Quota Cares Month—Top Winner
Quota International of Whakatane

The Quota club of Whakatane, New Zealand, spent Quota Cares Month giving as much care as they could all across their community. Instead of a single project, Whakatane Quotarians had five over the course of the month, garnering repeated media coverage and recruiting two new members, one pinned in March and the other in April.

Early in the month, on March 7, club members made and served sandwiches and muffins for the Eastern Bay Plunket Association's Well Child Day. After helping with activities for children and mothers, the Quotarians delivered surplus food to two local rest homes, a childcare center, and a women's shelter.

Just two days later, food again created the basis for fellowship as Quota member Karla Hammond opened her rose garden to a club-sponsored lunch for the residents of Mountain View Rest Home, Kawarau. After an afternoon of chatting and singing among the flowers, each guest left with chocolates to remember the day.

Children at the Jezreel Women's Support Home didn't receive chocolates but Quota Care Bears to let them know that someone cares about them when they arrive at the shelter. The bears were donated with forty toiletry kits for the Jezreel staff to distribute to the women and children who arrive at the home, often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Soap, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, and other necessities were included in all the kits. Those intended for the women also contained perfume or cosmetics, while the bears, 24 in all, wore blue ribbons, Q stickers, and "Quota Cares" labels.

Club members returned to hands-on help when Quota of Whakatane teamed with the Eastern Bay of Plenty Cancer Centre to raise money for their Project HOPE campaign. Quotarians took part in an open home show on TVNZ and raised over $1,300 for the cancer center while introducing the 100,000-person Mitre 10 Dream Home audience to one of the many ways that Quota cares.

Throughout the month, this Quota club continued to care about healthy hearing, distributing earplugs to those who work or play in noisy environments. They used individually labeled earplugs that included Quota contact information and the slogans "Promoting Healthy Hearing" and "We Share,We Care." On March 29, District 37 Governor Annette Cleghorn joined the Whakatane Quotarians and a local news reporter in distributing earplugs to construction sites.

Healthy hearing promotion has long been part of the work of the Whakatane club, and the rest home luncheon has become a tradition Quotarians and Mountain View residents look forward to. However, after this Quota Cares Month, the club is adding the Jezreel Women's Support Home to their list of organizations receiving continued support, with the hopes of putting more smiles on the faces of women and children facing hard times and showing them that Quota cares in every month of the year.

To read or print the club's winning application, click here*.

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