I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our members a happy and joyous holiday season. As we move into 2024, we have many exciting things happening within the District. First of all, we continue to move along with our Stigma Free initiative. We held our third panel discussion in our series at Bergen New Bridge Medical Center. The District is working to break the stigma that surrounds mental health. Our goal is to help people find the places that can treat their behavioral health issues and provide them information as to where they can turn to seek help.
I want to thank Dan Fitzpatrick and the Fort Lee Club for arranging our first panel discussion on anxiety and depression for seniors in Fort Lee. We are also going to branch out into schools trying to help with the rising adolescent behavioral health crisis. If your club would like to learn more about this and work toward arranging one of these informative sessions in a school in your community, watch for a flyer that I will be sending via Clubrunner to everyone.
As I travel through the District, I’m still amazed at all the great things our clubs are doing in our community. As many of you know, we have hired a marketing firm to help promote our clubs and increase membership. We will be holding a seminar where the marketing firm will review the tools they have created and how best to use them sometime in late January. The marketing firm has developed a lot of content for our clubs to use in print and for social media.
Our District has currently dropped to under 1000 members and Rotary International wants us to have over 1200 members. We have rolled out our “Grow District 7490” Plan. I hope that this will serve as an early holiday gift for our clubs
I’m happy to report that our current Gift of Life child Jess from the Philippines is doing well after her surgery and has one more follow-up visit. She and her mom will be flying out on the 23rd just in time to celebrate Christmas at home. I want to thank our Gift of Life Committee for all the great work they do and a big thank you to our Paramus club President Jean Jadevaia for stepping up to be the host family on such short notice.
As we enter the holiday season, I thank and encourage our clubs to continue to help the underserved in our communities. I know that “Service Above Self” is alive and well in our District, but in these uncertain times more than ever Rotarians who are people of action need to rise up and make a difference in the world we live in.
Yours in Rotary Service,
John Cosgrove
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