New Rotary Year - First Thoughts!

As we're now entering a new Rotary year, we had our "handover" on Friday (Rotary changes its Principal Officers every year).  At our event (Brunel University Hamilton suite - great venue) I had the opportunity to address the gathering with some thoughts on what we might try to achieve while I hold the post of District Governor.  And here are my thoughts so that more people have a chance to at least read what I had to say:

"I’m constantly surprised by how little impact we as Rotarians make on the consciousness of the general population of the UK. By which I don’t mean that we don’t do anything for them, it’s more how unaware they are of what we do to make the world a better place and more importantly why they should come and help us do so.  

Our theme for this year is Engage Rotary, Change Lives. Take “Engage” – if we look up that word in the thesaurus we find almost 30 synonyms – words like Encounter, Attract, Join, Involve, Absorb, Engross, Retain – actually that’s not a bad set of words to use as a strategy for our Membership.  So let’s do those things – let’s use every encounter we have as Rotarians as an opportunity to explain what we do and to attract new members to Rotary and once they’ve joined let’s involve them, and absorb them into the framework of our clubs, so they’re engrossed in what we do and we retain them. 

If we do all those things we won’t have a problem with Changing Lives – we’ll change their lives and our lives for the better and we’ll all be able to change the lives of the communities impacted by our Service for the better.  And we may have less of a problem with people knowing what we do – if there’s more of us, that’s more of us to spread the word.  Sounds devastatingly simple, but I know that the reality isn’t quite like that – for a start we’ve got to get our members to Engage with the idea that that’s what we need to do.  And in some clubs that’ll be easier than others.  And it will only happen if we all use our collective will to make it so.  At our District Assembly I felt a real buzz about the place, a gathering of people who wanted to be part of making our District a better place to be a Rotarian, a more dynamic place to be a Rotarian, a more satisfying place to be a Rotarian. 

Ten years ago my club held a celebration of its silver jubilee and we made a video including remarks from founder members of the club where they stressed the importance and vitality of Rotary fellowship.  Resorting to my thesaurus again and looking up Fellowship I find words like camaraderie, partnership, solidarity, cooperation and yes, that’s what we need – a sense of shared responsibility for the well-being of our society – to do Good in the World.  And I’m not going to miss this opportunity to trumpet the cause of our Rotary Foundation – our charity.  We’ve come a long way in this District in the last few years, we have every right to be very proud of our achievements for our Foundation – we’re approaching the gold standard – the $100 a member every year, let’s keep that going, and let’s make use of it in supporting our projects.

I’d like to draw towards a close now, with a plea to all of you to help me to achieve 100% participation from the Rotarians in the District for our Pounds for Polio project which runs from Monday, yes July 1, until 24 October, World Polio Day.  Why is this important right now?  It’s important that we continue our efforts to complete the Endgame because we have had warnings again this year of what happens if we don’t finish the job.  Outbreaks in Kenya & Somalia which have led to the need to carry out emergency vaccinations of more than 1 million children should serve as a grave reminder of the ongoing need.  Yes, I know we’ve been at it for years, yes I know people are tired of the continued need, but in my view we need to adapt the words of Magnus Magnusson – We’ve started so We’ll finish.  Just to remind you, our objective is to raise £100 for each Rotarian in the District in the next 115 days, just a £1 a day each – not a lot to each of us, but capable of an immense Change in the Lives of others.

And a quick sneaky advert for District Conference 2014 – Torquay March 21^st-23^rd.  I’m very proud of the exceptional line-up of speakers we’ve already got for you - Arsenal & Scotland goalkeeping legend Bob Wilson, who’ll not only be talking about football but also his charity, the Willow Foundation which makes things happen for terminally ill young adults; transplant games medal winner Richard Burbedge and Paralympic gold medal rower Naomi Riches who’ll both be telling us what it’s like to grow up being different and to overcome those disadvantages.  And Ben Mee who’s taken a broken down zoo & built it up during a time of personal tragedy – yes it was him, not Matt Damon that Bought a Zoo.  We also have Lady Carnarvon on what it’s like living in Downton Abbey and how the temporary hospital storylines were factually based on the earlier Lady Carnarvon.  Not to mention Hudson river plane crash survivor Larry Snodgrass and Ray Burman on surviving 35 years in the police – make sure you put the date in your diary and come – better still, make sure you bring along someone from your club who’s never been to a District Conference and show them why they need to be there – after all, if it hadn’t been for District Conference I may never have joined!

I’m looking forward to this year immensely.  I know I lead a terrific bunch of people committed to improve the lives of others.  If I can help you to do that, please let me know and if I can I will. Let’s go out there and have fun Engaging Rotary & Changing Lives."