Convention Final Day

On Day 1, there were tens of thousands of us in the main Convention Hall.  Probably set up to seat 25,000 people it was clear that barely a couple of thousand made it to the first plenary session of the day.  Anyone one tells you this wasn’t achieved without self-sacrifice is being economical with the truth.  Up at 6:45 every day, on the road by 8:00 – and this is supposed to be a holiday?  Fortunately for those of us who did make the effort, it was rewarding.

Surprisingly, for those of us who have been less than enthusiastic about Conference business sessions in the past, the elections and voting held some interest.  Interest from two perspectives – the general and the personal. General from the viewpoint of the number of clubs represented being around 11% of our worldwide chartered clubs, just a little more than the 10% needed for a quorum – found this interesting in the context of the recent RIBI conference where almost 40% of clubs were represented and also in the response rates for both the RIBI quinquennial review (just over 10%) and our own District Conference survey (13%).  Personal from the aspect that, having participated in the official election of RI President-Nominee Ron Burton, who will be RI Presidemt when I am District Governor, I then found myself voting in the election of all the RI Officers for 2013-2014 – yes dear readers, I voted for myself – now that’s a first!

President Nominee Ron gave a thoughtful speech with passion for the things at the core of Rotary for the future, implementation of the Strategy and support for The Rotary Foundation.

Wilf Wilkinson, past RI President and incoming chair of the Rotary Foundation set out his key hopes for the coming Rotary year – his ambition for Polio "interruption" in 2012-13 (I think he meant significant progress in Pakistan, Afghanistan & Nigeria and no recurrence in re-infected countries) – good planning for the introduction of Future Vision, support for incoming RI President Sakuji Tanaka’s theme of Peace Through Service, and increasing the sum raised through the Every Rotarian Every Year programme (individual $100 donations) to $US 120 million)

John Hewko, RI’s General Secretary/CEO took us through his vision of how the Secretariat will support the Strategy by:

a) making sure we get our due share of the credit for the Eradication of Polio,

b) implementing the Strategic Plan and making Future Vision a reality,

c) defining our Value Of Service collectively – in financial terms, in man-hours to better show the total contribution we make to society,

d) to make Membership more appealing & relevant to younger people,

e) significantly improving our Global Impact & Recognition

He said that Vision, Intelligent Planning & Hard Work are needed to meet the challenges of our second century but that he didn’t doubt that Rotarians had the collective tenacity to do so.

In a breakout session specifically for District Governors for 2013-2104, RI President-Nominee Ron Burton & his wife Jetta talked to the 100 or so of us.   

He gave us his views on what our priorities needed to be for our collective year:

a)      Make sure that the need for membership is institutionalised in our clubs-we should each  sponsor a new member during the year personally and get each of our Presidents to do the same

b)      Make a personal contribution to Foundation, make the class of 2013-14 the first class of District Governors to do so and get each of our President to do the same

Our job is to inspire others!  He also promised us several times “ You’re gonna lurrve the theme”.