Rotarian Vic Young was installed as President of the Rotary Club of wellington 2019-2020 on Friday 28th July by outgoing President, Peter Williams.
President Vic said, “Firstly, I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate Peter on a great year in which he has steered our Club through its 90th Charter anniversary & many other successful events including, among many others, a great Film Night, a wonderful Sportsman’s Night and most recently our very successful Golf Day. As he said last week, he has had a great team to help him so, when he said my team is not much different, you’ll understand why I’ve not changed much. Good luck to all my Chairs and their Committees but let’s not be too safe & repetitious! Be brave and look for new challenges/opportunities.
What I did consider, when looking at my Committees/Chairs for 2019/20, was whether I could replace them all with volunteer “Project Managers” for “Projects” such as “Membership Development”, “International Disaster Response”, “Lend With Care”, “Supporting RI Annual Fund”, “Fundraising for Polio”, “Fairbourne”, “Youth Speaks”, “Schools/Colleges Liaison”, “Health Awareness Day”, “Gateway BBQ”, “Brewery Trip”, “Cinema/Film Night”, “Improve Facebook” Coverage” etc., etc.,. However, I felt it needed something of a “pilot” or two before full migration out of Committees so perhaps, if an opportunity for a new “project” arises in my year, I will discuss it with the relevant Committee Chair and, if they agree, I’ll put it out to members at a Club lunch to look for a volunteer Project Manager. If so, I hope many of you will consider it! Of course, “Food Bank Support”, “Medic Malawi/St Andrews” & “BMX Toilet Block” are effectively Projects already, being managed by Richard Studd & Brian Richards respectively. As far as I recall, they each evolved outside any existing Committee. Whilst I encouraged “Community” to adopt Richard’s “Food Bank Project”, I now realise I missed an opportunity to better develop the Projects “strategy” so I’m hoping new opportunities WILL arise and be trialled.
If there is evidence that we, & I mean ALL the Club members, can make it work (like many other Clubs do), I will promote development of the idea further over the coming year, hopefully with President Elect Peter Murray with a view to how he might want to further develop things If there any other ideas among you on how else we might improve the running of this Club, please be assured that I will be happy to hear from you.
I remain keen not to change the format of our Friday lunches. As Barry Preen said last week, we might seem “quirky” to some but our Fridays are what makes this Club special.”