President John de Ridder

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John joined the Rotary Club of Nelson Bay, D9670 in March 2013 and transferred to E-Club Serving Humanity in June 2021.

John de Ridder is recognized locally and internationally as an experienced telecommunications economist. Since leaving Telstra in 2002, he has worked locally for private corporations, regulators and governments. Sometimes, this work is performed as a sub-contractor to a larger consultant (eg GQI Consulting , NERA and LECG).

John’s eighteen year career at Telstra included stints as Chief Economist, Pricing Manager and Director Strategic Studies.

These roles put him at the cutting edge of developments such as universal service costing and the evolution of competition and regulation. John writes the “Economuse” column for the weekly on-line “CommsWire” newsletter and for the Telecommunications Journal of Australia.

Before joining Telstra, John held various positions in Australia and the UK. In Australia he worked as an economist for ICI and as the research manager for IBIS Consulting. In London he worked for Shell International as an economist and for DRI-McGraw Hill as a macro-economic forecaster and in sales.

PIMD has partnered with the University of Jaffna and the Eastern University of Sri Lanka to offer the PIMD teacher training as short courses through their online and distance learning centres. The first course to be offered is “Teaching Phonological Awareness and Phonics for English in Schools”. 700 primary English teachers applied for the first round in December 2022. The course will run multiple times in 2023 to allow all of these teachers to participate. Further collaboration with the Universities is planned.

When we established our online Rotary E-Club Serving Humanity with members from different locations and backgrounds we thought it would benefit our members to build a relationship together assisting less fortunate people in countries other than where we live and work.

One of the Rotary avenues of service is International Service and KIVA allows us to contribute to small projects and entrepreneurs in many countries.

What is KIVA?

More than 1.7 billion people around the world do not have access to banks and cannot access the financial services they need. Kiva is an international non-profit organisation, founded in 2005 in San Francisco, with a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive.

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In June-July 2022 the Sri Lanka English Literacy project changed gears in response to the economic crisis in Sri Lanka. The project provided funds to 15 schools to cover the cost of providing a nutritious meal per day for every student for a month. Teachers told us that students were coming to school hungry and in some cases starving. Because the funds went directly to schools and then into local communities, the cost was one-third of much larger donor-led programs channelled from overseas and through Colombo. Thank you to our supporters who donated to this appeal. 

Watch this fantastic video of a recent expedition of the team on a 6 week medical outreach trip around the PNG islands delivering much needed medical supplies and equipment. Our own Wendy Stein will soon be heading to Port Moresby and Alotau to restock their vessel – Kula Spirit – in readiness to expand their much needed services. Wendy urges all Rotarians conducting projects to partner with others, so maximum benefit is given to the recipients and to save huge amounts of donated funds.

Healthy families build healthy nations.