Dear Rotaractors, friends and guests,
On Tuesday, December 8th, our Club enjoyed a very different Christmas Apéro compared to our usual Fondue/Raclette evening at the Restaurant „Zur Schtund“. After a difficult and unprecedented year we tried to wake the Christmas spirit by spending an evening on Zoom. We listened to two pieces played by our member Leah Disse on her violin, tried our best to be on the podium at the end of several online quizzes as the winner would receive a bottle of the Rotary wine and listened to the Christmas story in Swiss German and in Rhaeto-Romanic. The board created a so called „ Apéro Päckli“, which included Prosecco, crisps, pumpkin soup and last but not least a chocolate Santa, which we indulged during the whole evening. Especially this year we didn’t want to forget the „helping“ part of „learn-help-celebrate“ and therefore we collected money to support Sister Ariane’s association incontro for the disadvantaged who live in precarious conditions in Zurich and their project of creating Christmas boxes for men, women and families. Like every year we also collected goods such as warm winter clothes, sleeping bags, hygiene articles etc. to give them to „Haus Zueflucht“, an organisation, which is helping homeless people and people in need.
As the year is coming to an end, the board would like to use this opportunity as well to thank our members and guests, who helped keeping the club spirit and the friendship between us alive in a year when meetings in person were impossible from one day to the next since Covid-19 spread around the world. Despite all the uncertainty and the lockdown you showed up every Tuesday evening on Zoom, to talk, to discuss, to learn and perhaps also to cheer people up, who were living alone and suddenly couldn’t meet up with friends and family. You kept our social projects such as Flying Croissant running as long as the situation allowed it and when it didn’t allow a project to happen we found another way like writing Christmas cards to the residents of the nursing home we would have normally visited in December to bake Christmas cookies together.
After a challenging and difficult year all of this will stay with us as the positive in 2020.
Although the crisis isn’t over yet, there is hope that we will overcome it in 2021. The board knows you’ll turn up for Zoom meetings again and hopefully for meetings in person as well and as soon as we call on you to help as helpers or drivers for Flying Croissant and other social projects again you’ll happily join. It’s communities like ours that help us to stay positive and hopeful and with all that said we wish you a merry Christmas and soon a happy and healthy new year.
The board of Rotaract Zürich
