Welcome

Deben Rotaract has now closed.  Unfortunately the majority of our members have reached, or are about to reach, the 30 year old mark!  However, we’ve had such fun over the years that we’ve decided to continue meeting and are currently looking into the possibility of setting up a young Rotary club in the Ipswich/Woodbridge area.  If you are interested in the new club or have any other enquiries please contact our sponsoring Rotary Club: Deben Rotary.

Please feel free to browse the old website, as the new club will take on many of the exciting events that we took part in annually!

 

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Rotaract is an organisation for 18-30 year olds with more than 7,600 members in 158 countries around the world. It enables members to meet new friends, develop professional and personal skills, try new activities, make a difference in their local community, and have fun!

We’re always looking for new members, so read on, and get in touch.

Welcome to Deben Rotaract’s website and blog.  Here you can keep up with our latest projects, get in touch, and join our facebook page.  Read our group blog below:

BBQs, Pirates and Theatre in the Forest

We couldn’t get too far into the summer without a BBQ, and Tasha volunteered to be our host for a ‘Come BBQ With Me’ challenge!  We were treated to a huge selection of burgers, sausages, baked potatoes, salads, kebabs, Pimms, champagne and cake, and a warm afternoon in the garden with friends.

‘Come BBQ With Me’ at Tasha’s
– Photo by Vanessa

On the 28th July we helped the British Heart Foundation raise money at the Pirates on the Prom event in Felixstowe, in full piratical finery!

Raising money for the British Heart Foundation

We joined an invading force of pirates young and old to search the seafront for the missing parrot, helping to raise just over £1150 for the Foundation!

Raising money for the British Heart Foundation

The Pirates take over the coastline at ‘Pirates on the Prom’ for the British Heart Foundation!

We finished July with a trip to see Red Rose Chain’s The Taming of the Shrew at Jimmy’s Farm: a brilliant production in a beautiful setting.  A small but well-chosen set of props and scene changes transported us from the Suffolk woodland to Padua, and the weather (always a worry for outdoor performances at this time of year) held until the end and embellished the set with dappled sunlight.

‘The Taming of the Shrew’ at Theatre in the Forest at Jimmy’s Farm

 

Orienteering

We took part in two orienteering evenings with the SuffOC this summer.  The first was on 19^th June at Foxhall Woods: a pleasant wander around the woodland with a few jogs thrown in when we knew which direction we were going!  We made good time, and it felt like we’d only just started as we approached the finish line.

Tasha finds one of our orienteering points

The second event was on the 3^rd July in Landseer and Holywells Parks in Ipswich.  The weather was a little too hot and muggy to dash around madly, but it was still a lovely way to spend the evening, even if we did get some odd looks from a bunch of teenagers sitting near one of the points!

All the results from the summer series are available on the SuffOC website.

Pudding Evening at Church’s Bistro

On Wednesday 26^th June we attended a Pudding Evening at Church’s Bistro in Ipswich: a selection of 11 desserts served over the course of the evening.  That’s 11 desserts each.  A sweet tooth was a definite requirement!

Pudding Evening at Church’s Bistro

It was a fantastic selection: doughnut balls and ice-cream, malteaser cheesecake, millionaire’s shortbread, pineapple meringue, sticky toffee, gorgeous melting brownie, champagne jelly, to name a few… and not tiny portions either.

Pineapple pudding and lemon pie on a huge plate, at the pudding Evening at Church’s Bistro

By the end we were so looking forward to something savoury that we fell on the final cheese round and demolished it before I even thought of taking a photo…

And then it was gone… the cheese round at the Pudding Evening at Church’s Bistro

I don’t think any of us finished all of the desserts, but Church’s were kind enough to provide us with boxes to take home the extras to be enjoyed at our leisure.  It was a fun evening, and I’d definitely recommend it- just don’t eat anything sweet for a few days beforehand!

Midnight Walk

Mid May we volunteered at the Midnight Walk, a yearly event in Ipswich to raise money for the St Elizabeth Hospice.  We manned points along the five and eight-mile courses throughout the evening, directing participants, assisting with crossing at busy traffic junctions, and of course cheering on all the runners and walkers!

The event raised over £110,000 for the charity, a huge boost for the provision of hospice care in the local area.

Volunteering at the St Elizabeth Hospice Midnight Walk 2013. A view of the crowds and entertainers at the start.

If you missed the chance to donate, or would like to find out more about the walk, visit The Midnight Walk Website.

Volunteering at Bradfield Woods

On the 17^th February we braved the icy pre-dawn chill and set out for Bradfield Woods near Bury St Edmunds to help the Suffolk Wildlife Trust construct a deer hedge around an area of newly coppiced trees.

Helen and Ian constructing a Hedge at Bradfield Woods

The sun made a rare February appearance as we arrived on site, and we enjoyed a warm morning weaving tops, munching biscuits, and carefully jumping on top of our half-made hedges to pack them down neatly.  It was a fun experience, and an interesting new skill to learn!  After a great morning’s work, we had a picnic in the woods, followed by a wander to explore the rest of the woodlands.

