By Mikayla van Loon
By establishing a satellite club in Mount Dandenong, The Rotary Club of Lilydale (RCL) is looking to extend its reach and support the Hills communities better.
Rotarian and passionate Hills resident Liz Millman has been working with the Lilydale club for about a year on this project after transferring her Welsh membership to RCL.
“If we could get a Rotary club going, then it’s about service for the community,” she said.
“Our communities along the tourist road and even in Kalista and Sherbrooke, there are about 3000 families, so it’s quite a considerable community but there aren’t any community service groups like Rotary or CWA.”
RCL president Jenny Selway said there are Rotary clubs right around the edges of the Dandenong Ranges in Ferntree Gully, Belgrave, Monbulk and Lilydale but none directly supporting those communities in the middle.
With the 2021 storms, Ms Selway said it really identified a need in the Hills and the lack of community groups of this kind to offer on ground support.
“You need that group because you’re a special cohort of people that really need to be all living together,” she said.
“Whereas the Rotary Club of Lilydale we can have members from Croydon, Montrose, Lilydale and Mount Dandenong, we’re a big area but I think the Mount Dandenong group really needs to provide a local focus.”
As someone who was affected by the storms herself, Ms Millman said this was one of the motivations for looking to establish a satellite club.
“The communities on the hill really lost out after the storm not only from the storm damage but lost out because there weren’t any organisations applying for funding to be able to do things,” Ms Millman said.
While Ms Millman acknowledged there are many newly established groups doing wonderful things, she said the infrastructure of Rotary and the support it can garner from other clubs as an international organisation is invaluable.
“Rotary [as a whole] was incredibly supportive financially after the storm and raised over $100,000 for organisations that were working on storm relief.
“If one Rotary club identifies a need then they’ve got the support of other Rotary clubs, and one of the really important things for communities living along the tourist road is if there are problems, then they need to be able to get support from the surrounding area.”
As a project based group, Ms Selway said it is the role of RCL to support members in their ideas and endeavours to provide a backing board.
To build a satellite group, Ms Selway said it is a requirement for people to join as members of an existing club, in this case Lilydale, but the Mount Dandenong club would almost run independently.
“If people want to become part of the club, they join as Lilydale Rotarians and then they can get access to all the Rotary information and support,” she said.
“Once there’s eight members, they officially become a satellite club but really once there’s three or four or a little group, they could have a project on the hill together but once there’s eight, that’s the minimum number to call it a satellite club.”
Although long term the vision would be to have a fully functioning, standalone Rotary club, Ms Millman said her focus at the moment is on what can be done in the immediate future with a small group of volunteers.
“We need to see what the need is now and help organisations locally to be aware of what funding there is so we can bring that funding in to be able to help make a difference to people’s lives,” Ms Millman said.
“It would be great to do a survey of need because come June we’ll be looking at two years [since the storms] and yet 200 families are still badly affected by storm damage either trying to get repairs done or fighting battles with insurance companies.”
At this stage, Ms Selway and Ms Millman are trying to engage members of Mount Dandenong and surrounding communities to join the satellite club.
Ms Millman will be hosting community engagement sessions each Wednesday evening at the Mount Dandenong Hotel from 6pm to 7pm, with guest speakers also noted for future events.
To register interest, contact Ms Millman on 0412 970 050 or via email at or email lizmillman@yahoo.co.uk. For membership enquiries email contact@rotarylilydale.org.au
