Waneta Sunshine Rotary

General

• There was a plea to keep our database on the District website up to date.
• I spoke with the District Treasurer, and Viktor was right, there is no need to keep separate accounts for admin and general projects.
• I spoke to the District Governor, Tim about a District 5080 GoTo meeting set up. Linda Bauer will get back to us.

Membership

Rotary is going to ‘sort of’ joint venture with Toastmasters. This I think is a pretty neat idea. The idea is to help coach Rotoactors and Rotarians in public speaking, and of course it is an access to prospective members. But in the meantime we can invite local Toastmasters to be our Programs and allow them some practice space.

There is a Toastmasters club in Castlegar, I have a neighbour who is a Toastmaster there and whom I will contact.

Fundraising

DonorTrail is a smartphone app that potentially is a revenue source with no outlay. It involves getting local businesses to sign up and it is sort of specific advertising getting people into their restaurants and bars. Buy one and get one free type model. Essentially it is the equivalent of selling a digital version of a coupon book.

One club mentioned that they did a Pickle Ball tournament as a fund raiser. I wonder who has the skill set and interest to have a go at this?

A progressive dinner … four restaurants. Basically, each restaurant provides a small meal and a group of people sample meals at each restaurant (the meals are set). What they had was four groups of thirty going around.

Home carwash day.

In Action

Rotarians in action. Overall I thought the training was better this time around; but, for me there was to much ‘brass’ when it came to the plenary speakers. The first time around several years ago, I was ‘wowed’ by what the speakers had experienced and doing, eg a Polio survivor,

Potential Objectives

Tighten up meetings a bit
Review meeting structure/agenda a bit
Focus a bit more on fellowship

Simon Sinek

Philosophically speaking I had a problem with some of the training, in that it was based on the motivating question, Why? Some of the sessions referenced this video and it was suggested we see it at the club level. (Some of the classes had lost the remote and there was no volume).

Foundation

And an explanation of the how the foundation works.

We had been asked about the club culture with respect to The Foundation; I explained in our club it was up to the individual of how they donated to the Foundation.

Incongruity

After the PETS training Madeleine and I stayed on for three nights in Seattle. The first night we just hung around the next hotel. The first day we went up the Space Needle, saw Chihuly Glass and Garden exhibition (well worth a visit) and did an underground tour of parts of buried Seattle after its fire of 1889. The nature of the tour took us in and out of the back alleys we would not normally have frequented. While there was poverty on the main streets of Seattle, certain images in the back alleys brought things into sharp relief. A lady was dumpster diving. In a way, she was well dressed, but one could see the clothes had seen better days. The same could be said of her. As I walked past I could see she had immaculately manicured nails …

Later in the evening Madeleine and I were sitting at a bar, trying to decide whether to eat there or elsewhere. Through the window across the street I could see a man checking out three dumpsters. I could not help but see the incongruity. Here we are in a bar, for me more expensive than I would normally frequent, and outside poverty wandering the streets. In juxtaposition, the meal we are about to eat and the wonderful fayre we had at PETS, see the picture above.

Philosophically, I understand things cannot have been otherwise, the bits of stardust that make up my body and mind have been lucky. Others have been less fortunate. The universe is unfolding, but that does not mean we can’t give it a nudge.