January is Rotary Awareness Month

      As this is Rotary Awareness month Membership Director Shawn Longhenry chose to speak on Rotary and mentoring of new members.   His first point was that each member needs to develop a concise two to three sentances to explain Rotary and what it means to them to use when encountering someone in a hall or elevator.  Sufficent information to give them a good idea of Rotary but not so much that they are running away.

      Mentoring is important as RI has shown that without mentoring 1:4 new members will leave the club.  That statistic is "spot on" for our club when new members are not mentored.  Another thing that can chase away new members is asking them to do too much too quickly.  That is almost as bad as not asking them to do anything.  He then spoke of the club's mentoring program with dual handouts: one to the mentors and the other to the new members. 

     The mentoring sheet had expectations of mentoring actions and ideas as to how to engage the new member.  The new members sheet had a list of tasks to do to become integrated into the club with an expectation that a new member should do ten of these in their first six months.  The tasks were as varied as checking the District and the Club's websites to goin to a District Conference or even an International Conference.

     The Rotary Fellowships raised many questions as no one is aware of any club member that has become involved with one of the many diverse fellowshiops in Rotary from birdwatching and stamp collecting to biking.

     All of the new members present had completed the club's training program.