As work begins to slow down for the holidays, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on what has been another prosperous year for our club.
In 2018, the Mining Club successfully created opportunities for future leaders, revised its governance standards, improved member engagement, collaborated with its peers, and secured valuable corporate partnerships.
The Club’s core activity – our luncheons – have shifted to respond to market needs and keynote speakers have graciously responded and moved away from the typical investor presentation.
Instead, they have shared their opinions on topical issues and trends facing the industry, combined with an overview of their activities and future plans.
This year, the Club continued to feature panel discussions including: Market Outlook for 2018, Miners of the Month, as well as the scholarship awards event. These encouraged open, “conversation-style” presentations.
The WA Mining Club also introduced the ECU Education Series. Sponsored by ECU this event series ignites conversations and debates topical developments facing our industry.
The first event, Smart Technology in Mining explored challenges, issues and positive advances and brought together a panel of specialists to share their insights and knowledge to our member base. The breakfast style event received excellent feedback and was attended by over 300 guests.
The WA Mining Club President’s Cup Golf Day was over-subscribed again this year and the 2018 gala ball attracted a fantastic crowd.
The Club also introduced a new sub-committee – the WA Mining Club Young Professionals – a forum that supports the development and retention of professionals in the early stages of their mining career. Their launch event was a sell-out and the YP steering committee is already hard at work planning more.
The scholarship program is our flagship community program. Led by Damian Quail, 2018 was outstanding. A record number of nine scholarships were awarded to the tune of $90,000. This is delivered in conjunction with our scholarship co-sponsors, who all provide mentoring opportunities to students.
In a similar philanthropic vain, at our most recent St Barbara’s Day Luncheon the WA Mining Club raised a total of $16,840 for our chosen charity, St John. Kerryn Cook from Macmahon was the successful bidder on the bottle of Grange and Neil Irvine from Rapid Crushing was again the successful bidder on the Hopman Cup box.
I’d like to take this opportunity to recognise and thank each our members, sponsors and strategic partners for your ongoing support of the WA Mining Club, and I assure you that we will continue to provide a line-up of captivating speakers, exciting events, thought-provoking articles and lively activities in 2019.
