My last post said I was visiting a nearby club but unfortunately I was the only one who arrived. The members had all gone to a special event somewhere else. I did call the club secretary in the morning but I guess he’s away on holiday as I got no reply. I was going to phone others in the club directory in the afternoon but was busy with work. Still, no trouble, the short walk did me no harm.

So, club visit number 6 was actually 30 minutes away in Strood. I grew up in the Medway towns so it was almost like going home. One of the club members is Dennis Spiller, he’s last years District Governor and as I’ve mentioned before was one of my youth leaders when I was a teenager. He hadn’t seen me for years before I joined Rotary and now I keep turning up like a bad penny 🙂

So, with a past district governor in their club, I was expecting good things. In many ways, things were very good, but I left feeling very, very frightened. Me, writing negatively about Rotary? Surely not I hear you cry! Well, yes, if being frightened is negative for you then this will be negative. However, being frightened can also be a force for change, a positive thing, and I’m going to be concious from now on of doing things to prevent my club getting into the current position of Strood.

To begin with, this was the smallest meeting I’ve been too, just 13 people including me. On the plus side this meant I could speak in more detail to everyone so it was still worth going. There were also several people still on holiday (and one member had landed in the UK at 4am in the morning so the members dedication cannot be faulted).

They were proactively planning their version of ‘Do Good Things’, in particular organising chestnuts to be roasted on a stand at the nearby Dickens festival. They raise a lot of money through that and collecting with buckets at the nearby Morrisons. Bucket collecting is something we’ve yet to investigate but clearly effective if you’re in the right place.

All good so far, so why was I frightened? They formed just over 30 years ago and from what I can tell were exactly like us. I can see myself in their position in 30 years time. A club membership who’s average age is in the late 60’s. They have 21 members according to the directory and taking into account illness and holidays their attendance when I there must have been 90%. So why so few in the club?

In fact, they know their age balance is wrong and are working on fixing it. A few years ago a young teacher joined. This year he recruited another 30 year old professional into the club. The club are battling to find the younger people that can join and continue the good things their club is already doing. I’m frightened because if we are not careful our club will be in exactly the same position in 30 years time, or worse, we wont realise it at the time.

They have just moved to a new venue which will give them more space for members to meet, their past venue was described as ‘cosy’ with 16 present. I didn’t find out their growth goals but I hope they’re aiming to be 30 members or more within 12 months.

I’ve written, lots!, but somewhere along the line I’m sure I’ve mentioned how Rotary appears to be a very good infrastructure for ‘Doing Good Things’. Above each club is the Rotary District. Each District reports to RIBI, Rotary International in Britain and Ireland. RIBI reports to Rotary International. The system is a classic heirachy, rules come down from above and should be implemented. Feedback and ideas come from the ground up and will re-shape the rules from time to time.

Our club’s District is 1120, and the structure is open that even a new Rotarian like me can turn up to the quarterly district meeting to find out whats going on and give an opinion. As you’ve probably guessed I have plenty of opinions! I went to the district evening meeting last month where most clubs were represented, giving a room full of somewhere near 100 people. The structure to handle that number of people was such that most things had already been discussed in separate sub committees and the meeting was essentially a forum for these to report their status and seek approval to do new things or make significant changes to procedures, as well as answer questions from anyone present.

I learn’t two things:

1) That there’s a fine line between; giving a large group of people information as a basis to vote upon, and them all understanding information in order to vote the way they mean. This is especially true when there were more than a couple of Rotarians with a hearing aid or two…

2) This (Rotary at District level) is an organisation that actively looks to improve things and it not, in principle, frightened of change.

The biggest example of this was a brief discussion on the organisation of the District Conference. It has been organised 2 years in advance (it happens each year but takes 2 years to plan) but the suggestion was made it’s organised further in advance by a new sub committee. The reason being there are so few conference venues that can take over a 1,000 people in a single weekend event. Next week I go to this years District Conference being held in Eastbourne, a town not in our district! I booked ‘late’ by Rotary standards, which meant I haven’t got a place at the formal dinner – 1,150 people booked before me and I’ve since found out that some clubs choose to go to local restaurants so there will be a lot of people there. Next year, or maybe the year after – I forget now, the conference will be in Brighton at a large hotel with more space. You don’t have to stay in the hotel but if you can. It’s 350 or so for the weekend with accommodation. Some people in the room took this as you HAD to stay at that hotel in order to go to the conference – out of the budget of many, therefore voted against brighton for the following year and said they’d rather go back to Eastbourne. The idea of planning 5 years in advance seemed to get pushed aside in the end.

