This week our Club President, Heather de Kok, gave us a presentation on her time at the Rotary International Convention that was held in May this year in Melbourne, Australia which she attended as a representative of our club. Heather told us there were between fifteen and twenty thousand attendees and that she met Rotarians everywhere she went, even in the Brisbane airport where she changed planes on her way there. She told us that she had booked a small hotel that was only a short trolley ride to the convention area. She said that Rotary had made a deal with the City of Melbourne that made public transport free for all attending Rotarians. She said that she took lots of handheld Canadian flags that she handed out freely, garnering her a large flag waving contingent at the opening Flag ceremony. She said that she felt very proud of the fact that this past year’s RI President, Jennifer Jones, was a Canadian and this meant that everyone at the Opening Flag Ceremony sang the Canadian Anthem. She said that it was a surreal experience.
She told us that two of the speakers at this ceremony were especially good, incoming President Gordon McInally speaking on mental health ( the focus of our upcoming Rotary year ) and our own Jennifer Jones (RI President), who spoke about how she did not want empowerment of women to become the focus of her year as president, but as the year went on and she saw the effect that she was having on women in other countries, she became very proud to be a woman, a wife and also the President of RI.
Heather told us that they had a lot of sessions and workshops on membership building, and that she attended four different ones on this topic. She learned that people join Rotary for a myriad of different reasons, networking, fellowship, making a difference in other people’s lives and many more, but they overwhelmingly stay for the fellowship. She also said that the key to fellowship is to get people involved in club activities where they get to know each other better and this in turn encourages them to come out for more activities. Heather said that we need to be Joyous (the Rotary Theme for this year) and have fun, to look at where we are going, not back at where we have been.