Apr 2014 RIBI 89th Annual Conference - Birmingham

This year's 3 day Rotary conference for all of the UK and Ireland took place in Birmingham City centre.  The 20 members and partners who attended from our club stayed nearby in the comfortable Crown Plaza Hotel.  The programme for all three days was a quality mix of fun, food and world class speakers.

Nan McCreadie (Rotary GB&I President) welcomed us all to the conference on Friday afternoon. We saw a brief video of RI Director Mike Webb who reinforced his Rotary theme for this year - Engage Rotary, Change Lives - or as some like to interpret it - Engage Change, Rotary Lives!  He sees Rotary as an opportunity to help others while having fun!

Speakers at the conference were many, varied and very interesting and included the Deputy Mayor of Birmingham, the Curator of the Royal collection, the Inner Wheel Association President, the new CEO of Shelterbox, Peace Jam/Rotary Youth Peace Project Co-ordinator (Jean Best), Peace Fellow (Sharon Edington), Rotoract, Soldiers Charity - was the Soldiers Benevelant Fund (Major General Rutlidge), Lord Digby Jones, UNICEF Ambassador  (Martin Bell).

link to speakers on Utube.

The bbc.co.uk/youngcitizens awards were transmitted live from the conference stage and included several inspiring young people.

Sarah Brown introduced a surprise guest speaker in Malala. She has recovered amazingly well from being shot on the bus because she dared to go to school, in Pakistan. She now lives in the UK because her life would be at risk if she and her family went home. She is passionate about the need for all children to be educated and has even spoken to the United Nations and helped them to formulate an ambitious target. A moving film was shown about the new project. She is helped by her friend who was also injured on the bus - Shazia.

It was a thoroughly worthwhile experience and we came back with several new ideas for our club's future activity.