From the President
Merry Christmas to All the Members of Polio SA. On behalf of the Committee I extend the Compliments of the Season to you and your Families. I must apologise for the lateness of this newsletter. This is not a reflection on the magnificent Editorial Staff, but rather a roadblock from the President. As you may be aware, I am undergoing a course of Chemotherapy and this has really affected my ability to concentrate or put thoughts together to produce a “front page”. Peter, Helen and I went to Sydney on October 16th and 17th for the AGM of the Board of Polio Australia. There were a lot of busy hours put in by the Board to get through the business at hand. Gillian Thomas has been re-elected as President. Gary Newton from Victoria is the Secretary, Alan Cameron from NSW is the Treasurer and I have been reinstalled as Vice President. One of the highlights was the awarding of “Life Fellow of Polio Australia” in recognition of outstanding service for the life of Polio Australia. The recipients were then awarded Fellow pins to wear as a badge of honour.
The awards went to Gillian Thomas, Maryann Liethof, Jill Pickering and The Hon. John Tierney AM. At the end of this year Maryann will resign from her position as National Program Manager, all polio survivors in Australia owe Maryann a huge thanks for all of her work. Polio SA has been really helped with the appointment of Helen Leach as our Community and Membership Officer. Helen has followed up on some lapsed Members, sadly some have passed or are in care, but many “old” Members have re-joined. Helen has also reached out to Culturally Diverse members of the Community, and some positive results from that work. Thank you, Helen.
To finish this letter, I must implore Members to consider volunteering some time to Polio SA. The reason for this is as I have indicated I am having Chemo and cannot commit to being President into the New Year, so a replacement will be needed as I am NOT going to continue, I would however like to be a Committee Member. Also our long serving, long suffering Secretary Trevor Jessop is also resigning and he is NOT continuing, so there are two very important vacancies in the Executive of Polio SA and if these are not filled Polio SA will NOT be able to continue.
Please consider the future of Polio SA.
Thank you.
Brett Howard, President Polio SA bihoward@bigpond.com | 0403 339 814