Weekly Meeting April 21 2021 Soup Angel

Jo was our Chairperson and she invited Ron to give is Invocation, Greg to present the Loyal, Royal Toast and Grant to give us for the first time since COVID an International Toast. This week he proposed the country Solomon Islands and Northwest of Vanuatu. The Capital is Honiara on the island of Guadalcanal. Bougainville is the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville which is part of Papua New Guinea. Grant gave us an interesting historical account of this country but the Bulletin Reporter needs to apologise for not giving the full account as she is working on a different devise. Her computer is still suffering from lockdown and time is of the essence. Honiara is the capital of Solomon Islands and the Rotary Club of Honiara is in District 9600 and was chartered 27^th March 1987 and has 31 members. The Club chartered a Rotaract Club in 2916. There are many projects and fundraising activities that the club organises, such as distributing wheelchairs to People With Disability, Solomon Islands and the Christian Care. The wheel chairs are donated by the Rotary Club of Surfers Sunrise.  While they are constructed in their project shed, they arrive in Honiara disassembled. 10,000 have been sent and the Rotaract Club reassemble them ready for use. Grant asked us to be upstanding to toast President Russell Clinch and the members of the Rotary Club of Honiara. Thank you grant for your work and effort in presenting once more a most interesting country. With ANZAC DAY a few days away, John Mason gave us a rendition of the ANZAC POEM TO COMMEMORATE THIS IMPORTANT TIME IN OUR Australian History. LEST WE FORGET. Roy Kaplan gave us an overview of a project that he and Geoff Gartly are driving. It is a youth driven project to repair and rejuvenate a run-down Scout Hall. The area chosen is Corryong township approximately 120 kms east of Wodonga. The township of 1200 people is still recovering from the bushfires of last year. The scout hall is in great disrepair and is needing renovation. There is a scout group and a Rotary Club in the area. The plan is to fund cost of materials and for us to provide our labour resources and to spend a full weekend of work in partnership with the locals. Thank you, Roy for the lead information. Our Guest Speaker was Nicole Lewis -Jacobs. Nicole introduced herself by telling us that she has 2 teenagers and that She has a degree in education in the sport’s field and that she had been a great participant and winner in her chosen sports. Nicole has been involved with charities from a young age. During COVID 19 lock-down she began to make soup and shared with neighbours who could not shop. She found that the highlight was on Sundays and by walking the streets and chatting while delivering 120-150 tubs of soup. She regarded this more as an act of kindness for lonely people and added the thought on her Face Book page. This went crazy and Nicole was inundated with calls for soup! This started a Wednesday delivery and a line-up for soup. At this stage she was not registered as a charity and was operating under strict hygienically conditions from her home kitchen, delivering frozen soup or soup within 24 hours of cooking to the homeless and to the Alfred Hospital. At first, she bought the ingredients and vegetables and as the demand grew donations arrived. A friend called her the “Soup Angel” and that became the name of her now Not For Profit charity.  Nicole has now an official venue and a full industrial kitchen, Aldi donates vegetables and she has an alliance with Bakers Delight. A knitting conglomerate has donated blankets and beanies so people can have soup with bread and a warm knitted article. What an amazing and marvellous story! Thank you for coming and sharing. We were most impressed and happy that a couple of our members could relate a few childhood memories.  The imitable Sergeant Tim made us laugh as we extracted moths from our wallets. Jo closed the meeting by wishing us a good week, reminding us that we are having a Zoom meeting and importantly reminding us that ROTARY OPENS DOORS

The Soup Angel Random Acts of Kindness Soup Made From the Heart With love was created during the first ISO COIVD 19 restrictions in Melbourne in March 2020 to provide home cooked healthy nutritious soups to the elderly in the streets surrounding Nicole Lewis-Jacobs home when the elderly could not go to the supermarket. During the 2nd lockdown in Melbourne it was opened up on a few Kindness pages in her community to anyone wanting soup. Health care workers, and front line nurses in a main hospital , the elderly, sick, families in need, a homeless shelter mental health organisations, families doing it tough and various charities & support services. . The overwhelming community support has blown her away from the offer of vegetables to cook to containers, drivers, artists, people printing labels for the soup, offers of help & volunteer with a venue secured, a fridge & deep freezer the Soup Angel is ready to go to another level. In order to take The Soup Angel to the next level I need community support to make it a not for profit charity. I need to cover the costs of the legalities to make this happen and would love your support for a very good cause.

 

The soup kitchen is approved by the council and the community support has grown each week as the demand to cook yummy home cooked meals and soups for the community has grown to more than 130 tubs of soup every 2 weeks. It feels good to give back and it doesn't cost anything to be kind. Her dream could be to one day have a soup van for the community and help feed others in need soup.The soup Angel has now grown to the wider Melbourne Community as well as to regional Victoria. It doesn’t cost anything to be kind. It’s also great to give back to the community.