Relaxing after a morning building deer hedges at Bradfield Woods

On the 21st of March we held a Pizza and Board Games night at Rachel’s, where Ian and Robert introduced us to Carcassonne, and soon had us busily plotting and claiming swathes of the French countryside.

On the 28th of March we returned to the Brewery Tap for their fortnightly quiz.  Unfortunately the special Easter quiz was hugely popular, and all the tables had been booked in advance!  Luckily we managed to obtain the last two mini tables and seats in the pub for our two teams, and set up in a corner for the evening.  Well done to both teams!

Puzzling over the picture round at the Brewery Tap Quiz Night
– Photo by Vanessa

Rounding up 2012

Happy New Year to you all!  We’ll begin by rounding off the events of last year.

On the 19^th November we attended the Ipswich Wolsey Rotary Club’s annual charter night where we enjoyed many a tale from their fantastic speaker Mike Brace who became blind at the age of 10, but went on to forge a varied career in social work and over 50 different sports including sailing, cricket, and cross-country skiing.  Most recently he was chairman of Paralympics GB from 2001 – 2008, and a key part of the 2012 Olympic Bid team.  Along with the good food and company, Mike’s humorous and inspiring speech made the evening a resounding success.  Many thanks to Wolsey Rotary for inviting us along.

On the 11^th we helped the Rotary Club of Woodbridge Deben with their annual Santa Sleigh collections around Martlesham Heath.  We wrapped up warm and braved the cold weather to assist Santa in his travels, and help raise over £1000 for a variety of Rotary charities!  Thank you to everyone who helped out and donated to the cause.

Helping the Rotary Club of Woodbridge Deben with their annual Santa Sleigh!

The next day we headed out to the Veggie Red Lion at Great Bricett for a delicious and different Christmas meal, with mulled wine, unusual mains and moreish desserts aplenty (the sorbet and figs was the definite winner!).

We organised several craft evenings on the run up to Christmas, making lino print cards, seasonal window transfers, and small sewn decorations and books, culminating in our craft stall at the Ipswich Library Craft Fair on 15^th December where we raised £35 for charity!  The fair itself was not widely advertised, and most of our sales were to library regulars, but we still had fun.  It was a great test for crafting to raise money, and we’re keen to book a stall at an actual Christmas craft fair next year as we’re certain to sell even more.

Raising money for charity at the Ipswich Library Craft Fair

Raising money for charity at the Ipswich Library Craft Fair

I hope you all had a good break over Christmas and are gearing up for another fun-packed Rotaract year.  The committee met last Thursday to begin planning, and we have some great ideas in the works, starting with our annual Snowman Contest.  Grab your wellies and make the most of the snow days, and help us raise money for EACH!

Snowman Contest 2012-13

As if the slow trickling of Christmas adverts, songs in the shops, and the chilly north wind weren’t signs of winter enough, it’s time to announce this year’s Deben Rotaract Snowman Contest!

Last year’s contest was themed around the letter ‘R’ for ‘Rotaract’, so it only seems natural that this year’s contest be themed around the letter ‘O’. The contest is open to everyone, and the entry fee is a mere £2 per snowman, paid straight to our chosen charity, East Anglia’s Children’s Hospice, via our JustGiving page. Please read the contest details HERE and friend us on Facebook to get a reminder when the snow starts to fall!

Autumn Update

It’s been a while since Banbury, but we’ve not been idle!  Here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to this autumn…

Starting way back at the beginning of September, we put together two teams for the Brewery Tap Quiz on the 6^th, enjoying a selection of food and creative questions for a fun evening by the waterfront.  Well done to both teams, and I hope we’ll be back to have another go soon!

The 27^th September saw us heading to Tasha’s for a wine tasting evening and quiz, where participants had to guess the descriptions for each bottle at ever-increasing levels of tipsiness.  Who’d have thought a wine would be compared to the tang of licking a battery?  A really fun night out, so thank you Tasha and Michelle for putting it together for us.

On Sunday 30^th September several of us helped out alongside Felixstowe Landguard Rotary Club and members of the Felixstowe Rotaract interest group at the Colneis Challenge Walk to help raise money for the St. Elizabeth Hospice.  We greeted walkers and logged their times, provided drinks and sold raffle tickets, and got to wear some very striking hats.  It was a fun day, and a great chance to meet up with other clubs in the area to work on a project together.

Colneis Challenge Walk 2012

The evening of Thursday 25^th October saw Rachel and Mark organising a Halloween Treasure Hunt around Ipswich, testing everyone’s observational skills and creativity with cryptic clues and a photo scavenger hunt.  The evening finished in McGintys for some ghostly tales from around Ipswich, drinks, and a vast amount of pizza to share!  Well done to all our teams, including a group from local Ipswich Wolsey Rotary Club, and special congratulations to the winners who made off with some spooky chocolates!

