Guest Speaker Shannon Quickfall

Shannon presented a new program for Public Relations being developed by District 5040 which will be used to coordinate Rotary's interaction with the Media. It is hoped that a unified message from Rotary, which they have called the "Culture of Hope", will get our "good news" messages out to the public and help us maintain visibility in our communities. It is felt that internationally and locally, Rotary is a window to the world and that good media representation is absolutely necessary. We need to get our message out there. The Vancouver clubs will be used in a pilot project to fine tune the parameters of the program. Some 96 media persons and institutions have been contacted and they will be the recipients of news of events and projects being developed by the individual clubs. Each club will be asked to provide a quarterly report of their important events and projects both local and international which will be forwarded to the media. Websites have been developed to assist the clubs â¿¢ see www.rotaryvancouver.com. Further information about individual responsibilities and expectations of each club will be forthcoming. Our members had many questions, but especially wanted to know if the individual clubs would still be able to contact local media, in our case, the Courier, with news of interest to our local community. We were assured that this was still the case. Shannon is a member of the Rotary Club of Vancouver.