One of the highlights of the Rotary year is when we have the finalists of the Year 7 and Year 8 speech competitions attend Rotary and present their winning speeches. The following excerpts are from Alan McKinnon's report for the weekly bulletin.

This year did not disappoint as we had Pieta Bennett the Year 7 winner from Cashmere Primary School and Olivia King the Year 8 winner from Hillview Christian School. 

Pieta talked about sleep. With a nice mix of humour and science she told us about the main phases of sleep (light sleep, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and deep sleep), the importance of each and what affects the amount of each phase that we might experience. The pleasure and importance of a peaceful sleep following a warm drink of milk with a dash of sugar cannot be denied!

Olivia spoke to us about the importance of humour in our lives. Inevitably her talk was peppered with some amusing humour such as the glass of water given to a caller at the door asking for a donation for a swimming pool, or the person at the bank who pushed someone over when asked to see their balance.  Curiously, children laugh up to 300 times a day whereas adults laugh only about 20 times. Given the obvious benefits of laughing in terms of general well-being, assisting relaxation and strengthening relationships, Olivia asked why adults seemed to have largely forgotten this important activity. Laughing is certainly contagious and we all have experienced the pleasure of a good group laugh. Olivia challenged us to laugh more – after all it’s easy and it’s free! 

It was a delight to have Allison and Gill Blackler at the meeting to present these very talented young people with the inaugural Tony Blackler cups in honour of our good friend who was such a keen supporter of the speech competition and all Rotary activities related to young people. Pieta and Olivia were very deserving recipients