About Norwich Marchesi Rotary Club
Norwich Marchesi Rotary Club was named in honour of Louis Marchesi, the Norwich Rotarian who founded the international Round Table movement in 1927. The Club was chartered in May 1980, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Norwich. A proportion, but by no means all, of its founding members were former members of Round Table. At its inaugural meeting in the Norwood Rooms in November 1979 there were 31 founder members. The Club currently has a membership of 16, nine of which are from the original founding group, including John Scotting founder President. 2020 marks our 40th anniversary – 40 years of enthusiastic and varied Rotary service. Although all our members are now retired, Marchesi is still actively pursuing the aims of Rotary and enjoying a high level of fellowship and social activities.
Founder President (John Scotting) and Founder Vice President (Dennis Black) at the club’s inaugural meeting in November 1979.
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Norwich Marchesi Rotary Club at their first Charter Night 1980.
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International aid and projects
The Club was involved in international links from its conception. In the November following its Charter a devastating earthquake struck southern Italy centered on the Irpinia region. Over 2,500 people died, 7700 were injured and a quarter of a million made homeless. It was decided to make an appeal on Anglia TV for second-hand caravans and eight were donated together with a number of large plastic containers for storage of fresh water. Documentation was rapidly put together and through contacts with the Caserta Rotary Club close to the devastated area arrangements were made to tow the vans some 2400 miles via the Felixstowe to Zeebrugge ferry across Europe, through the snow covered Alps to Caserta where they were met by Italian Rotarians and the regional Director of the Red Cross. This venture, which attracted considerable publicity, helped to bind the club together early in its first year.
Further international contacts followed including visits behind the Iron Curtain to Moscow and St. Petersburg, at the time called Leningrad, during the Brezhnev era, and a few years later to east and west Berlin, chiefly to visit Rotary Clubs in the western sector distanced from the rest of Rotary International far behind the Iron Curtain when the city was brutally divided by the notorious wall.
Further international contacts followed including visits behind the Iron Curtain to Moscow and St. Petersburg, at the time called Leningrad, during the Brezhnev era, and a few years later to east and west Berlin, chiefly to visit Rotary Clubs in the western sector distanced from the rest of Rotary International far behind the Iron Curtain when the city was brutally divided by the notorious wall.
Sorting shoes for despatch to Poland 1983
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Later the Club formed a three-way link with the Rotary Club of Dreich Isenberg, Frankfurt, Germany and the Rotary Club of Medvode, Ljubljana in Slovenia, hosting members of both Clubs in Norwich and paying return visits to the clubs home countries.When there was a dire need for footwear in Communist controlled Poland in 1983, the Club organised a major collection of footwear for shipment to that country. At the time shoes were rationed in Poland to one new pair a year per person. The Club sent a lorry loaded with 15,000 pairs donated by people in Norwich and Norfolk.
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Among many international projects, Marchesi members have given long standing support to St. Anthony’s nursery school in Malawi, founded in 2001 by Gina Rose Saunders, a former Norwich High School pupil. The Club has provided regular donations for equipment and running costs
Club members and friends at the handover of a cheque as a major donation to establish the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital’s Targeted Brachytherapy unit, 2014.
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Club Community Service Chairman Derek Bond with N&NU Hospital’s Louise Cook at the hospital’s Woodland Walk. The Marchesi Club has donated 10,000 crocus, daffodil and snowdrop bulbs to enhance the hospital grounds for the benefit of patients, visitors and staff.
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Local projects and charities
Closer to home, the Club has supported major initiatives at the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. Foremost among these was taking a key role in helping fund the hospital’s Targeted Brachytherapy appeal in 2014 to enable cutting edge treatment to be offered to prostate and other cancer patients. Marchesi successfully bid for both international and district Rotary grants. This involved the Club supporting its international partner, the Rotary Club of Indiranager Bangalore, India in tackling the serious problem of cataracts, a significant cause of avoidable blindness in rural areas in India’s Bangalore region, by supporting an appeal to build a new eye hospital. The brachytherapy unit at the N&NUH has subsequently proved so successful that it won the 2019 Macmillan professional excellence award.
The Club is currently working with other Norwich Rotary Clubs to support the hospital’s £800,000 Boudicca appeal for a new dedicated breast cancer unit. Indeed, the Norwich Craft Fair, which originated as a Marchesi project in 2014 and is now organised jointly with other Norwich Rotary Clubs, was in 2019 part of Rotary in Norwich’s fund raising effort for the Boudicca appeal. Other initiatives by Marchesi members have included the provision of a day room for the hospital’s neurosciences unit, the Dunston Ward, which cares for stroke patients and those with other neurological disorders, and the planting of crocuses, daffodils and snowdrops to enhance the hospital grounds, particularly the woodland walk used extensively by staff, patients and visitors to the hospital. In the last four years (2016-2019) we have supplied 10,000 bulbs.
