District to offer Rotary Leadership Insitute
The mission of RLI is to help future Club leaders with their knowledge of Rotary and to help them develop Leadership skills necessary for volunteer groups like Rotary Clubs
.
This group of AGs, Membership and Foundation REPs and other district leaders just completed D 7090's first Rotary Leadership Institute session. Please feel free to talk to them about their experience and find out how you can participate on either March 6th or April 10th sessions.
Think about your Rotary club and answer the following questions:
> Are your club leaders knowledgeable about what the world of Rotary can offer you outside your club?
> Do your leaders have enthusiasm about making your Rotary club better?
> Do they understand and have the ability to lead your Rotary club?
> Is your club involved in worthwhile and interesting service projects?
> Is their a feeling of inclusion and fellowship in your club?
> Do they conduct meetings which are interesting and have good programs?
> Do they grow and retain the membership of the club?
In the early 1990's a DG in New Jersey felt this was not happening in his district's clubs and so he started a program that has grown into the Rotary Leadership Institute RLI which has spread to over 200 of the 530 Districts that make up the Rotary world. District 7090, has joined with 2 other districts, 7070 and 6330, to form the Shining Water Division of RLI with several others district may join in the future.
You may ask if we have District Assembly and PETS why do we need RLI?
These training sessions are Job Specific, where as RLI focuses on potential leaders and not on specific Rotary positions. Many Club Presidents when attending PETS and preparing for their year as President, wish they had a better foundation in Rotary before going to PETS, that is why we have added PETS1 but it is still intense. A lot of material is given to you in a relatively short period of time without having the opportunity to develop the areas of knowledge and leadership skills.
RLI is a start. During the day you work on skills, develop an understanding of Rotary topics and find out about resources that you can work with both during and after the RLI sessions. The RLI program is broken into three Parts and each part is a day long divided into six session. Normally they are taken over two to three years but if a participant wants to they can attend sessions in other participating districts, which would involve some travel and could be completed in as little as 1 year.
District 7090 has scheduled two Part Is one on March 6th in Hamburg and the second on April 10th in the Hamilton area. Although RLI is open to everyone, we are suggesting that each club President select two potential leaders from their club's membership to participate. We are allowing every club to nominate two candidates for RLI. If more than two register from a club, we reserve the right to ask the club to relinquish a spot or spots if other clubs are unable to participate do to lack of space. We also strongly recommend that the club pays the registration fee for the members they nominate. This can be paid before or reimbursed after the nominee has attended. There is also a session on February 6 that District 7070 is running in the Toronto area. You can get information about the Toronto and our two sessions off the RLI Division website http://www.rli-shiningwaters.org/Welcome.html website.
RLI is not composed of lectures but rather different techniques including: discussion, roll playing, exercises in building solutions and much more. The topics in Part I deal with Leadership Characteristics, a session on The Rotary Foundation, Membership Retention, Rotary Beyond the club, Team Building and Service Projects. On January 9th, 2010, District RLI Faculty, who have been trained by RLI trainers, had a dress rehearsal where many of the District's: Assistant Governors, Membership Reps and Rotary Foundation Reps, participated in a Part I session, and experienced RLI. It was a full day program that included a continental breakfast, lunch and breaks. The response from all participants was enthusiastic and positive. We asked this group to participate, because they area leaders and come in contact with all of you and we would like you to ask them about their experiences, rather then just hearing about it from us.
You can get more information about RLI in general off the www.rli-shiningwaters.org site. If you have any questions ask our Discussion Leaders and the participants of
the 1-9 session or send an e-mail to richardearne@yahoo.com