Change in Rotary

The weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy was held at the Dean Park Hotel on Tuesday 1^st May.  Rotary GB&I President Denis Spiller from the Rotary Club of Strood was a guest at the meeting which was well attended with District Governor Graeme Archibald, Assistant District Governor Heather Stuart and two visiting Club Presidents present.

Presidents Business included mention of how enjoyable and successful the youth evening had been and how wonderful it was to see what youngsters were getting from their associations Rotary. Dunnikier had participated at the district final of the Primary school quiz and achieved 3^rd place, which unfortunately did not qualify them for the finals in Aberdeen.

PP Iain Gow and Caroline Nolan have successfully managed to establish the 1^st RotorKids Club at Kirkcaldy West Primary School. Iain had also attended the recent District Assembly.

The Secretary announced that the Club was still looking for Auction prizes for the Champagne and Jazz evening. Next week’s meeting is a scatter meeting and PP John has recommended that those that can, attend the Howe of Fife meeting at 5:45, an e mail with details will follow.

President Denis introduced the theme of his talk as ‘Change in Rotary’. Denis had joined Rotary directly from Rotoract and remarked how Rotoract had fallen behind when they stopped recruiting 18 year olds and relied instead on 25 -28 year olds. He compared this to how Rotary itself was now predominantly older Members and that if it is not to head the same way as Rotoract it was vital that Clubs strive to increase membership of 30-40 year olds. Acknowledging that with changing times came changing pressures Denis has been instrumental in growing Rotary 2, an initiative aimed at new style flexible clubs which offer diversity and opportunity to the Members. The target was to achieve 250 such Clubs and to date 245 have been formed. Rotary was started out as a business networking opportunity and Denis said that today’s youngsters still have the same networking requirements and therefore Rotary should be appealing to them. 

Denis highlighted the success of the End Polio Now campaign and introduced his contribution which is to be the ‘Rotary Grand Tour’. The Grand Tour involves a number of Purple ‘End Polio Now’ branded vehicles ranging from a Dump truck to a mobile Ambulance which between the 21^st and 24^th May will tour Britain with set check points in each Rotary District, the 1010 checkpoint is to be in St. Andrews.

Denis concluded by referring to the Rotary Moto for the year ‘making a difference’ and pointed out that Rotary needed to make a difference to themselves as well as others in order to be here for the long term.