By Jessica Anstice
Forty people attended the launch of the new VW Minbus, at Insight Education Centre for the Blind and Vision Impaired, on Wednesday, 29 August in Berwick.
Funds for the minibus were raised by the Rotary Club of Emerald and District Inc after their Kids Fun Run with Thomas event, in 2017.
The minibus will expand the transportation services for vision impaired students in the South East Melbourne corridor.
In his address to the group, including MP Jason Wood, Rotary president Ian Ash, Insight staff, sponsors, board members and supporters, Ian Wakefield from Emerald Rotary thanked everyone who contributed funds and services to the Kids Fun Run with Thomas event.
“It was a true community initiative, literally running an event to raise funds for the disadvantaged, in this case blind and vision impaired children,” Mr Wakefield said.
Mr Wakefield acknowledged the perseverance and great work undertaken by Insight’s founder Alan Lachman as well as all the sponsors, participants and Rotary Club members involved.
“I now want to expand our services through mobile classrooms and satellite schools, to serve the over one thousand blind and vision impaired students around the state,” Mr Lachman said.
“The addition of the (VW) minibus will be of great assistance with this.”
The VW minibus was supplied by Ferntree Gully Motors Group, in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Emerald and District Inc.
The Group has a number of community service fund raising initiatives, and has helped raised millions of dollars for the wider community over the past few years.
