NEWS REPORT FROM THE ROTARY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN HAMBURG THIS YEAR
By Bernie St. Louis
Penny and I attended this year's Conference In Hamburg Germany. About 25,000 Rotarians were there representing 3506 Clubs and 170 countries. The City is beautiful and the German hospitality was outstanding everywhere. If you stopped to look at the street name signs or glance at your map, someone would immediately offer assistance.
Our District arranged for a meet and greet evening cocktail hour at a downtown Hamburg location for our District Club members and guests who attended the Conference. An optional dinner afterwards was arranged.
Penny and I met most of the members of the Rotary Club of Hamburg at a Host Hospitality evening. One of their District fundraiser programs is "Happy Socks" featuring the "Best of Friends" 2019 Presidential theme.
Check it out! http://www.wilsonandbow.com/2019-rotary-7090-theme-sock
ROTARY PARTNERSHIP WITH TOAST MASTERS INTERNATIONAL
An exciting new partnership was announced at the Convention between two powerful world organizations - Rotary International of Evanston Illinois and Toastmasters International of Englewood Colorado. A curriculum and manuals will be jointly developed to aid in developing future leaders.
Toastmasters objectives are clearer communication, improved leadership, enhanced teamwork, effective meetings, increased productivity, and positive mentoring. We both build leaders. The similarities between our organizations makes this a brilliant partnership.
|
ELEMENT
|
ROTARY
|
TOASTMASTERS
|
|
Year Founded
|
1905
|
1924
|
|
Number of Members
|
1,200,000
|
357,000
|
|
Number of Countries
|
200
|
143
|
|
Number of Clubs
|
33,000 (1)
|
16,600
|
(1) Toastmasters has Corporate Clubs which are very large and include organizations such as The Boeing Company, Bank of America, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Google, IBM, Amazon, Apple & AT&T.
(Please read the 'President's Message’ in this month's 'The Rotarian' magazine, August 2019). Mark Maloney is "asking every club to form an active membership committee. I am encouraging Rotarians and Rotaractors to grow Rotary."
We have a new tool to attract more Rotaractors and build leadership life skills!
PRESIDENT'S WHATSAPP GROUP
Great suggestion. Connect the District Presidents in a WHATSAPP group. Build District strength by connecting Club Presidents outside of the Districts President's Meetings.
THE CLUB FLEXIBILITY MODEL
There have been many changes in Rotary in the past three years with flexibility model of meetings and attendance which was adopted in 2017. This hasn't worked for all Clubs. Suggestions to tighten up on the flexibility model were soundly rejected: “Engaging in service and in fellowship is more important than attending meetings and eating a meal together”.
GROWTH THROUGH ROTARACT
There was an emphasis put on attracting young professionals (ROTARACT). Building a diverse integrated organization will have many challenges. The Club flexibility rule changes will assist Clubs in designing models that work for them.
ROTARY INTERNATIONAL U.S. 501 (CHARITY) STATUS
Rotary International, not just the Foundation, is a U.S. 501 © which allows RI to apply for many grants and partnerships that it could not before. While this move will not affect individual clubs, it will assist R.I. being more effective.
DUES
International Dues will increase by one dollar for the next 3 years commencing in the 2020-2021. The dues next year will be $69 U.S. per member. (Additionally, we have our District Dues and our Club Dues.)
CLASSIFICATIONS
The rules governing the number of Club Members in a Classification have been eliminated.
POLIO UPDATE
Rotary has been working on worldwide eradication of Polio since 1985. In excess of $16 Billion in spending has vaccinated over 2,5 billion children in 122 countries. Africa has been declared polio free, but Afghanistan and Pakistan are still hotspots. (It takes three years of zero cases of wild polio virus cases for a country to be declared polio free.)
UPCOMING CONVENTIONS
Future Rotary International Conventions will be:
2020 Honolulu, Hawaii, June 6 – 10
2021 Taipei, Taiwan
2022 Houston, Texas
2023 Melbourne, Australia
2024 Singapore