Unfortunately several of the organisers were hit by the winter viruses over the next week or so, and a couple of events had to be rescheduled.  We were planning a Come Dine With Me at mine, but so few people could attend I’ll be hosting it in the new year instead when we’ve all relaxed again after the Christmas rush.

On Monday 12^th November we sent a team to the annual charity quiz at Waldringfield Golf Club.  As usual, we were pitted against the very best quizzers in the region, and came a respectable last earning us a box of chocolates each.  One of these years there will be some questions for our generation… maybe.

Deben Rotaract win chocolates at the Waldringfield Charity Quiz

And finally, this past weekend Rachel, Tasha and Helen went to the RGBI conference in London to meet up with Rotaractors from around Great Britain and Ireland.  It was a really interesting insight into how the organisation works and the plans for the future, and it does sound promising!  Among many other upcoming events mentioned at the meeting, there will be a Rotaract EUCO conference in Rome next May, open to Rotaractors across Europe.  Booking opens on the 25^th November and the details can be found here: http://eucorome2013.rotaract2080.it/  Email us if you’re interested in going!

If you have any photos from these events that you’d like to share with us, please do email us.

Banbury 2012

Banbury is always a very special occasion in the Rotaract calendar.  It’s a chance to meet with Rotaractors from across the country, find out what other clubs have been up to, share ideas, and meet new friends.  I’ve met an amazing bunch of people all thanks to the Banbury camping weekend!

The Marquee

The first evening was all about dancing off the long journey and catching up with old friends.  A marquee had been set up on the campsite, complete with bar, bbq, DJ, karaoke and disco going on well into the night.  The campsite is well set up with a large catering hut (where we enjoyed a wide array of American-themed meals over the weekend), toilets and shower blocks, so we were well fed and refreshed by the time we headed out for Saturday morning’s activities.

We gathered in the marquee (now adorned with benches and screens) for a new addition to the Banbury programme: the mini-conference.  It worked well, and was actually a lot more interesting than you might think from the name!  We had several speakers, including current RGBI chairman Natasha Last, Helen Dickenson speaking on the subject of Birmingham PHAB- a charity providing holidays for disabled children in the Birmingham area (and incidentally RGBI’s chosen charity this year), and Southampton Rotaract giving a talk on their past year, in which the club had grown from just three members to over 30.

We also heard all about the Rotaract Overseas Project: a chance for Rotaractors to travel and take part in a life-changing project for a community abroad.  The previous project was the Go Gambia! trip, which one of our Deben Rotaractors took part in alongside members from across the UK.  The focus was on providing clean drinking and washing water for a Gambian village by digging a bore-hole, erecting a water tower, and installing a solar-powered pumping system to distribute the water.  You can read the Go Gambia! Team’s diary of the trip here: http://www.rotaract.org.uk/index.php?cat=content&page=cms&CatID=96  Hearing how the project had transformed the village three years on was inspirational, and the announcement of the next Overseas Project in Kenya got us all excited.  If you are interested in taking part in the next project, do get in touch!

The conference also included a series of workshops on the subjects of events, leadership and advertising, through the means of charades, jumping around the marquee, and studying the packaging of chocolate very carefully by eating it.  The workshops were an interesting addition to the weekend and luckily covered the rainy part of the morning.  Then it was back off outside to take part in the Banbury treasure hunt which, thanks to a very lucky guess, team ‘Deben + 1’ won!  The prize was a bucketful of American-themed goodies which was soon devoured with help from friends.

‘Deben + 1’ win the treasure hunt!

We dodged between brilliant sunshine and showers for the rest of the Saturday afternoon, wandering between groups of tents to catch up with friends and hurling frisbees and rocket balls at each other.  Saturday evening was the fancy dress party, this year with an American theme.  We joined cowboys, the Simpsons, gangsters, the Statue of Liberty and many more to party the night away.

Banbury American-themed fancy dress night.
Photo by Andy Dibley

Sufficed to say, not many of us were up early on Sunday, but the glorious sunshine soon drew us all out.  Sunday is traditionally the Silly Sports day, and the real Rotaract competitiveness appeared as we set up for the volleyball, tug-o-war, and of course the very important Welly Wanging Championship, interspersed with the tipsiest game of shots Snakes and Ladders that I’ve ever played!  BBQs and circus skills filled the wait until the afternoon awards ceremony, where the trophies for outstanding achievements over the past year are awarded to Rotaract clubs.

Huge tents help when it’s raining!

Monday morning came all too soon, as we started to take down the tents and clear up.  Moustaches from Saturday night costumes appeared randomly over the course of the day, and probably will do for some time yet.  Then there was nothing left to do but say our goodbyes, load up on cheap leftover drinks at the gate, and start looking forward to next year!

Rachel