President's Review 1st 3 month

As we are at the end of the first 3 mont of this Rotary year President Barry has produced a brief review of events during that period.

President Barry on a visit to our twin club Vlaardingen 80

Review of the first three months

The first three months of this Rotary year are nearly complete and in this period I believe we have achieved a number of the targets set by the committee chairman when they laid out their plans at Club Assembly, as well as having a successful fellowship program.

The Stroke Awareness day was a great success and 93 people had their blood pressure tested. We now have a good relationship with Boots and we will hold a similar day in 2016 at their unit in the new Westfield Centre. Many thanks to all concerned.

Another success has been the presentation of the Dictionaries for Life to year 5 at Bowling Park Primary. I attended the presentation along with John Watson and John Waterhouse and the dictionaries were gratefully received. I know in this computer age that there are some doubts as to whether these dictionaries are necessary, but after seeing the kids reactions on receiving their copy, I have no doubt that this is a project that we need to continue to support.

We were pleased to welcome our RYLA candidate Grace Law to our “away day” meeting at the Dubrovnik and she certainly gave a very professional presentation. Forms for 2016 will be coming out in the near future and we will continue our support of RYLA in 2016.

I wanted to have a number of outside visits this year and I am pleased that we have already made a number. The visit to the Bradford Police Museum was of great interest, as was the visit to York Gate Gardens.

The fellowship programme has been full, starting with the Hello/Goodbye, kindly hosted by Janet and Mike, and involving visits to Ilkley Playhouse and the open air Twelfth Night presentation in the ground of East Riddlesden Hall. An evening of Bowling at the Ilkley Bowling Club was a great night out, but the quality of play was a little embarrassing.

Charter nights and other Rotary dinners are coming thick and fast, and the Club was represented at the Motor Neurone Disease dinner on 18 September and during October we will be attending Bronte’s charter and Bingley’s ladies evening. I do hope all members can attend at least one Charter or make a visit to another Club during the year.

I hope all who attended the President’s evening on Saturday enjoyed the occasion. I believe it was a success and Fox Corner kept us well entertained. Many thanks to Keith for organising the evening.

We have welcomed many visitors from other Clubs during the first three months – Bradford West, Bingley, Ossett, Idle & Greengates, Burford and Windrush Valley, Shipley and last meeting we had a visit from Isaac Otabor from Nigeria. Isaac is attending the University of Bradford, Department of Project Planning and we hope to see him again at future meetings.

District Conference is nearly upon us and there will be 6 couples attending. I always enjoy the Conference weekend and I hope members will continue their support in future years.

As regards membership, we are processing the membership application from Muhammad Atif and the information meeting will be held in the very near future.

Last Saturday, I attended District Council and the session was very well led by the District Governor. A discussion took place regarding the proposed movement of Clubs from District 1270 as from 1 July 2016.

Twenty four Clubs have voted to join our District and after discussion, District Council gave its unanimous approval to these Clubs becoming members of District 1040 from 1 July 2016. The proposal will be taken to the RI Board meeting for ratification in mid-October and if ratified, District 1040 will be made up of 103 Clubs from 1 July 2016.

Also at the meeting, it was announced that Manoj Joshi will take over from Mike Bamford as Assistant District Governor for the Bradford Group of 10 as from 1 July 2016. There is also a District Governor in place for 2018/2019 and this is Nigel Arthurs from the Birstall Luddites.
The date for Kids Out for 2016 was confirmed as 8 June.

I hope this report covers most things and reminds members what we have done so far in this Rotary year. I look forward to the next three months been as varied as the first three months and I thank you all for your continued support.

Barry Smith
28 September 2015