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President’s Comment – 21 Aug 16

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Thank you to all six members who have submitted their member surveys. I will contact the remaining four by email who still have to submit.

Attendance by some members has been excellent. I encourage all members to log on to our website regularly and record their attendance an learn more about Rotary.

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August is Membership Month, a time to celebrate your club, your members, and the good you do in your community and around the world! Many people join Rotary to serve others locally and globally. Rotary allows members to make a difference while promoting fellowship and international understanding.

We offer many programs that allow you to engage with fellow members and make new connections outside your club and district. Here are just a few ways to get more involved:

Youth Service recognizes the importance of empowering youth and young professionals. Read how Rotaract clubs are building stronger communities through sustainable service projects.

President’s Comment – 14 Aug 16

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This is an inspiring story that offers hope in a community that has been subjected to  extreme horrors in the recent past. Rotary does some marvellous work!

African youth construct kitchen gardens for genocide survivors

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Rotaractors take part in clean up

Rotaractors and guests clean up and create kitchen gardens in the village of Kinyinya, Rwanda.

By Peter King Oloo, a member of the Rotaract Club of Kie, Rwanda

Nearly 140 Rotaractors and guests from across the East African countries of Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya and Uganda gathered in Rwanda on 26 March to participate in the monthly cleaning exercise in Rwanda called Umuganda.

The Rotaractors, through their award-winning annual project called REACT (Rotaract East Africa Impact), had organized a project to construct kitchen gardens and raise funds for medical insurance. Both these activities were geared toward helping the community of the 1994 Rwanda genocide survivors who were resettled in Kinyinya village in Kigali.

REACT-Fast-factsThese survivors were resettled under the Peace and Hope Initiative. We sought to carry out a project with some guests that would be sustainable and enable the people at this community to feed themselves for longer term.

The community was trained with practice to construct kitchen gardens in tight spaces and to balance their diet. By the end of the project, 50 kitchen gardens had been constructed.

Miss Rwanda 2016, Miss Jolly Mutesi, joined us and implored the young girls at the center to be hard workers and make wise choices. She told stories of girls who had listened to the promises of boys in the village, and then found themselves alone once they became pregnant.

We raised 500,000 Rwandan Francs for medical insurance, enough to cover 167 individuals for a year. The project was hosted by the Rotaract Club of Kigali City and the Rotaract Club of KIE and was the fourth annual REACT project after Uganda (2013), Burundi (2014) and Kenya (2015). The 2017 leg will be held in Tanzania and its concept is in development.

President’s Comment – 7 Aug 16

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This is Membership Month

Why don’t you invite a friend to join our Club? This may be the opportunity that some of your friends have been looking for. Please view the video below it may inspire you. Let see if we can get some more members.

Video on Membership – RIP John Germ

Through the Rotary community, you can exchange ideas and build lifelong friendships with like-minded people. Take advantage of the resources and activities available through your club, district, and Rotary International to make your experience with Rotary both rewarding and fun.

How do I start?

Get the most out of your membership by participating in club projects and activities.

Here are some ideas:

  • Serve on a club committee where you can use your skills
  • Identify a need in your community and suggest a hands-on project to address it
  • Work with a youth service program sponsored by your club, such as or
  • Host a student
  • Help organize your district’s programs
  • Recommend a colleague or friend for membership in your club

 A Fresh Approach

Give your members a meaningful Rotary experience by offering them opportunities to make a positive difference and connect with others. They’ll make valuable friendships and feel good about Rotary and the work we’re doing to make the world a better place.

Find ideas to help your club take a fresh approach with these resources:

President’s Comment – 31 Jul 16

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Thank you to all those members who have completed the Member survey and recorded your attendances. It would appear that most of the Club is starting to attend online as we intended. I will record your suggestions to the Club in  a future comment so that we can all consider the ideas put forward.

I think that the article below does not apply to most Australian Rotarians as we are known for getting our hands dirty and doing a bit of manual labour to achieve our goals. We have a reputation of volunteering to run BBQ’s to raise money for our projects. I think we operate as a third class, grass roots organisation in Australia.

So much is achieved by doing it yourself and motivating those around you. Please read on:

Are you willing to be third class, and serve?

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Tiffany and baseball players

Tiffany Ervin with participants in a special needs baseball league her club sponsors.

By Tiffany Ervin, past president of the Rotary Club of Four Seasons – Hendersonville, North Carolina, USA

In the days of the American wild west, if you wanted to travel a great distance, you had to go by stagecoach and it was a very long trip. There were three different classes of passengers – first, second, and third class. The seats were all the same, but the prices were different. Here’s why…

  • First class meant you remained seated during the entire trip, no matter what happened or what conditions might be faced.
  • Second class meant you remained seated until there was a problem along the way, when you had to exit the stagecoach and walk alongside.
  • But third class passengers not only exited when there was a problem, they were also the ones who had to fix a broken wheel or even push the stagecoach along, through the mud, up the hills, no matter what came along.

