Weekly meeting

Besides our speaker this evening, we welcomed David Cochrane, a visitor from Donaghadee Rotary Club in Northern Ireland, at Ivan's invitation.

Our speaker Robin Wraight, District Youth Services chair, impressed us all with his enthusiasm for Youth Services, and how he sees this avenue of service as the future of Rotary, particularly as some of the young people we engage with now will hopefully go on to be Rotarians in years to come.

As Robin described, there are many ways that Rotary Clubs can support the education of our young people. There are school competitions, such as Young Photographer and Youth Speaks, there are the Illustrated dictionaries that we  distribute to primary school children, and there is RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) among others.

We do many of these activities already, and are looking to engage further with young people locally through annual Young Citizen Awards. After Robin had spoken to us, a lively question and answer interlude followed, where we gained an insight into many aspects of Youth Services at District level.

The evening finished with David giving us an insight into his work as a Rotarian in his part of Northern Ireland.

Our meeting finished a little after 9.00 p.m.