By Marnee Obendorf
When I was asked to create an explanation of how the process of putting together the upcoming District Training Assembly has evolved this year, I felt like it required a little background information about what the District Trainer and Training Committee really does.
Oddly enough, the District 5020 Trainer doesn’t really TRAIN Rotarians. It’s more of a coordinator position than most Rotarians might think from the title. Early in the 2018-19 year when the position became available, and I accepted the challenge....
When I was asked to create an explanation of how the process of putting together the upcoming District Training Assembly has evolved this year, I felt like it required a little background information about what the District Trainer and Training Committee really does.
Oddly enough, the District 5020 Trainer doesn’t really TRAIN Rotarians. It’s more of a coordinator position than most Rotarians might think from the title. Early in the 2018-19 year when the position became available, and I accepted the challenge, the dream of District Governor-Elect Maureen (Mo) Fritz-Roberts and District Governor Nominee Greg Horn was to establish a little different format than we’d previously had in place for the District’s Training Committee. The process began in early September to recruit about 25 Rotarians within the District with various interests ranging from Membership, Public Image, Youth Protection/ Youth Services, Visioning, Foundation, Finance, and others, as well as Rotarians who had a strong background in adult training/education. It was fairly easy to find willing Rotarians to step in! We held Zoom video conference meetings to lay out the Committee format which was an effective method given the size of our District.
The next step was to survey Presidents, Presidents-Elect, and Assistant Governors to elicit their thoughts on what they might want to learn at District Training, the President-Elect Training Seminar, or any other venues including electronic formats or in-person seminars. Following the compilation of those responses, the suggested topics were shared with the Committee and those were narrowed down to come up with the best options for the 30 training sessions we’re offering this year at the District Training Assembly/District Conference in Victoria May 9-11, 2019. Several members of the Committee volunteered to develop and lead those sessions, and we also asked other members of the District’s leadership to step in to present some of the sessions. Thankfully, no one said “no”! The proposed titles and descriptions were collaboratively developed, and desired outcomes were written by the presenters that will be evaluated by the registrants to help us determine whether we are providing the types of sessions that our members are looking for in the future.
We currently have registration of over 450 Rotarians for this year’s DTA! One of the most meaningful remarks made to me recently came from a Past District Governor who said that he was really pleased to see the diversity in our training sessions this year at DTA as it appeared that we had made a sincere attempt to meet the needs of new Rotarians as well as the more seasoned members. That was certainly one of our main goals! We will attempt to learn as much from this DTA as possible for future planning.