Saturday 7th April has been set aside for the Annual General Meeting for The Grub Club. Committee members as asked to attend 28 Lyon St, Bellingen at 4pm. The agenda will include election of officers, treasurer's report, chairperson's report and Progress in East Timor.

If you are unable to attend, please send me an email on debbielocke@bigpond.com or alternatively call me on 0429977959.

Hope to see you all there.

Debbie Locke

Chairperson

Library books for the Escola Pre-Secondaria Foho Ailico English reading project have now started their long journey to East Timor.  No more books will be collected.

Thank you to all those individuals and Bellingen Public School, NSW and Mundubbera State School, Qld for their help, we thank you for your generosity.  Also thank you to Rotary Melbourne and Dili, Bob Glindeman and Darryl Mills for their help in organising this operation and Geoff Crouch and Chris Peddler of Crouch’s Transport Wagga Wagga for getting the books to Melbourne.

Once pictures of the books arriving at the school are available I will post them for all to see.

The books will be travelling by Rotary Container via the seaways from Melbourne to Dili and collected there by Jino Pereira, our hard working school contact.  A safe journey and many more years of happy reading to them.

I returned from Timor Leste on the 12th of July and have to say I am inspired by the determination of the young to pull themselves up. In the spirit of John F. Kennedy's inauguration speech 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country;' three young men in particular have inspired me. Jino Pereira and his cousins Johnny Costa, Luciano Neves and Edi Freitas all working and studying in Dili are looking for ways to improve the lives of the young and old in their home village of Bei Cala, some 140 kms from Dili and 6 hours driving.

A chance conversation between work colleagues Jino and Naomi Lacey and myself and Luke Gosling of Life, Love and Health (LLH) brought us all together. This has in turn led to an initial donation of $500 for student resources for the Escola Pre-secondaria Foho Ailico and a visit in country to view the prospective site for a school project.

The visit has endeared a community to me and will allow me to fulfill a promise I made following Matt's untimely death. That promise was to ensure his name would live on through the education of the young in places he had worked.

Since visiting Timor Leste I have been able to work out a budget, gather construction information and get to know the project manager, builder and meet important people such as the chief of the village, principal and education officer. I have seen the existing school and the site of the new building and learnt its purpose.

It will be an extra classroom, library and offices. It will house the collection of english books we have collected which will allow students to learn english as well as other books in tetun and portuguese. Jino sees it as important to his country that the children are educated further than primary school and perhaps in the future we will see a trade training school, and help students go to university.

I am inspired by these young men who are finding solutions by themselves. It is the greatest example of citizenship in action and I am very proud that the Grub Club will be playing a part. 

On 20th October 2010, the GrubClub's Debbie Locke was interviewed by Fran Kelly on ABC Radio National.

Follow the link to listen to Debbie Locke talk about brother, Sgt. Matthew Locke and the work of the Grub Club. The Grub Club has extended its area of influence to now include Timor Leste where it is hoping to build a secondary school for students of the village of Bei Cala.

ABC Interview 20^th October 2010

WANTED

Primary School Reading Books

Must be in GOOD condition

As part of our commitment to the Pitileti School and Escola Pre-Secondaria Foho Ailico schools in Timor Leste we are holding a book drive. We are looking for donations of primary school reading books to help school children in Timor Leste learn to read and write in English. There is great desire to learn English so we would like to build a library in each school full of books that will give students the opportunity to learn.

So if your kids are finished with their primary school readers, please donate them. Books will be collected and delivered to Timor Leste with the kind help of Rotary. Books can be sent to:

If you have any questions, contact me at debbielocke@bigpond.com