Melvin Platt

I hope that your club is working to win the Rotary Presidential Citation. Rotary President Ian Riseley is asking all clubs to strive to achieve it. I have contended that the Rotary Citation is easier to achieve than any citation presented during the past five years. I believe also that it presents a more level playing field for small, medium-size, and large clubs than recent Presidential Citations.

If You Are Not Criticized, You May Not Be Doing Much – What a great line to remember if you are a leader breaking away from the buffalo herd! In the South, there are creatures called Blue Crabs. Let’s say you catch a bunch of Blue Crabs, and you put them in a bucket. You can walk away, leave your bucket, and you don’t have to worry about any of the crabs escaping, because when one of those crabs gets up to the top of the bucket rim, another crab pulls it back in the bucket.

Rotary clubs around the world are experimenting with club flexibility and membership types, but how does a club go about offering an alternative membership type? Before making changes, clubs should ask themselves questions like:

Why do we want to offer this new membership type?
How would our club benefit?
What membership issues do we expect it to address?

If a club wants to engage family members, then offering family memberships may be a strategy to consider.

District 5710 in Kansas has a provisional club almost entirely designed around family memberships. A parent is listed as the active Rotarian, but the annual fees cover participation for the entire family. Meetings are held on Sunday afternoons and children are invited to attend meetings, projects, etc. The club also appoints an unofficial leadership role to one of the children, which rotates between the kids over time, to help them build leadership and responsibility skills. At the start of the year, eight families were participating and interest is growing!

Would you like to enjoy a taste of French culture without traveling to France? You can do that right here in North America by attending the upcoming Rotary International Convention in Toronto, Canada, on June 24 through 27. You will rub shoulders with Rotarians from around the world at the convention. The convention schedule is filled with general sessions featuring reports by Rotary leaders and dignitaries as well as smaller breakout sessions on Rotary topics during which you can ask questions and contribute to the conversations. In addition, there will be time available when you can visit the House of Friendship where there are literally hundreds of booths publicizing club and district humanitarian projects, dispensing Rotary materials, advertising tours abroad, and selling a wide variety of products from around the world, including Rotary clothing, jewelry, logo pins, and more.

From all accounts, District Conference was a success. Attendees heard sessions on Rotary service, the Rotary Foundation, Visioning, Polio Plus, and reports on international humanitarian projects. It seemed that everyone had a favorite session. One Rotarian observed that she had not heard such a thorough explanation of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, while another person marveled at the outstanding international projects underway in the District. Still another person was persuaded to push his club to hold another visioning session this year. Attendees heard presentations from visiting Rotarians Brent Rosenthal from Columbus, OH and Elizabeth Usovicz of Kansas City as well as persuasive speakers from District 6080. Youth Exchange, RYLA, Interact clubs and Rotaract clubs were also featured. Special thanks goes to all those who led sessions and those were involved in planning and assisting at the Conference.