Over the years members have organised multiple events supporting charities in the community. Among them art exhibitions, fashion shows, concerts – including a memorable evening with the late Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band whose popularity and signature tune ‘Stranger on the Shore’ attracted a capacity audience to St Andrews Hall. To mark the 40th anniversary of VE Day, the club organised a concert at the Theatre Royal starring the wartime forces ‘sweetheart’ Anne Shelton and the Syd Lawrence Orchestra raising £4,000 for local good causes.
Another major project, undertaken in 1983 was the creation of a garden at Burlingham Horticultural College designed to show that disabled people can enjoy the pleasure and therapy of gardening. Working with the district RYLA team, we have sponsored a number of young leaders in co-operation with employers, the police and the Norfolk Fire Service. Also in conjunction with Rotary District 1080, it was a Marchesi initiative to enable all Norfolk Rotary Clubs to gain membership of Norfolk Chamber of Commerce and benefit from the synergies and opportunities for service and membership offered by both organisations.
Support for young people and budding entrepreneurs has featured in the Club’s service aims. In 1986 an amateur boxing tournament and dinner raised enough money to help set up two young people in business. One of these has developed into a prominent City company operating across the region and beyond. On a different scale we have been granting interest-free loans via the Lend with Care charity to provide seed- money to small start-up business in developing countries. So far the Club has helped 45 small traders, created 23 jobs and assisted 125 families. Truly a matter of giving a hand-up rather than a hand-out! Marchesi even made headlines in the Sun newspaper some years ago when an auction of ‘promises’ organised by the Club included the opportunity to bid for a vasectomy. It was a ‘snip at the price’, as the headline went!
The Club has supported both RIBI and Rotary International in practical ways. In 1992-93 the late David Crowe, a founder member and former principal of the Norfolk College of Agriculture and Horticulture, served as District Governor. Jim Wilson OBE, formerly Director of News at Anglia TV and also a founder member, served on the RI Public Relations Committee at Evanston, Chicago 1987- 1990 and was its chairman 1989-1990.
The Club is currently working with other Norwich Rotary Clubs to support the hospital’s £800,000 Boudicca appeal for a new dedicated breast cancer unit. Indeed, the Norwich Craft Fair, which originated as a Marchesi project in 2014 and is now organised jointly with other Norwich Rotary Clubs, was in 2019 part of Rotary in Norwich’s fund raising effort for the Boudicca appeal. Other initiatives by Marchesi members have included the provision of a day room for the hospital’s neurosciences unit, the Dunston Ward, which cares for stroke patients and those with other neurological disorders, and the planting of crocuses, daffodils and snowdrops to enhance the hospital grounds, particularly the woodland walk used extensively by staff, patients and visitors to the hospital. In the last four years (2016-2019) we have supplied 10,000 bulbs.
Over the years members have organised multiple events supporting charities in the community. Among them art exhibitions, fashion shows, concerts – including a memorable evening with the late Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band whose popularity and signature tune ‘Stranger on the Shore’ attracted a capacity audience to St Andrews Hall. To mark the 40th anniversary of VE Day, the club organised a concert at the Theatre Royal starring the wartime forces ‘sweetheart’ Anne Shelton and the Syd Lawrence Orchestra raising £4,000 for local good causes.
Another major project, undertaken in 1983 was the creation of a garden at Burlingham Horticultural College designed to show that disabled people can enjoy the pleasure and therapy of gardening. Working with the district RYLA team, we have sponsored a number of young leaders in co-operation with employers, the police and the Norfolk Fire Service. Also in conjunction with Rotary District 1080, it was a Marchesi initiative to enable all Norfolk Rotary Clubs to gain membership of Norfolk Chamber of Commerce and benefit from the synergies and opportunities for service and membership offered by both organisations.
Support for young people and budding entrepreneurs has featured in the Club’s service aims. In 1986 an amateur boxing tournament and dinner raised enough money to help set up two young people in business. One of these has developed into a prominent City company operating across the region and beyond. On a different scale we have been granting interest-free loans via the Lend with Care charity to provide seed- money to small start-up business in developing countries. So far the Club has helped 45 small traders, created 23 jobs and assisted 125 families. Truly a matter of giving a hand-up rather than a hand-out! Marchesi even made headlines in the Sun newspaper some years ago when an auction of ‘promises’ organised by the Club included the opportunity to bid for a vasectomy. It was a ‘snip at the price’, as the headline went!
The Club has supported both RIBI and Rotary International in practical ways. In 1992-93 the late David Crowe, a founder member and former principal of the Norfolk College of Agriculture and Horticulture, served as District Governor. Jim Wilson OBE, formerly Director of News at Anglia TV and also a founder member, served on the RI Public Relations Committee at Evanston, Chicago 1987- 1990 and was its chairman 1989-1990.