On Thursday, August 11th, over twenty members and guests gathered at the Mill House for our club's first face to face meeting for three weeks due to Covid concerns. We were also joined by three members online via Zoom. The topic of the night was an engaging presentation by new member, Bec Lowery, who shared her vocational story - so far. Click "Read more..." for more details and photos.
Bec was raised in the Wimmera city of Horsham, and her father was actually a keen Rotarian, and Bec believes it was his influence that has guided her into community service positions over the years. Bec went to Horsham High School and soon after she'd completed Year 11, she got offered a job in the town to initiate her vocational journey. After moving to Maryborough, she got offered the job of managing the shop at the Jockey Factory - now, of course, the site of the Mill House and the K-Mart/ Coles shopping centre. Once the Jockey Factory closed, the shop remained for five years and as soon as the company decided to close the shop, Bec was offered a job at the Westpac Bank which started her banking career. From there, she moved to the Regional One Credit Union which had more of a community service focus. Regional One was taken over by another Credit Union, MECU, and they promoted Bec to manage their branch in Castlemaine to where she commuted for several years. Bec's next vocation and promotion was as to be "Mum" to her two children and during this time, she became firstly, President of the Cal Gully Kindergarten and ensured that funds were spent to improve the environment for the children (yard improvements, play equipment and carpeting) and secondly, President of the A.G. Leech Kindergarten and she ensured that funds were spent well, there. During her Kindergarten presidencies, Bec was instrumental in promoting the importance of reading and literacy in families. Bec then joined the team at Bounce, Australia, a training and coaching organization that specializes in personal coaching. Whilst there, Bec qualified as a Personal Coach and used those skills in programs with long-term unemployed people. A lot of her efforts went into assisting these people to change the way they thought about themselves and employment from "I'm not good enough - there are no jobs for me" to something like, "There are jobs, and I am good enough - I just have to persevere to find a job that will suit me". Once Covid hit, Bounce lost 90% of their programs so they were forced to go online. As a people person, Bec did not enjoy the online focus of work as much, so she applied for, and was successful in obtaining a position at Maryborough Toyota as a sales person and during this last year, she has added a finance and insurance component to her position.