On 18th March, club representatives, Iain Ramsay and Adrian Alsop attended Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital (GOSH) in London, to present a cheque of £3,000, collected before Christmas 2024 from supermarket and sleigh collections.
GOSH were very thankful for the generosity of the Grays Thurrock community and to our club. The club was glad to support such a deserving charity.
On March 11th we held this year’s Technology Competition. 9 schools entered representing 5 schools in the borough. On the day we had 8 teams. Hathaway x 1, Mossbourne Fobbing x 2, St Cleres x 3, Thames Park x 2 and Harris CH (sadly were unable to make it on the day)
The Baltic States were the surprise destination for 20 Grays Thurrock Rotarians on their annual mystery trip. A great social occasion for Club Members after a hard year of raising funds for the local community.
The group arrived at Stansted and were presented with their boarding passes to take them to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania for a two-day visit.
The results for the Young Photographer competition of 2025 are now available.
On the 8th of March, two of our schools, Hathaway and Mossbourne Port Side, were represented at the Youth Debate Cluster Finals which were held in Norwich. Both schools thoroughly enjoyed the experience and are keen to take part again next year which is very encouraging to hear.
The team from Mossbourne Port Side did particularly well, coming second out of the three in the Intermediate section. It should be acknowledged that Hathaway and Mossbourne Port Side were the only two ‘non-independent’ schools represented.
The Club would like to thank all the young Artists for entering this year’s competition. The quality of the work was exceptional. Everyone will have their work returned to them along with a well-earned certificate.
The club is pleased to be able to provide a piano stool for the students at the Gateway to use.
Pictured are Katina Williams from the Gateway, Nick Wilkinson our Youth Committee Chair. The students are three music student who took part in our young musician competition.
Imad Usman Herringham Primary Academy
Hollie Piper Orsett Heath Academy
Brooke Sullivan Orsett Heath Academy
The judges had a very difficult task this year, the standards being very high in all categories. The number of entries submitted this year has increased which meant the judges had to work hard to choose the winners. Although in all competitions there is a winner the judges wished us to congratulate everyone who submitted an entry. They enjoyed reading them all.
World Rotary Day is celebrated on February 23rd, the day the first Rotary Club was formed in in Chicago in 1905 by attorney Paul P. Harris.
Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland (Rotary GB&I) hosts a number of events to celebrate Rotary Day and Rotary's core values of service, fellowship, diversity, integrity, and leadership.
Our guest of honour at the Clubs Speaker Meeting on 6th February, was the Mayor of Thurrock, Councillor Kairen Raper.
Also, at the lunch was Angela Mitchell from Tesco Supermarket and Kim Morgan from Asda Stores, who had helped the club with events and support over the years, particularly at Christmas.
Following another successful year of Christmas Collections, the club on 23rd January held its annual Cheque Presentation Awards Lunch.
Cheques were handed to Treetops School, Barnardo’s, Little Havens Children’s Hospice and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
Pictured below is the winning team in the "Youth Speaks" competition all of whom are from the Mossbourne Port Side Academy, Congratulations to them all
Flanking the winners are Rotarians Mark Jones and Nicholas Wilkinson
Congratulations to our winners of the "senior section" of the Youth Debate.
Pictured below with Rotarian Mark Jones are Emma Litcanuand, Simi Ogun-Fowokan and Muhammad Haque all from the Hathaway Academy
The club had another very active Christmas, raising £12,000 from all activities.
The sleigh was out in force again on the streets of Grays Thurrock.
Most of our 40 members were involved over 10 consecutive evenings on 10 different sleigh routes, involving 98 people on a shift, 4 different drivers, 5 different Father Christmas’s, 46 Elves, (20 of whom were Rotarians, including ADG Mark Chambers - many thanks Mark) and a partridge and…...
Thanks to Iain Ramsay for organising the sleigh.
We raised over £12,000 this year thanks to the generosity of the people of Thurrock with club members braving quite rotten weather at times including the bracing wind at ASDA Tilbury. But its not all about fund raising with the club choir performing at a Christmas bash laid on for the residents at the Bluebell Nursing and Residential home in Grays.
Click on Read more to see a video of our achievements >>>>
At our meeting of the 5th December 2024 at the Orsett Hall and in the presence of our District Governor Anne Moriarty we inducted our newest member into the club, Stephen Davies.
Steve, a Consulting Engineer, brings with him a wealth of business and project experience that we are pleased and excited to add his skills to the knowledge base of existing members.
In the picture below, Steven Quigley (our Vice President and acting President) welcomed him into the club and went through his duties and obligations as a member and Rotarian Brian Little (his proposer) pinned the Rotary badge on Steve.
Largest Rotary Club in Thurrock (est 1930)
Orsett, Essex RM16 3HS
England