District Strategic Plan News

Representatives from District Council and 30 clubs came together in April 2014 to review and tweak our District Strategic Plan. This District Newsletter series uses the results of that event to show how our District Strategic Plan may be useful at the club level. To review our Strategic Plan, http://rotary7090.org/SitePage/district-strategic-plan.  Or, you can google it, just make sure you are looking at the 2014 version.

 

Focus – To take diverse approaches to educate Rotarians about the larger world of Rotary and District Resources. There are many ways to bring the larger world of Rotary and District to your club. Most do not need to be time consuming nor take a lot of effort to put together. How about having your President use the ROTARIAN or our District Newsletter as a fun learning experience by doing a short, fast table-by-table quiz? Guaranteed you will find some members know the answers and other’s eyes will glaze over, but perhaps next month they will be up to speed also. A huge plus of these fun quizzes is the hoots and hollers. A laughing club is a prosperous one!

 

The incoming President may do a club survey while preparing for their year to help focus on projects, speakers, and show learning gaps.

 

It is easy to assume our members self-educate themselves about Rotary; however, truthfully, many Rotarians are just too busy to add one more self –directed training to their “to-do” list. Therefore, club leadership should regularly integrate relevant Rotary speakers into club programs. Here is a handy list to help organize speakers in keeping with RI’s new special observance months, starting July 1, 2105:

 

September: Basic Education and Literacy		February: Peace and Conflict Prevention/Resolution
October: Economic and Community Development		March: Water and Sanitation
December: Disease Prevention and Treatment		April: Maternal and Child Health
January: Vocational Service		May: Youth Services

Not sure, where to find a speaker who will be on target, go to www.rotary7090.org and click on the Organizational Chart on the left side. You will want to log in to view contact information.  Any of these District leaders will assist you to find a speaker about these themes. Challenge your club to use these themes as a training tool in 2015-2016. You might be surprised to find these generate new energy and new projects come from these targeted programs.

 

Rotary International has developed a terrific number of video about our focuses. In addition, many of the webinars they sponsor on an on-going basis are taped and can be downloaded for your club. https://www.rotary.org/en/learning-reference/webinars/upcoming. These are great training tools for new and seasoned Rotarians.

 

If you really want to ramp up your club’s Rotary knowledge and help engage new members and retain members, add a Training Champion to your leadership team. Our District has tools to help direct this new trainer. Enroll the person into one of the upcoming Club Leadership Training sessions in St. Catharines, ON on Saturday, April 11^th or in Niagara Falls, NY on Saturday, May 2^nd. On the other hand, how about enrolling your Champion in the Rotary Leadership Institute, there is one on Saturday, May 6^th in Niagara on the Lake. As one graduating member of the March 21^st RLI event stated in their evaluation, “There is ‘magic’ in RLI and it works! It is a commitment of three Saturdays to graduate, however it is a sound investment of your time and the club’s training dollars.

 

Helping members learn they are a part of the world’s largest service club who is doing good work everywhere certainly helps recruit new members and retain those who are already Rotarians. Rotarians sharing our common focus and goals work hard to do so much good whether locally or globally. Please help give your club the tools.