You might get the feeling that my involvement in Rotary is a lot of meetings. That might be true, but think only in the good sense of meetings. That is, the good thing of meeting people, talking and learning, rather than boring meetings that drone on forever with no aim.

Meeting Steve Auty, another new Rotarian, at the Pilgrims Hospice was another huge learning experience for me. Firstly, let me tell you what Pilgrims is and what it does. The hospice movement steps in once the NHS step out. When you have a terminal disease and you can no longer be treated, the hospice movement will help you and your family cope with that news and make sure the last stage of your life is the best it can be. As Steve said to me, as a society we rarely speak of what happens when you know you’re going to die and we should probably speak to each other more about it. While some of us will die suddenly, for others there will be a period where a doctor runs some tests and tells us there is little that modern medicine can do for us. If that’s said to you, what will you do?

The hospice movement is entirely funded by charitable donations. They will be there with specialist staff to help not only you come to terms with things, including managing treatment that can ease suffering through to the end of your life, but the hospice movement will be there for your family too. Steve explained to me that many people view the hospice movement as somewhere you go to die, but in reality only 40% of … i don’t think patient is the right word but it will do for now, only 40% of patients die in the hospice. Many make a decision they would prefer to die at home and the hospice will do everything they can to allow people to stay at home instead of in the hospice itself. While the number of volunteers at the hospice outweigh paid staff by a huge amount, some staff need qualifications and resources cost money. The hospice needs around 8 million pounds a year to run. This funding allows them to care for around 4,000 people in the final stages of life, out of around 6,000 people that deserve their care and attention in the area Pilgrims Hospice covers.

Please read this with the notation that I’ve typed these figures from memory, if they’re grossly wrong I’ll correct them but I’m sure they’re near enough. Pilgrims would very much like to expand their service to look after all the 6,000 people in East Kent and they are working hard towards growing their fund raising base to provide this.

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve visited a lot of places through my business. I’ve seen large offices and small offices, offices for designers with no expence spared and offices for workshops with sawdust or machine oil on every surface. Visiting Pilgrims I felt straight away that every penny donated to them goes to the cause and not to the office furnishings! Part of Steve’s office was occupied by a folding bed. When I asked about it he said it had been donated by someone, along with another pile of things in another corner. His office was used for storing lots of donations, if the space was needed it was used. Steve is the Chief Executive of Pilgrims Hospice and his coffee table, chairs, desk and filing cabinets looked like they’d seen service since the 1970’s. That’s not to say there was anything wrong with the furnishings, they were all fully functional. If anything it made me appreciate even more how this charity is focused directly on it’s cause and that niceties like matching furniture really aren’t important. I can say with 100% confidence this is a cause worth supporting and definitely within the ethos of “Do Good Things”.

But what to do? Well, another new Rotarian, Diane, already has that in hand. She’s organising a summer ball to take place next May in order to raise funds for Pilgrims. Pilgrims haven’t had a summer ball before. Diane’s original target was to raise 40,000, although that’s since been changed to 50,000 because in her words “I’ve been offered a better venue than I thought I could get”.

Wow! To me those figures sound huge but the more I get to know Diane the more I just know it’s going to happen.

So, two good causes, presentation day next – how we presented it and how it all went.

Oh, I almost forgot, I spent some time with Steve talking about his past as well. He made the rank of Commodore in the Navy (that’s very, very senior officer!) and told me a couple of great stories of his time in the forces. There’s some amazing experience and knowledge in our Rotary club, the more I meet with people, the more I’m glad I joined.

One of our members (Craig) was working as a teacher in an organisation called “Playing for Success” which brought them to the clubs attention. Playing for Success is a scheme part funded by the Education authority locally, part funded by a special national education fund and part funded by a sports club. Why the sports club? They provide the venue and their superstar players.

The theory goes that children can be motivated to learn things outside of school within a sports environment. The program takes 14 children each evening (56 children per 4 day week) from different schools for one term. They use a session around 2 hours long to do activities with the children that will help develop their confidence and attitude to learning. Being at the sports club means the children get to meet professional sportsmen and women and that is woven into the course as an integral part of the motivation (professional sportsmen and women are always motivated people to have reached that level).

I went to see Craig on a Thursday afternoon to find out what Playing for Success Kent is and what their goals are. They run sessions at the Kent County Cricket ground. I wanted to find out if there’s any way we (as a Rotary Club) can “Do Good Things” in a focused way. Talking with Craig was interesting in itself. Craig is from Zimbabwe but had been forced to leave due to the current political troubles there. The school he was working at had a falling student roll as farms closed and people moved away so he too had to leave with his wife. He hopes to go back one day, having seen how good a teacher he is the selfish part of me would rather he stays teaching in the UK. Still, for the time being he’s teaching the children at Playing for Success and the benefits of the program are instantly visible. Seeing work of past groups and the excitement generated by meeting different cricket stars, the way he handled and motivated this group, it’s easy to understand why the scheme is in such demand. As they are outside of the national curriculum they can focus very much on those hidden skills of confidence and positive mental attitude. These are the things that you can’t measure but intrinsically know are important.

At first glance you’d think Playing for Success has everything it needs. Great venue, all the IT equipment necessary to deliver the course. Great teachers and volunteer mentors (each class has 1 teacher and 3 volunteer mentors). The organisation is itself naturally motivated to deliver this training to as many young people as it can and to increase the use of the facility they’ve been running courses outside of school term time. For these courses they have to charge which means they don’t get to choose the children that will most benefit from the course. One of our Rotarians suggested that if we raise funds to pay for the additional course then the additional spaces can be directed via the local Education Authority towards the children that would normally be targeted. This would definitely fall within the ethos of “Do Good Things” and as I write is still being investigated as an opportunity our club can work on.

After meeting Craig I next had to learn about Pilgrims Hospice, more reading here!

Club Assembly is when the club presents to itself it’s goals and ambitions for the forthcoming year.

Sounds easy. Probably is if you’ve done it before – I on the other hand had only recently joined Rotary and still hadn’t quite organised to my satisfaction the plans for the next month let alone the next year!

Initially, I said to Jarle that I’d need at least 15 minutes to present the parts from Service Projects. That was a gross underestimate on my part – in the end it needed 27 minutes. So what did we do and why?

I’m an objective driven person. I really need to know what the aims are in order to work towards them. Rotary has aims, I copied them on this blog earlier, but they are not exactly easy to digest or summarise. When you read them closely, you realise that every word has it’s reason for being there. Still, I’ve found them awful tough to learn and integrate in my mind. I decided that before I could present my committee’s objectives, I needed to present the object of rotary in a way that everyone would instantly know and understand. Only then could I go onto to how in the first year we can achieve that. I worked out that I could put across the Object of Rotary in just 3 words. Sure, they wouldn’t carry the minute detail of how Rotary can achieve things, but it would be enough that every new Rotarian around the table could use, remember, and apply. Here it is, my Object of Rotary in 3 words:

Do Good Things

Having an aim is one thing, but we need to follow it up with actions. There were already two causes others in the club had begun work on. I needed to find out very quickly what those causes were beyond just their name so that I could stand and present them as a worthy “Good Thing”. The first was Pilgrims Hospice, the second was Playing for Success. I went to visit them both, and if you want to find out what I found then you can read on once more.