Greetings 5170 Century Builders,
We met Tom Schmitz, President Elect of Oakland #3 and his wife Mary
as we were running to the first meeting this morning and we hope they
did not feel we were rude as we were trying to get to the meeting as
quickly as possible.
The meetings started with Glenn Estess, President RI, 2004-2005, as
the first speaker at the International Institute.
He talked about his goals.
1. Polio Eradication – We are at the point of being 99% done.
This is great but that last 1% is a very difficult and important piece
since if we do not take care of it, it will come back with a vengeance.
2. Membership Retention - is as important as membership recruitment.
Glenn asked us to find out why people joined Rotary. What was the expectation
that was not met for those who are leaving? We must find that out and
do our utmost to stop the loosing all of those wonderful members that
we have recruited.
3. Continuity – There are going to be 4 Task Forces that have
had their beginnings before and will continue into 2005-2006
a. Family of Rotary Task Force
b. Literacy Task Force
c. Health concerns Task Force
d. Water Issues Task Force
4. Public Relations – Public Awareness – People in the
street do not know about Rotary.
a. It is the responsibility of Every Rotarian to tell people about what
we know and what we are doing.
b. Tell people what we are doing, do not keep the light under the basket.
5. Celebrate Rotary – Reflect on the past but most importantly
we must focus on the future. There is just as much to be done as there
ever was.
Then we had that wonderful open forum where people from the audience
were asking questions of Glenn.
The next session was the reporting out by the group leaders of all
the groups that met yesterday:
1. The Lend a Hand success stories,
2. Spirit of Rotary and Rotary World Peace Scholars
3. Council of Legislation,
4. Vocational service,
5. New Model for Rotary Clubs Pilot Program
6. Membership Development and Retention – Success Stories
7. Rejuvenation of Rotary Moving Forward
8. Ethics in Business
After all of that we hade a coffee break and then we came right back
in and we heard a presentation by Jim Lacy who is the Head of the Rotary
Foundation. This too was followed by an open forum which brought out
a lot of interesting issues which we will get to hear more about later.
Cindy and I took a little break in the morning and we went to the House
of Friendship and we ran into Yaovi who happens to be the District Governor
of several countries. One of his countries is Rwanda and as some of
you know I have an interest in us doing something in Rwanda especially
since they suffered a Holocaust around 10 years ago.
This was followed by another one of those wonderful Fellowship Lunches.
In both of these lunches there
were no speeches and fellowship was the concentration of the activity
at lunch. At our table we were fortunate enough to sit next to Raja
Saboo, Past President of RI, who said such interesting things like the
importance of one’s involvement in Rotary is Sincerity and Humility.
We also had Edie Blender who is in charge of the New Models Club Pilot
Program who had some interesting comments about some of the New Models
clubs. I was excited to hear what he had to say about one of those clubs,
the Cupertino Club. I look forward to share some of our conversation
when I get back.
We returned to the last session of the Institute to get a wonderful
early overview of what Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammer will want to do when
he occupies the Office of the President of Rotary International in 2005-2006.
Arlene Greenberg our District governor for 2005-2006 will have a very
interesting year as the first District Governor of District 5170 in
the second century of Rotary. The excitement and successes of Rotary
will continue.
Jonathan Majiyagbe closed out the Institute with congratulations for
everyone. We left and had fun going around looking at all of the booths
in the House of Friendship.
We had dinner early in the House of Friendship and we saw Steve Andrews,
President Elect of Cupertino and his wife Suzi as we left. We had a
pleasant talk with them and their touring friends after which we retired
to the room.
Saying goodbye from Osaka, Japan.
Until we see you on the web site tomorrow,
Ron and Cindy
