12:30 PM - Club Assembly

The Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy Lunch Meeting 19thMay 2015, this week we had 29 of our own members and 1 guest Assistant District Governor Malcolm Horner. President Brian welcomed everyone to the meeting and to our Club Assembly for 2015/16.  President Brian was disappointed he had to announce the cancellation of our Rotary Family Day although great interest from our own club, unfortunately the other 7 clubs involved had little interest.  We will now combine a family day with our sponsored Cycle Race on the 21^st June.

President Brian handed over to Senior Vice President John Kilgour who takes over as President on the 1^st JuLy 2015 to enlighten the club members of what was planned for the coming year.

SVP John started with ‘The Rotary Club of Kirkcaldy has done so much for so many over the years, we have raised vast sums of money for charity, helped many communities in Fife and around the world, that it would seem foolish to try and change a model that has worked so well in the past.  So we would like to put forward a very similar programme to last year with a few subtle changes. We have supported many International projects and whilst this work is important and will continue, I would like to refocus our efforts on helping our local community and bring Rotary onto our local doorstep. Show people what Rotary does and what being a Rotarian actually is and hopefully this will make non Rotarians want to get involved and consider becoming Rotarians.  One of our main aims is to attract younger people into Rotary by changing people’s views of Rotary, both internally and externally, Rotary needs to modernise and change to survive. We will try and promote Rotary through our member’s businesses and social contacts, through the local organisations that we are helping and other similar types of organisations to attract new members.  We will continue to involve ourselves with the younger generation through our strong links with schools and by trying to forge new working partnerships with Fife College and other organisations to get young adults involved with Rotary and extend Rotary further into the local community, which should in turn help us to recruit new members. 

With RYLA we want to look at changing the selection process, rather than just choose the high flyers who are already destined to do well, let’s try and choose candidates who are in need of an life changing experience like this, to get them back onto the right path again and give them the confidence to reach their full potential in life. As you will hear in a moment we do a lot for the younger generation, but we are very keen to try and do more to help those in need at the other end of the age spectrum, the elderly and we have recently given funds to the Grey Panthers Club in Kirkcaldy, which is to help elderly people who are lonely to meet up and become more active and involved in the local community. I would also ask you our members for suggestions of any projects or activities that you think would be worthy of our involvement. 

We will also be considering continuation of our support/sponsorship of the children from Upendo Mission in Tanzania and we will continue to liaise and support the Fife Society for the Blind specialists on work programmes with the Albino children and our book highlighting the plight of these children’s persecution.

As already mentioned we are actively trying to find new members who will contribute to Rotary, particularly younger members who will be the future of Rotary. Consideration will be given to setting up an evening meeting group to attract new potential members and members who are unable to attend the lunch time meeting, similar to the evening group set up by The Rotary Club of Inverkeithing & Dalgety Bay. We are trying to get members involved with aspects of Rotary where they can make use their existing skills and also learn new ones.’  We then heard from each Committee Chair who outlined an exciting and varied programme for next year and we look forward to seeing and hearing more about these as the months go by. 

If you would like to find out more about Rotary, how much fun, how rewarding, please feel free to get in touch at secretary@kirkcaldyrotary.org,  SVP John commented before handing back to President Brian ‘I am looking forward to next year and serving the club as President. The Rotary theme is ‘Be a Gift to the World’ which is to make all members think about what they can do to achieve this, from their own and our Club’s prospective.  So my message to all Rotarians, is think about what you can do, you only get out of Rotary what you put in, so become involved and let’s all work together to make a big difference.’  President Brian then closed the meeting by thanking SVP John and Assistant District Governor Malcolm Horner.