Dave King - Telling Rotary's Story

President Katrina welcomed everyone to the meeting, including the speaker, Dave King, who would be “Telling Rotary’s Story”.

In her Interesting Rotary Information piece, Katrina highlighted an article from the February/March edition of The Rotary Magazine, entitled “Combatting climate change starts with you”.

The article included several actions that individuals could take to help combat climate change – fairly easily done actions include a) Up to half of all food produced is lost or wasted before or after it reaches consumers, b) It takes around 1,800 gallons of water to grow enough cotton to produce just one pair of jeans and c) In the last 170 years, we added 2.4 trillion tons of Carbon Dioxide into our atmosphere. Half of this was added in the last 35 to 50 years.

She urged anyone who had not read the article to do so.

Katrina then introduced Dave King, our speaker for this evening who has been the editor of Rotary Magazine for Great Britain & Ireland since January 2017.  The magazine is the oldest regional magazine in the world, beginning life as The Rotary Wheel in 1915.  Dave has been a Rotarian since 2010, when he joined The Rotary Club of Swindon.  In February 2018, he joined the Rotary Club of Elthorne-Hillingdon and is the Immediate Past President of that Club. 

Today’s Rotary Magazine is modern, gritty, reflective and deals with topical issues.  It is designed to be read by everyone, whether a Rotarian or not.  It is one of 30 regional Rotary magazines, published in 130 countries in over 20 different languages.  He highlighted the recent Rotary Magazine that dealt with the environment and plastic pollution, a cause that has been taken up by many Rotary Clubs in a practical way.  He believed that taking a practical approach to issues such as protecting the environment was a potential way of attracting people into Rotary, especially the younger ones.

Dave said that the magazine was designed to promote the public image of Rotary and dispel public misconceptions about Rotary.  He believed it was the best marketing tool for showcasing, growing Rotary and telling Rotary’s story. Before Covid, 10,000 copies of The Rotary Magazine were being deliver bi-monthly to hotels, airport, cruise and railway terminals.  They are now available in Sainsbury’s stores.  Rotarians in some Clubs have adopted the “read it and leave it” approach, where Club contact details are attached to the front cover and the magazine is left in a coffee shop, library, doctor’s surgery etc.       

After Dave had answered a series of questions put to him by the members, Des Donnelly proposed the vote of thanks, appreciating Dave’s interesting and informative talk and also all the work he was doing in connection with The Rotary Magazine.

Inspired by the “Wrap Up Lancashire” talk a few weeks ago, Callan, Katrina and Jean had met to discuss the possibility of setting up “Wrap Up Lanarkshire” involving a multi-club approach across two local authority districts.  Proposals will be firmed up regarding the approach to other Rotary Clubs and the details put to our own Club Council to seek support and approval.

Charles Keeper reported that he had attended the President Elects Preparation Seminar (via Zoom) last Saturday.  The 2021/22 presidential theme will be “Serve to Change Lives”.  The two mail topics discussed during the 4-hour meeting were, increasing membership and the environment.

Lend with Care had been in contact with James Gibbons, informing him that there was enough money in our account to lend to another two entrepreneurs.  James will inform the members, next week, which entrepreneurs have been selected to receive funding.