Club President Joy Palmer Cooper to Clinical Lead Nina Burnett with nursing assistant Doreen Scantlebury and HospiceCare volunteer Rotarian Jill Clark in attendance.

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