PRESIDENT'S  REPORT   

17  OCTOBER  2000

Dear members,

This year has seen many worthwhile achievements.  The major success has been to receive a grant from DIMA to fund a community worker for 3 years.  This enables us to extend our services to five days and to open an office at the Botany MRC.  The new office will be open on Thursdays and will provide a similar service to that at Ashfield.  The extra funding has allowed us to upgrade our technology with the purchase of a new computer and fax / answering machine.  The old computer will be recycled to our secretary whose job hopefully will be made much easier!

The work undertaken by our information and referral Centre is huge - during the year, more than 1200 clients have used the range of services and benefited from the various seminars.  At the same time we have established a wide network system with many government and non-government service providers, such as Centrelink,  the Heart Foundation, universities.

There is now in place a regular program for the elderly  who meet in the Russian Club in Strathfield - they listen to information sessions, have discussions and interesting excursions.

There have been other successes and I would like to mention some of these:

• last September we had the successful launch of the book, 'Russians in Strathfield'

• at the beginning of the year the RECC was involved in the Australia Day celebrations in Strathfield

• an information stand was set up at the Russian Club in Strathfield - it provides a wide range of brochures on various topics eg pensions, housing, health

• the presentation of prizes to students at Saturday Russian Schools

• the presentation of a prize to a student of Russian language at  Macquarie University

• the establishment of English classes at Ashfield

• the organisation of  excursions and information seminars

• the support of the Russian language and discussions with the Board of Studies re changes to the Russian curriculum

• the joint community organisation of paralympic events - a fundraising concert, ball , dinner, itinerary , and monetary donations to the paralympians

• on the 18 November 2000 there was the raising of the Russian flag in Cooma in honour of those Russians who worked on the Snowy Mountains project.  The RECC would like to thank everyone who contributed towards this flag.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for their time, support and effort - without the hard work and dedication of everyone in our organisation we would not have been able to achieve so much.  I hope that in the coming year we can set new goals that will benefit all members of our Russian community.

God bless you all,

Irina Andrews (President)