Rotary means a lot of things to different people. My preferred vision (and one which I think really appeals to younger people) is:
“Rotary is an organisation which brings together, in fellowship, leaders from business, politics, religion, not-for-profits etc to solve local problems. We do so by using our leadership and organisational skills to benefit the community. This helps us enhance and grow our skills, build the community and makes us better leaders and role models.”
It is my view that a strategy such as this is the best way of ensuring our future. So it is very disappointing when we have a classic leadership problem - the sustainability of Meals on Wheels - and we do not have a Rotary Champion putting themselves forward to solve this issue. Meals on Wheels is a key component in the quality of life for many of our older community members. It is currently dependent on organisations, such as Rotary, who are aging and are more likely (as time goes on) to be in need of Meals on Wheels than to be the deliverers of same!
Our motto for this year is: “connect and inspire”, and people are inspired by stories of problem solving. In my opinion, it is not tagging things with the Rotary symbol that inspires people; but the telling of stories of how we used our skills to solve real life problems that inspires people. If we do not create our own success stories and just live off the stories of an earlier generation, then we are just pygmies walking in the footprints of giants. We need to develop new success stories for today. Solving the sustainability issues of Meals on Wheels, would be great feather in our cap!
Following on the theme of “connect and inspire”, it is also disappointing that not only have we not connected with our own adult children and inspired them to join Rotary; we have not even been able to inspire them to fill out a form to tell us why they will not join Rotary. This is not inspiring for the future of the organisation as it currently exists. So far, we have only had 6 respondents. To be fair, the quality of these responses have been very good and we have learned valuable information for our marketing campaigns from these responses. However, it would be great to have some more.
The Presidential Elect Committee will be meeting in the next month to discuss the nomination of a new President Nominee. Currently, we do not have anybody who has put themselves forward. If you are interested in expanding your leadership skills and taking on a new challenge, please contact Russell or myself.
.jpg){kind=logo}
