Mark's ReMarks 24

Wed 23 March

I have just returned from conference full of renewed enthusiasm, having been inspired by some of the brilliant speakers and presentations. Well done to Rotary club of Eltham for organizing such a first class event.

The conference will be more fully reported elsewhere in the bulletin so I won't report in detail here, but I will mention a couple of things that I particularly noted. At the Presidents breakfast we were addressed by the  R.I. President's Representative Past District Governor Bernie Rodgers. He is a very highly regarded Rotarian and a very powerful orator who is able to get straight to the point but flesh out his points with witty stories. He spoke about why he first joined rotary. He said what motivated him to join was not the opportunity to fight polio (even though he had polio as a child) It wasn't the chance to give back to the community. It wasn't even the chance to network with his peers or the opportunity for self-development .

 It was because he was invited by a mate and he witnessed a bunch of people enjoying themselves and each other's company whilst looking to do good things. As Bernie put it - He thought "These seem like a good bunch of people, I think Id like to give this a go ."  It wasn't until some time later that he became committed to the Rotary cause.

So he asked the assembled presidents. What does a visitor see when they come to your club?

Success in Membership boils down to some pretty basic fundamentals after all.

Bernie also gave the closing address ( I think you will have gathered that I was pretty impressed by this fellow)  It was a very powerful address designed to encourage us to keep Rotary strong. He touched on the projects of Rotary and how we need to be constantly addressing membership retention.

His statement that sticks in my mind is " The world cannot afford to lose Rotary"

A number of members commented to me how positive they felt after last week's meeting. I very much appreciated the feedback. Congratulations to Steve on his presentation of his insights gained from the President Elects training session.

Incoming District Governor David Anderson at conference talked about a district project to facilitate us having a vision for our club.  

What do we want it to look like in one three or five years? I have asked him to follow up on that when it is established, but for now I would like to concentrate on what we can do right now to make our club more vibrant.

John Mackey made the comment last week that the thing that really set our club up in the first place was the response to the local bushfires in the late sixties. People wanted to join the club to help the affected community. In my time in the club the project that got our club members really involved was the building of the home for homeless youth. An ambitious but achievable project.

We have many wonderful projects now but I believe nothing beats having an important local project where we become directly involved. I think it should satisfy the following criteria :

-Directed to helping the local community in a very significant way.

-Be of such obvious benefit that everyone would be keen to be involved, even join the club to be a part  of it   

-Be a long term project or a shorter project that could be repeated every year or several times a year.

-Would promote Rotary to the community.

Examples are - Diamond Creek and Eltham Clubs run a town fair Rosanna Club runs farmers market that brings them significant ongoing revenue.

I'm not necessarily suggesting we copy those ideas but I believe we should look for a project to satisfy these criteria.

Cheers  Pres. Mark