The Rotary Club of Amanzimtoti elected a new president at a virtual monthly board meeting during stage three of lockdown. Dr Penny Orton, 61, will led the civic organisation for the next two years.
“We have certainly missed the interaction and fellowship of our members,” said outgoing president, Rhona Chetty. “This has been a very trying time for all, but we managed to achieve a lot in the community that we serve. We had to have the induction of our new president via Zoom (video and audio conferencing application), which was something new for us, but most of our members and some guests were able to attend. Our congratulations to Penny and we trust she is going to have wonderful support from the Toti people and success in her projects planned.”
Penny was born in Mbala, a small town close to Lake Tanganyika in Zambia. She did her schooling at Hillside Junior in Bulawayo and Mabelreign Girls High School in Harare. After school, she studied to be a nurse and started her general nurse training at Andrew Fleming Hospital in Harare and then went to the UK for midwifery training, which she did at West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds.
“My clinical speciality is in occupational health nursing, which I did at the old Wits Technikon. My degree studies started at UNISA with my undergraduate degree and all my post graduate studies were at the University of Natal and UKZN. My PhD thesis was looking at access to higher education for health sciences in South Africa. This is a very contested area in South Africa’s effort to transform higher education.”
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She moved to Toti from Johannesburg in 1999. She is widowed and has a son, Jamie, 25. She enjoys walking, the bush, books and handcrafts.
“I was very surprised that, as a relatively new Rotarian, I was selected to be president, but I was also very honoured to be entrusted with leading the Amanzimtoti Rotary Club for the next two years. I was prepared, as we have a succession plan in Rotary and the incoming president is afforded some training in order to learn the ropes.”
Penny first joined the Rotary Club in 1999 when she moved to Toti and her membership was transferred. “However, life took over and I resigned, as I did not have time to give adequate attention to the club. I then joined again two years ago after being invited by Aneska du Pont.
I was planning on retiring and so thought I would have a bit more time, as I have been in a very demanding job for the last 14 years, however I have contracts at my previous place of work and so seem to be just as busy! I have an ethic towards community service which I got from my mother and so look forward to contributing something to making things a little better for our community, be it people, animals or the environment.
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“I think the difficulty (of taking over as president during lockdown) has been in negotiating our new realities and so things have been a bit slow, as our new way of working is demanding a lot of us and extramural activities like Rotary are playing second fiddle. However, as worklife settles into a reimagined reality, I hope we will find more opportunities for Rotary. We need to consider how much we can do virtually and how to do the good work differently.”
Penny said the club has done sterling work over the many years of its existence and she hopes to continue with these projects. “I would like to try and share the load across all the members and so make an impact in the many projects we have in place. These projects cut across job creation, early childhood development, the environment and health, which is a lot for a very small club. I hope each member will take responsibility for a project and get the rest of us on board.”
She will welcome new members to the club, as there is so much work to do in the Toti community. “We invite them to contact us and they are welcome to attend a meeting, currently virtually on Zoom, but we hope in the next year we start with our face to face meetings again.”
The club’s bakery project, led by Aneska, has been well planned and is ready to start implementation once lockdown is lifted and travel is allowed. The club has contributed to job creation opportunities at Ocean Call Caravan Park and explored a contribution to the Jona Vaughan Home. A project is currently underway to digitalise the club and all the records, which Neil Subbiah is busy with.
The club encourages young people to join the interact club that is active in community projects via local schools. Anyone wanting to join can call Dr Penny Orton on 082-453-8442.
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