Welcome
The Canberra Sundowners are one of Rotary's newest clubs, having chartered on 20th August 2021. The information on these pages relates to our pre-charter life as a satellite club.
Check out our own web pages at https://portal.clubrunner.ca/15623. These pages on the Canberra Sunrise website are not being maintained separately now that we have our own website.
Regular Club Meetings and Events
Despite interruptions posed by COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 Sundowners continued to meet virtually online, with some form of meeting or activity on Tuesday evenings. Since the end of August 2020 we have recommenced in-person meetings at our home at the Canberra Club, Blackall Street, Barton.
We have also maintained involvement in community events and social activities. Guests and potential club members are very welcome to join. Use our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/canberrasundownersrotary to find out more and to make contact and rsvp to an event.
A Brief Potted History
Toward the end of 2015, the District Governor Monica Garrett approached RC Canberra Sunrise with a challenge to launch a satellite club focussed on attracting younger members. The Sunrise Board, led at the time by President Peter Hill, accepted the challenge and commenced planning and recruiting activities to identify the minimum of 8 members required to form a Satellite Club.
This was some of the rationale at the time behind forming a new club:
Why a new club? How would it differ from existing clubs?
The idea of a satellite for younger Rotarians is to offer ‘ageing-out’ Rotaractors and Rotarians in their 30s and early 40s an alternative to existing clubs that better suits their needs and preferences. The emphasis would be on a level of flexibility matched to our lifestyles, contemporary service activities, less onerous financial obligations and fun – social opportunities with people of a similar stage of life. The Satellite Club would not aim to draw younger people away from existing clubs, but fill the gap for those who wouldn’t otherwise join Rotary or may leave.
(Note: that while at the time we were looking for ways to attract younger members, members of any age are welcome to join our club. The club seeks to offer an informal, more hands-on community service approach that includes loads of fun - ingredients that we were looking for and that we think may be more attractive to younger people.)
It took time and a great deal of effort to build numbers and to establish plans for the satellite club and we tried a number of approaches. Below is a flyer we used in 2016 to seek out new members:
In January 2017, we had recruited sufficient members. The Canberra Sundowners (formally titled the Rotary Club of Canberra Sundowners) was established as a satellite club within the Rotary Club of Canberra Sunrise on 23rd February 2017. It is a great credit to Claire Scott that she had the vision and commitment to lead this activity to fruition and to become the Sundowners initial Chair. Other foundation members included Nick Scholar, Sam Saunders, Gus McBride, Philippa Butler, Kate Wiencke and Ash Jensen.
Past Sundowners Chairs
2019-20: Tara Pullen
2018-19: Sam Saunders
2017-18: Claire Scott
February-June 2018: Claire Scott