Like many other Altrusa Clubs worldwide I am sure, the last year for the Morrinsville group has been both challenging and rewarding. The earthquakes in Christchurch shook everyone up here in New Zealand and made many people re-evaluate their priorities in life. Keeping and retaining members has been an ongoing issue for us and at present we have three of our hard working members taking a leave of absence but we are looking forward to them rejoining our ranks in the near future.
Raising our profile in the local community has become very important to our members and to this end (and to possibly win some prize money) we entered a decorated float in the Morrinsville Christmas Parade. The theme was movies and what better for a local women’s service group to be than “Calendar Girls”. No - we didn’t take our clothes off, it was all very “proper” but we had a lot of fun, certainly raised awareness of who we were, and plan to enter again next year. The local newspaper has been very helpful giving us free publicity on several occasions throughout the year, and in today’s paper there is a photo and article regarding our donation of lazyboy chairs to the local retirement hospital. This year also involved making and raffling a Garden Patchwork Quilt. Hours of work were involved for members making the individual patches, with one of our members cutting out the pieces and compiling the quilt once everyone else had put the patches together.
Chartered: 09/02/2006
Current President: Cathryn Balvert