You are receiving this newsletter as you are a friend or connection of Bristol Breakfast Rotary Club, or have been in the past. It is our desire to keep you informed of the work we do and to re-connect with you where common good can be achieved and we can continue to make a positive impact in the City of Bristol and beyond.
This 1st newsletter of the new Rotary year was published on 7th September. If you do not wish to receive these communications, please do feel free to unsubscribe.
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Welcome
Welcome to this, the first newsletter of the new Rotary year. It’s been quite a start to the year, and things have been moving at a pace. This has not been helped by my 3 week absence from the club when I needed to support my Mother in South Africa.
I am now back and looking to continue working on the items I identified in my Website report, namely:
Membership
Review of breakfast model
Making a greater community impact
Supporting young people
Building stronger connections
Embracing innovation
The first 2 months have passed quickly, and not without incident.
Community Support
A doublet earthquake occurred in Venezuela on 24 June 2026. Bristol Breakfast Rotary Club pledged to support the appeal with a £590 donation to ShelterBox.
Flash floods triggered by a major glacier collapse on 26 August 2026 caused catastrophic damage and loss of life in north-eastern Nepal. Bristol Breakfast Rotary Club pledged to reserve £1,000 to support an appeal from Rotary clubs in Nepal for funds for reconstruction. In addition, a separate fund was created into which members are able to donate privately to this cause.
Immense Impact
Fundraising
We have been successful in applying for several Global and District Grants:
Global Grant GG2571870 – Extended paediatric hearing screening and intervention facility – Western Cape Province of South Africa.
Bristol Breakfast and Bellville Rotary club together raised in excess of US$60,000 that included Global Grant matching, and these funds were used to create facilities in Cape Town for the early detection of deafness and the early intervention of therapies to deal with that.
In addition, we have recently been successful in applying for 2 District Grants, the first for sand dams in Kenya and the second water harvesting in Uganda (through 3H).
Local Youth Projets
We continue to support local causes in and around Bristol, especially in the South East of Bristol where we continue to provide 200 breakfasts a day for secondary students.
The Technology Challenge was held on Tuesday, 7 July 2026, when thirteen teams of three to four bright young minds, aged between 13 and 14 from the Bridge Learning Campus took on the challenge of ‘The Pipeline Vehicle’. This involved designing, building and testing a vehicle of maximum length 200mm and maximum height 100mm, powered by an electric motor complete with a remotely operated switch.
This turned out to be a great day for the students, staff and Rotary members that saw design, innovation and teamwork at its best, and sincere congratulations to the winning team.
Social
Its not all hard work for members of the club.
July saw Rob and Sally Wellman host a fundraising BBQ at their lovely home in South Bristol. Over 50 people attended on a gloriously sunny day and everyone seemed to enjoy the day. A local band were roped in to provide some entertainment, and with entry donations and the proceeds of an auction ably run by Rotarian Roger Harper, we managed to raise £4,000 for our coffers. Sincere thanks to Rob and Sally.
We have also been active on the Boules scene with 3 matches played to date – one lost, one drawn and one won.
Speakers this year
As usual, we held a weekly breakfast meeting at the Redland Green Club (full details below). We had a good list of speakers including:
Thank you for reading our first newsletter of the new Rotary year. We will share with you news of past events as well as current and forthcoming initiatives as we go through the year. Please let us know if you have an ideas, would like more information or to take part in anything we do.
Our Club Events are shown on the right of the page, so please do get in touch if you would like to attend one of our meetings as a guest, we'd be very happy to have you!
Redland Green
Redland
Bristol, BS6 7HF United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
We currently meet at 7.00am to 8.30am every Wednesday morning at Redland Green Club, Redland Green, Bristol BS6 7HF where we have some interesting speakers. To join us contact secretary@bristolbreakfastrotary.org.uk
