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CHRISTMAS ROTARY IN ACTION! - COLLECTING FOR THE NEEDY OF WINDSOR & AREA To be completed...  'W&E ROTARY CLUB CLEARS AWAY REFUSE THAMES WALKWAYS AND AREAS! NOV. 2025 It was a truly cold day as your local Windsor & Eton Rotary Club members helped, along with others, to clear the garbage from along the walk ways of the Thames. Rotarian Member Guy Barlow (Pic. left) commented "I'll admit there was far more than we all expected, but in the end it was most rewarding job to do". Rotary will be arranging another refuse clear up early in 2026 - if you want to join us, connect the Clubs Secretary THE CLUBS'S NEW PRESIDENT TAKES HIS PLACE.. 03/08/2025 In line with all other Rotary Clubs through the UK, Windsor & Eton's Club's 2025/26 new President Ron Lewandowski received the Clubs valuable chain of office from the past President, Richard Carleton. For Ron, this was second time around in this important role, having been the Clubs President a few years back! One of his first comments was...how heavy the chain is now, since last time! The medallions placed each year go back to the 1930's! At the Clubs first meeting in his year he detailed his intentions for the clubs direction, headed by a focus of increasing corporate membership and to ensure all members are driven by this same focus, along with a fun, relaxed social side throughout the year. UNIQUE HAPPENING - NEW CLUB MEMBER ON HAND-OVER DAY! It's not often that a new member joins a Rotary Club on the same occasion that a change over of Presidents happen! Well, it happened this year. The clubs outgoing President Richard Carleton had the joyous opportunity to enrol Ceri Davies in to Rotary. Ceri has had a tremendous career background which includes many years with British Airways. We are truly pleased to have Ceri with with us. Pleasingly too, as the club wishes to increase its lady members. A rare special club moment - three paul harris awards 03/08/2025  Left to Right - Bob Pickles, Andrew Try, Now past President Richard Carleton, Adrian Benge. The Rotary Club of Windsor & Eton annually considers the presentation of the prestigous Rotary 'Paul Harris Award'. This award should be looked upon as rare and each Rotary member or outside of Rotary persons will have to have set a particularly high level of achievment to be awarded it. Windsor & Eton Rotary Member Chris. Clark, the head of the clubs Paul Harris awards committee explained that "it takes many months prior, in confidentality, following assessments and discussion, finally to be accepted by the previously awarded committee members to agree if a person should receive this very special prestigous award". It was quite a surprise to all at meeting, as never previously has three such awards been handed out in one evening by the Club! The awards were presented to Bob Pickles, Windsor & Eton Rotary Club, Chairman Social Committee, for his outstanding social event arrangements over so many years, and other club services. Adrian Benge the Clubs Secretary and numerous outside of Rotary works. A recent one being the high risk he took during the pandemic in assisting the Windsor NHS Vacination teams over many months. Andrew Try, for his renowned 'outside of Rotary' works. These include Andrews many local areas of support within the Windsor Community. He is also the founder and CEO of the Comxo Company and the Royal Country of Berkshire Lieutenancy. - All three of the above having outstandingly met the important Rotary principle of 'Service before Self'. 'SWAN LIFELINE' ROTARY TALK - RELEASES SHOCKING NEW PROBLEM ENDANGERING THAMES SWANS! Examples of the cruel catapults being used to injure and kill Swans! Cindie an executive of Swan LifeLine gave a truly inspiring talk covering their history, the charity is amazingly the oldest registered charity devoted to the care of sick and injured swans in the Thames Valley and surrounding areas. They can care for an impressive up to 180 injured swans at their their base on Cuckoo Weir Island, Eton. The damaged Swans are brought to their headquarters from both accidental, but also now the growing fast damage to Swans by cruel people, and over more recent times the numbers haver grown with the arrival swans in terrible condition from both children and adults getting a kick from firing metal balls from powerrful catapults at a swan!
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 I love organising the Rotary Youth Speaks Competition every year because it allows our young people to shine. This year Trevelyan Middle School & St Edward’s Royal Free Ecumenical Middle School fought for the Intermediate prize and Windsor Girls fought for the Senior prize amongst themselves in the prestigious Jafar Hall at Eton College. What a story to tell at dinner parties in years to come. Teachers are very busy people with lots of demands on their time so they need to have a real passion for Youth Speaks to give it the time and commitment required. Thankfully, this year the new English teacher at Windsor Boys came and watched the competition and said she would bring boys teams next year… hurrah, they are engaging again… would love to see Dedworth Middle School join in if anyone reading this has any influence? The topics for this year’s debate were:
All the students gave an amazing account of themselves, sharing their thoughts on their chosen topics with passion and belief normally only seen on TV when a CEO is fighting their corner. Richard Allen of the Green Room led our Intermediate judges and gave each team a clear summary of their performance, enthusing all to keep debating. The Intermediate winners spoke on “Money can’t buy happiness” with George Burden as Chair, Fiona Winters Proposing the topic and Anushka Sagar Opposing. Edward Shekiluwa, chair of the other team, won the Best Speaker prize with his very engaging performance using his god given smile to light up the room. David Knowles-Leak chaired the senior judges and underlined the importance of taking part being character building and that all local schools should join in. The younger team from Windsor Girls won again this year on the topic of “Mobile phones have a positive impact on today’s society”. Chaired by Olatz Bulson-Roman, Proposed by Scarlett O’Shaughnessy and Opposed by Lydia Sampson we all turned our phones to silent mode so we hear the debate ;) Scarlett won Best Speaker and so walked away with oodles of Amazon vouchers so she can buy more books, videos and mobile apps! Because of circumstance, 2 teams from each category are going forward to the next round to be held in February where they will be competing against teams from Ascot, with the winners going through to the District Finals in March in Marlow. As Chair of the Youth Committee I am exploring an idea of how I can take the energy from this competition and bottling it for the wider community to help young people find their voice. Thank you. Jon Davey Chair of Youth Committee  More than 775 million people over the age of 15 are illiterate. That’s 17 percent of the world’s adult population. Our goal is to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy, reduce gender disparity in education, and increase adult literacy. We support education for all children and literacy for children and adults.
HOW ROTARY MAKES HELP HAPPEN We take action to empower educators to inspire learning at all ages. OUR IMPACT ON EDUCATION The Rotary Foundation supports education through scholarships, donations, and service projects around the world. Rotary members make amazing things happen, like:
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