So I began thinking about this when it comes to our involvement in Rotary. Let me ask you – what class ticket do you hold?

Pampered, or detached?
Too many of us hold first class tickets – we expect to be waited on and catered to – even pampered! We’re willing to ride, but not push. We just sit back and let the others do the work.

But there are also those in our organization who hold second class tickets – detached spectators who show up but don’t want to get too involved. Their name goes on the roster, they even include their membership on their resume…but that’s about it.

“Is success really remaining seated while others get out and push, or is it getting your hands and feet dirty? Is success being served or serving others?”

But thankfully, there are also a few who are willing to hold third class tickets – willing to get out and push when the going gets tough.

We tend to equate first class with privilege – exempt from doing any work. But is success really remaining seated while others get out and push, or is it getting your hands and feet dirty? Is success being served or serving others?

What it means to be third class
Third class ticket holders have a heart for service. They don’t mind working behind the scenes. They are people who have made a conscious decision to get involved or join an organization whose entire reason for existence is to change the world! They are people who are willing to get out and push!

If we just sit in our first class seat and expect everyone else to get behind and push, what will happen to Rotary? We’ll never reach our goals – to end polio, to prevent other diseases, to bring about world peace – every organization in the world already has too many first class passengers. We’re looking for a few more third class passengers!

What are you willing to do? Are you willing to be a leader instead of a spectator? Are YOU willing to be a third class passenger?

NEXT BOARD MEETING

WILL YOU BE ATTENDING THE GoToMeeting –  Wednesday 3 August at 7.30pm EST

ALL WELCOME

President’s Comment – 24 Jul 16

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ATTENDANCE

Well done to those members who have successfully registered an attendance on our website.

This is still developing and we are waiting for Cameron our IT specialist and Administration Director to write a program that will record everyone’s attendance when you log on and log off. Only attendance longer than 30 minutes in one session will count. Some of this time may be used to post on your page on the website, make comments or suggest changes that we can adopt for our Club.

The website is interactive so you may post comments and give feed back to any of the posts made on the website. This is to be encouraged and hopefully we can all learn from doing this.

You will also receive an email from me this week with essentially the same message as appears here on the website. I want to encourage members to attend more regularly.

MEMBER SURVEY

I will also post a survey on the website in the drop down menu under Member Login, that I want all members to complete in the next 2 weeks please. We require some personal details  and it will also relate to what you want to achieve in the Club and what goals we should be setting for ourselves.

CLUB GOALS

Each year the Club executive set goals for the Club to achieve during the year. I am suggesting some goals listed below that I consider we should achieve in our first year of operation as an E-Club:

  • Increase our membership from 10 members to 15 members. The more members we have the easier it will be for the Club to function as the roles and tasks can be shared more. Each one of us should make a real attempt to introduce a new member this year.
  • Contribute to the Rotary Foundation a total of US$1000 both from the members and the Club.  We need to generate some income for  us to achieve this.
  • Support at  least two of  our overseas projects with funding and perhaps volunteers.
  • Develop our website to better reflect the requirements of Rotary International and improve our communication and fellowship as a Club.
  • A least one of our Club  working as a District Officer – We already have Lauren Slater who has taken on the role of District Youth Director.
  • A least one of our Club be a member of a Rotary Fellowship. I am a member of the International Fellowship of Skiing Rotarians (ISFR) and Carolyn and I will be attending the week in Jackson Hole, Wyoming USA during February 2017.

Please let us all know your thoughts on these by recording your comments on the website.

If we achieve these goals and any others that you might suggest our Club will be well on the way to becoming an effect E-Club and part of the wider community of Rotary.

President’s Comment – 17 Jul 16

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JULY IS LITERACY MONTH

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Welcome to our website. Every month Rotary International has a different theme to bring this to the attention of all Rotarians. July is Literacy Month, an area that has been the basis of many Club projects.

It may be as little as Rotarians conducting a project to offer their services to schools in their own community to children who are having difficulties in reading and just listening to and correcting their reading skills.

Other projects might be like Past Rotary International President Bill Boyd’s dictionary  project to supply primary school children in New Zealand with their first dictionary.

Worldwide, 67 million children have no access to education, and more than 775 million people over the age of 15 are illiterate. Rotary Club’s support educational projects that provide technology, teacher training, vocational training teams, student meal programs, and low-cost textbooks to communities. Rotary’s goal is to strengthen the capacity of communities to support basic education and literacy, reduce gender disparity in education, and increase adult literacy.

Video on providing Computer tablets to remote school in Fiji.

All Rotary Clubs are encouraged to consider a literacy project during the month of July. Look at this Rotary Resource that explains some strategies.

Basic Education & Literacy Project Strategies – 618en