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FORaMEAL team leaders, Doug and Nora worked with the team at District 9800 to organise and help supervise at the Federation Square event; while numerous other members assisted in many ways, including oversight of packing of meals by volunteers from across the globe at the House of Friendship.
During the packing, there were many stories to tell. Visiting Croatian Rotarian Fran Mikulicic worked tirelessly for over 7 hours during The Big Difference, delivering product to tables and loading the trucks.... and he turned up later in the convention to help with packing at the House of Friendship.
FORaMEAL founder, Doug Hawley, spoke to the group he saw at one table, thinking they were visiting Rotarians from the Philippines. Further investigation revealed that they were from Bendigo. Now permanent residents of Australia, they saw the Big Difference advertised on social media; found through investigation that many of the meal packs had been sent to the Philippines; and hired a minivan to come to Melbourne to join in the event. They described the event as ‘Fantastic’.
The Big Difference event went so well that it had to finish at 2.30pm when the supplies ran out!
At the same time the team were at the House of Friendship where they packed 30,000 meals on Saturday, 15,000 on Monday, 15,000 on Tuesday and another 10,000 on Wednesday. One of the Canterbury Rotarians commented on how good it was to see Rotarians from multiple countries conversing on many topics as well as Rotary. One table was observed to have 2 Argentinians, 1 Bolivian, 1 Nigerian, 3 Taiwanese, 1 from the USA, …. and one from Warrnambool!