More than 8,000 people were killed this year by the two major earthquakes on April 25 and May 12.

The dinner will be held on Wednesday, June 24 at the Forbes Services Memorial Club and Orange Rotarian Mary Brell, who was in Nepal when the first earthquake struck, will be the guest speaker.

Since 2012, Mary has been travelling to Nepal with a project that she instigated through Rotary Australia to provide teaching, building and health education to local villages. 

When the first earthquake struck last month, Mary was returning to her accommodation when the building she was staying in collapsed in front of her, just moments before she would have entered her room.

Fortunately Mary was not injured and she has since returned to Australia, raising $15,000 that will go back into the village where she was working.

Mary has spoken at state, national and international conferences on a wide range of topics and more recently she was invited to present her paper on professional learning at a conference in Beijing and a university in Austria. 

For the past three years, Mary has been the Rotary District Learning and Development coordinator and was last year’s district Rotarian of the year. 

Tickets to the event cost $35 and can be booked by phoning the club on 6852 1488.