The Rotary Club of Timaru has boosted local conservation efforts with the donation of six high-tech AI cameras to help Predator Free Timaru track and eradicate invasive species threatening native birdlife.

WORDS: Rachael Comer. The Timaru Herald.

Members of a group working to bring native birds back to Timaru, NZ, now have more tools under their belt, with a donation of AI cameras to detect and identify invading predators.

On 26 June, the Rotary Club of Timaru handed over six cameras and batteries, worth more than $10,000, to Predator Free Timaru to help in its eradication of possums, stoats, rats and hedgehogs from green areas such as the Scenic Reserve and the Highfield Golf Course.

When Rotary club members thousands of miles apart decide to collaborate, something has to bind them together. For Marion Bunch and Stephen Mwanje, it was a shared awareness of the devastation of AIDS.

Bunch, a member of the Rotary Club of Dunwoody, Georgia, USA, experienced that devastation when her son died from an AIDS-related illness. Mwanje, a member of the Rotary Club of Mukono, Kampala, Uganda, had seen how the disease ravaged his country. The two met when Bunch visited Uganda, and they began talking about the complexities of fighting AIDS in Africa.frican National AIDS Council, one of the action group’s partners.

Project Abigail: Restoring dignity and opportunity for girls in Uganda

Australian Rotary clubs in Districts 9705 (ACT and NSW) and 9423 (WA), assisted by a club in Washington DC, have helped turn one Ugandan student’s dream into reality, funding 10 new bathroom cubicles at Kimaanya Secondary School to restore dignity, improve hygiene and empower more than 750 girls to learn with confidence.

For too long, mornings at BS Kimaanya Secondary School in Masaka, Uganda, began with frustration and fatigue. Hundreds of girls queued for hours at the school’s crumbling bathroom facilities, some forced to bathe in the open, their privacy and dignity stripped away. What should have been a simple daily routine became a source of exhaustion before the first lesson even began.

Thanks to the vision of Rotary Peace Fellow Emily Nabakooza and the generosity of 16 Rotary clubs across Australia and the US, this story has been rewritten. Through Project Abigail – named after a courageous student whose video plea touched hearts across the world – 10 brand-new, modern bathroom cubicles now stand at Kimaanya Secondary School, transforming the lives of more than 750 female boarding students.

Donors to The Rotary Foundation celebrated some big achievements in fundraising in the past year, showing their support for the wide array of programs the organization sponsors all over the world.

A multiyear campaign to increase the Endowment to US$2.025 billion by 2025 exceeded its goal by US$25 million. In 2024-25 alone, members and others contributed more than half a billion dollars to the Foundation.

The traditional model of Rotary, with weekly meetings at a local venue, may not suit the lifestyle of many, especially people developing their careers or caring for young children. But that doesn’t mean they miss out on the joy of Rotary!

IN 2019, a group of committed young Rotary alumni decided it was time to explore a new model of Rotary. It would focus less on meetings and more on connecting people, ideas, passion and skills to create the change they want to see in the world.

The club’s unique structure adds value in this changing world, allowing those with varying work or study schedules or locations, carer responsibilities, mobility or transport issues access to Rotary.