This Tuesday we were glad to hear from our new District 5370 Governor, Jim Ferguson. Jim has been a Rotarian since 2005. He currently lives in Stony Plain, but due to the nature of his work, has been a member of E-Club of Canada since 2012. This means that he is also a bit of a techie and his presentation to our club on Zoom was done in the traditional e-club fashion of a pre-recorded video.
Jim presented the Rotary priorities for this year, in keeping with the Rotary International President Holger Knack’s theme of Rotary Opens Opportunities.
He encouraged strategic planning based on what we would like our club to look like five years from now. This includes increasing our impact in our community and expanding our reach by bringing in younger members. We can partially do this by increasing our Rotaract to Rotary crossover rate, which is currently only about five percent. Enhancing member participation through a variety of community volunteer, fundraising and social group activities and by increasing our ability to adapt to a changing world.
He said that the challenges of this year have forced Rotary to expand into areas that we may never have gone otherwise. He also asked us to keep in mind that our local Rotary districts have partnered with Inclusion Alberta to provide employment opportunities for people with developmental disabilities.
Jim commended our club on it’s wide variety of activities, fundraising opportunities and community support, and in particular how well we have adapted to the shift towards the use of technology in fundraising, hosting of meetings and other activities on-line The current restrictions on group meetings have forced each of us to think outside the box and come up with solutions to ensure that Rotary can continue to open opportunities for all.