Post inaugeration and I was keen to see our club start to do things. There were a couple of things going on but all on a very small scale by what I felt our club was capable of. I was keen to see action, I wanted to volunteer my time and skills (assuming I have some of use to the club) but needed someone else to come up with the cause. Then, at the end of one of the Morning meetings Jarle asked me if I’d take on the job of “Chair of Service Projects”. First response: What’s that?
The club is organised for different people to take on different roles to ensure the club runs smoothly.
The club President (Jarle for our first year) runs the meetings and acts as our public face
The President Elect (Karen) will be next years president. Karen is also Chair of the Public Relations committee.
All the functions needed to run a club have a person responsible for managing that area. Without writing hundreds of words, we also have members in the roles of Secretary, Treasurer and Membership. These members also form the club “Board”. I’ve oversimplified here a little, so forgive me for not mentioning every member in every role.
The role of “Service Projects” within the club is to oversea the activities the club is involved in. As a Committee it’s the largest within the club – involving 10 members from our 28 member total after inauguration. As chairperson I would have to run those committee meetings and report to the Board. The committee includes people overseeing our clubs activities within the “Avenues of Service”, that is International, Community and Youth (the forth Avenue is Club Service).
I had to borrow Jarle’s blue book, kind of like an instruction manual of how Rotary works to read about what Service Projects was. Before saying yes I wanted to know I’d be capable and that it would fit alongside other things I do. Having read that, I was happy to say yes – at last I could start feeling useful!
There was good news and bad news in this.
Good news: The board had decided that this committee needed a Deputy to assist in it’s running and Lucy was being asked if she’d like to take this role on. Both of us would report to the board.
Bad News: I had become responsible for organising a Fun Day. That was all I knew, my first fear was that we had to organise everything, including publicity,and it was less than a month away.
Now I had the job, I had to figure out how to do it. Fellowship, a word so often mentioned through Rotary, seemed to be the key…