For me this meeting also highlighted the pleasure of fellowship. I was on a table with a retired paper salesman. While talking the conversation came around to youth clubs and my involvement with the Air Training Corps (I’m a Civilian Instructor at 1242 Faversham Squadron). It turns out this retired paper salesman was a Cadet in the Air Training Corps in the first few months of it’s formation in 1941. He left to join the air force and flew Mosquito’s over northern france amongst other things. I am constantly amazed by the people I’m meeting through Rotary. I don’t think I should be amazed, after all there were a lot of pilots, and a lot of people have done a lot of different things. I think the difference is I’m taking the time to speak to more people and therefore finding things I’d never have known about before.

Anyway, back onto the topic of district, outside of the meetings I’ve seen lots of email on different subjects continuously developing things. There seems a growing emphasis on recruitment and ‘the missing generation’, Rotarians between the age of 25 – 50. No doubt this was the impetus to our club being formed. At 32 I’m clearly in the missing generation referred to. I’m curious to find out more about what this means (I’ve started asking for the membership statistics) and the history that’s led to this. At the moment I’ve no idea if Rotary is growing or shrinking in size. It’s reassuring to see that at a District and higher level these details are being worked on, so I can concentrate on my roll within the club. It’s also nice that, so far at least, everyone I’ve emailed a question to has been very helpful. I get the feeling that if I emailed the R.I. President for this year, D.K.Lee, I’d get a personal response.

Thursday the 2nd October. For some reason I had a spare evening in the week. Best of all Rhonda said I could visit another Rotary club so a quick flick through the district directory and I find the Rotary Club of Chestfield meet on Thursday’s, 7.15 for 7.30. A quick phone call to Hilary who I met when she visited our club – “Hi, is your club meeting tonight and do you think it’s a problem if I come along”. No, come along, we’re meeting at 7.30 for 8.00. Still, at this point I hadn’t realised my mistake!

So, I arrive early ish, meet some people (names forgotten already!) and get myself a drink. I was surprised to see Ruth from our club also there. Then, Jim from our club arrived. “Hello Jim, what brings you along tonight”, cue interesting story of how in his younger years he’d worked in Africa developing agriculture and that prompted his interest in tonights speaker. Tonights speaker? David Mann, speaking on his recent visit to Tanzania and the fund raising for a school that’s been carried out. At this point, I still didn’t realise my mistake.

Then, Jarle, Diane and Lucy arrived. Lucy said “I didn’t know you were coming, you weren’t on the list”. No, I phoned earlier. I had the evening free and this is an evening club so I’ve come along. Then I was told my mistake. Chestfield is a morning club like ours. This was a special evening for the special presentation, held only once a quarter. It just so happened I’d mis-read the directory but the meeting was happening anyway. I was also put in my place for not remembering that this has been in the events folder for the last month. Maybe that was the subconscious prompt that made me find Chestfield in the directory. Anyway – a fortunate mistake on my part! Two things I learn’t from the visit:

1) It really is amazing what one person can achieve when they get on with it. David, two years ago, would never have dreamed of going to Tanzania. He’d never have dreamed he’d raise over 15,000 to build a school following a meeting with a local bishop in Tanzania who was visiting Canterbury Cathederal. As David quipped, there’s no such thing as a free drink so the champagne reception the cathederal hosted is being well repaid! As the fund raising continues to develop he’s been able to call on rotary contacts to formalise things – at the moment it’s not a registered charity so can’t claim gift aid. When he visited he found a need for sanitary towels which he has been promised in the UK but needs to ship them to a specific area. Rotary is finding and providing contacts with knowledge of shipping to make this good thing happen.

2) The president, Andrew, is a farmer and was clearly showing signs of exhaustion from a busy harvest. Speaking to him about the ‘credit crunch’ he confirmed my thoughts that credit has little impact on farming. The fact his grain sells for a third less this year compared to last is all due to how the weather has been around the world. Last year several countries had a poor harvest so grain prices increased. This year the UK harvest hasn’t been so good but most other countries did well. Therefore more grain on the international market means lower prices per tonne. He also commented on storage being expensive – the grain has to be chilled and have a low moisture content to store well and this requires energy input. The longer it’s kept, the more it costs to keep. Rotary continues to be an education.

This is a very fast written post. I’ll correct the spelling later (or maybe leave it here on the pretense that it’s now part of history) but now Rhonda has said I can visit another rotary meeting, this time a little closer to home. 7 minutes to walk there – plenty of time.