Preparing to write my first entry here as President, I went back to see what I’d written as incoming President Elect. “… being equipped to take on the role of President is also about learning from other Rotarians, both long-time and recent, all of whom have considerable to offer in experience, wisdom, and perspective. I would love to hear from any of you if/when there is an issue to discuss, an idea to develop or to propose, some advice to receive, some support to be requested.” Those principles still apply – both in terms of continuous learning and in implementing the responsibilities of the President and the goals of the Passport Club.
Your 22/23 Board and I will be looking to you for your support, for your thoughts, for your participation throughout this year. Please know that we are consciously addressing issues of succession, of goals, of team building – of engagement.
Vision Exercise
The email sent to all of you today brings you up to date on the status of our Vision Exercise. Over this month we will, as a Club, collect your exciting ideas, determine which we want to focus on this year, and begin to think about how to implement them.
Our July Business Meeting (26 July, 1:00 – 3:00 pm. EST) will address normal business briefly at the outset, but subsequently be devoted to a presentation of our collected and priorized thoughts by Lars Henriksson and his team (International Visioning Facilitation Council (IVFC) Visioning Team in District 7070), a brief refresher on strategic planning, and subsequent breakout rooms where we can take one or two issues and begin to develop an implementation strategy, and then come back and discuss further.
Given the depth of thoughtful consideration and conversation that needs to go into this stage of the exercise, the length of the meeting is extended to 2 h. For our members in a time zone significantly offset from those in this District, our normal meeting time would be late at night. (Sweden, for example, is currently 6 h ahead of this District.) To facilitate attendance of our members with work schedules, the meeting is reset, for this month only, to 1:00 pm EST.
Please let me or Secretary Chris know within the next few days if you CANNOT attend the meeting.
Margaret Shibley
President Elect
Last week half way through our turn over meeting I noticed Secretary Chris had added the title ‘’president elect’’ before my name. I confess, it kind of surprised me to see it written there.
At that moment I was struck by the depth of the commitment I was once again making to Rotary.
Accepting to put yourself in the succession plan of a Rotary Club is a minimum, three year commitment as you cycle through the roles of president-elect, president, and finally past president, so it isn’t a decision to be taken lightly.
Having served in each of those positions before, for the Rotary club of Sudbury, I was fully aware of what I was signing on for, but I must confess, there have been times over the last six months that I have stopped and asked myself, ‘’ what were you thinking? ’’
Having confessed that, I want to counter balance those sentiments by also saying how excited I am to be a part of Rotary, and especially the passport club. Being in an online format opens so many amazing doors of possibility for our club, from developing a truly international membership, to becoming a leader in on-line fundraising. The opportunities will only be limited by our imagination and how big we allow ourselves to dream.
I look forward to working with you, and standing with you
David Carey
Secretary's Thoughts
Welcome to a new Rotary year.
Starting now, our Board has decided this bulletin will be published every two weeks.
The next one will be on July 17th.
The Board has decided we will not be holding regular, scheduled, separate, social, meetings.
Instead, with the Board meeting separately, the time needed in our monthly meeting for other business is reduced. That means more social time during our monthly meeting.
If this works well, it will remain. If not the Board would consider other options.
Starting in the next bulletin, we will have a section called Members Thoughts. It's an area where any members can update on activities, and perhaps give us a background on themselves. It will be varied but hopefully informative and interesting.
Stating next bulletin, we will have a section for words from our Director of Membership.
