Club News

The Mayor of Faversham, Cllr Josh Rowlands, was the guest speaker at a Rotary Club evening meeting in October.

Josh represents Abbey Ward on the town council and in May 2024 at the age of 33 he became the youngest Mayor in the history of Faversham Town Council.

His involvement with political activity goes back to his childhood, when he helped his grandfather delivering leaflets. While at college in Canterbury, he was active in the students union both locally and nationally.

In his role as Mayor, Josh is non-political which he says gives him opportunities to work with everyone to make Faversham a better town. He gets the chance to meet lots of people in Faversham, many of whom are volunteers in the town’s various groups, clubs, charities etc.

There is a lot of need in the town as shown by the calls on the Food Bank, to name just one organisation that provides help & support.

Josh talked about his chosen charities, which this year are the Abbey Physic Garden and Keep Talking Services. Both these charities provide befriending and support services to help with mental health and wellbeing, and to try to reduce social isolation. Men’s mental health, and encouraging men to talk about this, is an issue of particular interest to Josh.

Josh also emphasised the importance of communication, in listening to the town’s residents and engaging with them to create “One Town, One Community”.

https://www.abbeyphysic.org/

https://www.keeptalkingservices.com/

Sonia Jackson of Plastic Free Faversham came to talk to members recently. She gave a very informative presentation about plastics, both globally and locally, and the challenges of recycling them. Here is her summary:

”Since starting our Zerowaste™ recycling boxes with Terracycle in April 2023, we are now on our fourth Oral Care box and our third All In One box, boosted with the funding from Faversham Rotary Club.

We think the boxes have been very successful even though we’ve only advertised on our Facebook page. But people have discovered the boxes through word of mouth, too, so more people are bringing along those hard to recycle items, such as CDs, old cassettes and videos, clothes hangers, crisp packets, old gardening equipment, etc.

Their location in the Swale Visitor Centre in Faversham Market Place has been convenient for people to access. It also seems to have encouraged the Environment Committee at Faversham Town Council to add to the collection by launching their own Zerowaste™ Crisp Packets and Sweet Wrappers box! The more the merrier, we say!

Click on the links below to find out about how Terracycle works and the video which shows how waste is recycled into new products:

u  https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/#@54.39586446195522:2.83447377734376zoom:5

u  https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB/pages/journey-of-waste

We are now discussing whether to expand the boxes into some of the satellite villages, such as Boughton Under Blean and Oare.

We know that we can’t recycle our way out of the plastic and waste crisis. We need to move to a circular economy where waste is designed out of the system altogether. But Zerowaste boxes are part of current solution whereby raising the profile of recycling means that people become more and more accustomed to regarding waste as, well … wasteful!”

Club members were delighted to welcome Ivan Atwiine to their evening meeting.

Ivan is a member of the Morningtide Bugolobi club in Uganda. Bugolobi is a suburb of Kampala, the Ugandan capital.

Ivan is in the UK visiting his in-laws with his wife and family of three children.

He shared some similarities and differences between his Rotary club in Uganda and ours in Faversham.

His club has 43 members, average age 40 and with 22 women members. He laughed as he said that while the male members were more laid back, it was the women who got into action to make things happen!