I am sure that no-one who has gone through the experience of COVID-19 will fail to identify this image. Even though the colours used are a construct, the electron micrograph will be instantly recognisable.
I am pleased to note that there has been a positive uptake of ZOOM meetings across the District. The Rotary Club of Coolamon is an example.
Even those clubs not using ZOOM are keeping in touch by phone calls, messaging or other means. It is really important to keep in touch and share what we are doing while restricted to home. I have noticed that the practice of having a beverage of some description at a Rotary meeting has been able to crossover to online meetings as well and there has been some discussion about the type and characteristics of the beverages as well.
While we are not able to do many of our service projects I was impressed by one club providing gourmet pizzas and cakes to local hospital front line staff, so with some imagination we can still contribute to our local communities.
At a Rotary International level the Rotary Foundation has been active in providing grants to affected Districts and communities for COVID related projects. The table shows that over $US13 million has been provided so far.
Grant type | Number of grants | Total funding |
Global grants (new applications) | 92 | $8,642,032 |
Global grants (repurposed funds within existing grants) | 35 | $372,334 |
Disaster response grants | 163 | $4,046,539 |
While some of the restrictions on our movement will be slightly eased early this month, it is likely that larger meetings will be taboo for some time to come.
As we move towards the end of this Rotary year and changeover time, questions have been raised about what can be done for changeovers when we cannot meet in person. An informative article by Stephen Sennett, a Rotarian from Melbourne and digital guru, on having virtual changeovers gives some good guidelines and suggestions on how to conduct a virtual changeover. A link to the article is here. It is well worth a read.
On a completely different topic, for those who are missing their injection of culture, the Sydney Opera House site https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/digital.html has a wealth of entertainment available for FREE! Their “Digital Season” of performances, podcasts and interviews is outstanding, with live performances streamed each week, or you can watch them at your leisure later. And, the ABC's I-view is showing videos of a range of performances of plays, operas and orchestras here.
As DG I have an advantage through club bulletins of getting all the good ideas of what clubs are doing and all the jokes circulating as well. How about we start to collect and share those ideas. If you send me a list of the ideas your club has been coming up with I can collate them and put them up on the District website for all to see and use. Let's see what we can come up with.
In the meantime keep safe and keep adapting.