Fittingly, on Monday night, in the 100th Year of Rotary our club was host to the 100th District Governor – Craig. The evening turned out to be an auspicious one for another reason as well but more about that later.
Craig talked about how Covid 19, while severely disrupting Rotary activities did serve to focus us on one aspect of our core business – the eradication of communicable diseases. Our long term and finely honed experience with polio and other diseases means that Rotary is well placed to offer support in the worldwide vaccination programme and discussions have already begun.
A recent outbreak of polio in Liberia and the recent hard caused by an outbreak of measles in Samoa serves to reinforce that Covid will not be something which is eradicated but rather an endemic problem that will require long term planning and careful management.
Covid has also shown large organisations the danger of litigation and class lawsuits should all health and safety precautions not be taken. If we needed any confirmation of that, a recent class action against Boy Scouts has effectively placed that organisation in a state of bankruptcy. This type of organisational risk was a key reason that R.I. moved so quickly to issue an edict banning all face-to-face meetings until later this year, the irony of which had not escaped Craig.
In question time Craig addressed the issue of district “redistricting”, the term favoured over merging or amalgamation and membership. Whatever the term chosen, District 9910 has until 2025 to get club numbers and membership up to the required levels. Club merging has not proven to be a success, largely in Craigs view, because of the sometimes very different cultures of clubs. Instead, he favoured targeting new members who would be a good fit for a club “by getting out of the office” and directly approaching the target audience. Likewise trying to attract much younger members into a more traditional and established club setting was not seen as something likely to be very successful. Some ideas for our club to ponder.