2019 Assembly for District 1180

2019  Asembly for District 1180

Report of Rotary Club of Llandudno Business Meeting – 14^th May 2019

Every year, just as individual Rotary Clubs hold a Club Assembly for the purpose of reviewing and planning the coming Rotary year, so does District 1180

This year Alan Guinn and Chris Drew represented the Club at the Assembly held on Sunday 28^th April at Neston High School, on the Wirrall

We were two of the more than 200 delegates present, representing 61 of the 79 Clubs in the District, which covers North Wales, Wirral, Merseyside and South Cheshire

The session was opened by incoming (from 1^st July 2019)  President Bob Maskell, of Bangor Rotary. Many Club members will recall Bob as being the facilitator for our Club’s visioning scheme in 2016/17

Bob asked Clubs to focus on three priorities in the coming year

-       Achieve a Rotary citation

-       Turn District 1180 Purple4Polio in October

-       Bring a non-Rotarian to Conference

He also asked Clubs to be mindful of the overall vision statement

….and of our own District aim

The Assembly spent much of the day split up into separate groups, each covering a different aspect of Rotary – between us we covered three of the ten or so such sessions 

Youth – Alan Guinn

The main purpose is for the Youth Committee to unlock the potential in young people. The National Youth Competitions have an enormous impact within the local communities to provide young people with the opportunity to develop their skills. The competitions will be run across Great Britain and Ireland and will culminate in a series of National Finals. 
The headings are,

young chef,

young musician,

young photographer,

technology tournament,

young writer,

young citizens award,

 Youth Speaks. 

All these competitions are open to students who are in full time education. They are run and selected by a panel of judges. The only change for this year is Youth Speaks which will have a completely different format than previous years. It will be run as a debating project by 2 separate teams, from the same school,  for and against. These will be controlled by a chairman. There is going to be further meetings regarding this prior to the midsummer holidays. 
Arrangements are in hand to introduce further headings for competitions. Young Artist, youth exchange, young scientist. These will be introduced when organisers are established. 
The other Youth activities are proceeding quite well. It was pointed out that RYLA have a waiting list of 2 years and it seems to be the flagship for the youth section of Rotary International. 

Membership – Chris Drew/Alan Guinn

The theme was that retention is at least as important as recruitment – a sentiment we can echo from our Gogarth experience as well as that of the parent Club itself

Membertship Recruitment

The workshop also looked at detailed case studies of what had and had not been successful in other Clubs and I have details of this information for any future membership studies

Membership Retention

In many ways this was a step back to our 2016/17 visioning exercise

If anything this proves that what has been labelled “visioning” in reality is something that should be permeating our thinking throughout the year, rather than as an “exercise”

Public Image

This was very much a session for the Club’s social media operator(s), coupled with a more general cry to Clubs that this is the way forward, given the demise of more traditional methods of workplace and press for dissemination of information about Rotary

I am happy we are broadly in tune with what we should be doing – just gotta do it!

CONCLUSION

The Club needs to take the DG’s opening remarks into account

The Youth, Membership and Public Image Committees can benefit from the resources that were made available and/or publicised

Alan Guinn

Chris Drew

9^th May 2019