Handover and Business Meeting

RI Presidents theme for the year - ‘Be the Inspiration’ 

Assembly Address by Graham Forster.

Good evening ADG Chris, Rotarians and Guests. I don’t want to take up too much of your time but I am duty bound to outline some of my thoughts for the year. To that end I have cut the joke about the Vicar and the young couple who slipped away into his vestry during his sermon.

Bexhill Rotary Club is now entering its 95th year of giving dedicated service to the local community here and beyond. Membership of such a Club is indeed a great privilege to me and I’m sure for all of us and without any doubt at all it is a great honour for me to have been elected as your soon to be President for the coming year. I will do my very best to uphold the valued traditions where appropriate and the great work of our Club and of my predecessors and to appropriately represent you and our Club.

I think we all know we are a very active Club recognised indeed envied by many. We enjoy good support and fantastic fellowship from our membership. It is really important we all recognise that contribution from Members can take many forms. We all have different skills and of course our personal circumstances differ and indeed will vary from time to time, even year to year. While we all accept ‘Service above Self’ we must also remember that our priorities are and must remain as Family first then Work then Rotary. In Rotary we are a team and we all help each other out whenever needed.

It is all too easy when planning for ones year as President to think that we should change everything. Well that is not my intention – so much of what we do is just great as it is and will carry forward however we must however evolve as we do it as the alternative is to stagnate or decline and lose opportunity. To that end I am asking our Committees and Champions of events to reflect on what we do well but where we can learn and improve tweak it and as always look into some possible new ideas, but not necessarily additional. For example we identified last year that the raffle was not achieving what we hoped so we moved on from it with a couple of other activities such as the Barn Dance raising more funds and coupling it with fun. We also had Raouf s calendar introduced. With all our support both these activities could grow in the future.

Good fun and fellowship is core to much that we do. We want to enjoy ourselves. If we find it fun then others around us will too. The Rotary theme for this year is ‘Be the Inspiration’. We can all do that you know and with so doing will encourage all those around us not just ourselves but particularly those that we serve and those that support us in the community. You know there have been many occasions during my membership when I have been inspired just by what others in the Club, that’s you, have done.

Continuity year to year has been the theme for the past few years now to avoid stop start strategies and I have been working closely with Paul and now also with Patrick to set and achieve goals that go beyond the single year. I have tried to achieve the same within our Committees with some Chairs continuing on and some new, similarly with the make up of the teams. We also always have champions who support other committee functions too. Best of both approaches I would like to think and they are recognised in our handbook. However to ensure we do evolve we shouldn’t hang on to a role or to a committee for more than say 3 years without a change or at least involving someone new to shadow

 Well I don’t want to steal any thunder from my team who I shall introduce shortly and who will enlighten us further on their super plans. The future of our Club is dependent on ourmembership. We have been successful this year in having more guests who are future possible members than for some time now. We know some of them will join us sooner or later. A simple albeit rather sad fact I learnt as a teacher is that every year we are all a year older – a surprise I know and we don’t feel it! Fact is we must attract more new younger members who will bring in fresh ideas and become our future moving us forward. Having said that older experienced members are incredibly important and there is no age restriction on new members who want to contribute time and effort. Rotary provides fellowship and opportunities for members to serve at all stages of their life.

We have now seen the benefits of social media in publicising our events and getting our message across including to potential new members. Even I made a promise to go onFacebook to Colin as part of the deal for him to carry on his good work with our social media. HesaidifhecandoitIcandoit–faircomment–only4weekstodoit–help please!! I’ve let the Outreach team set the recruitment target but we can all help! Who canyou bring along even just to enjoy an evening while seeing what we are about?

Continuing on that vein brings me to social events whether they be purely social or fundraising as well. One a month seems a good plan. We can’t all make all of them but we can try and bring along friends and guests to those we can make and thus increase the success of many events. We can also promote to other local Clubs and similarly with the new Coordination strategy we are trying equally can attend some of theirs. I went to the Houses of Parliament two weeks ago with Senlac, a great day. I would like us to arrange a joint venture with some other local Clubs. I have also asked Social to try and reintroduce maybe 3 or 4 raids (one every 3 months) on other Clubs next year, always quite interesting as well as enjoyable. Anyone know an ADG who may be able to help?

While thinking about developing collaboration I have asked Youth Service to look at a couple of events using a recommended collaboration partner to smooth the way and ease the workload. It would be great if we could kick off a Rotakids in one of the local Primary schools, maybe the main feeder to St Richards where we have our Interact Club. Two years ago I asked Brian for a contact in an Eastbourne Club for a teaching friend of mine there seeking to support a good overseas cause. The result was the school got support for their African charitable cause and one year later they have an Interact Club formed at the school. That same contact this year significantly supported our Sensory Garden project. We can perhaps all win working together.

We raise money through both International and Fundraising Committee activities. I don’t believe in targets here other than doing our best and the more the merrier. I know they have some great ideas to share with us and will undoubtedly be raising money for some of our regular good causes such as Yellowmen. We are also so close to eliminating Polio forever. Only a handful of cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan in hard to get to areas and all money raised is still trebled by Bill Gates. Rotary International through Foundation carries out fantastic support worldwide but can only get its money to do so by our fundraising for Foundation (even better we can get some of it back to direct ourselves). I join several recent past Presidents in the wish to try and increase our contribution to Foundation and hope we can achieve this next year. Please support this endeavour. We are also eligible for further district Grants next year and possibly more (Global) – lets take advantage.

I look forward to the return of the more traditional meet with our Contact Clubs visiting later this year. Having said that I know Perry and Geoff and one or two others are keen to organise another cycling event and I have been told to start training now as mandatory I participate!!

We will also have the opportunity (and I know some are interested) next year to attend the RI Conference as it makes a rare appearance ‘locally’ in Europe in Hamburg.

Community Service who arrange fantastic events such as the Old Folks Tea Party bringing such joy to so many brings me to my charities for the year. My focus next year is on both the seriously disabled of all ages and disadvantaged Children. In particular I wish to support the local Hastings and Bexhill Mencap organisation as a main charity with whom I am involved and until then was unaware they have to raise all their own funds locally. John is already on the case I believe. I am also keen to support a new group of students in Gambia hopefully via the Don McMath Foundation supported previously or similar. Some severely disabled and indeed ill people have their everyday lives awfully restricted. I have been so impressed by Medical Detection Dogs and how they can help improve lives that they become my third main charity.

You know we can all ‘make a difference’ and now we can ’Be the Inspiration’. I know we all chip in to help each other and that is what makes us such a great Club. Remember some newer members may not be aware of what goes on so lets ensure we invite them to come and join in rather than wait to see their hands up or names on a piece of paper. I would also like us to try and ensure our Honorary Members, and we have 8, are invited and made to feel very welcome at our meetings not just at Partners meetings. Some of them can or perhaps will only get here with help and they won’t want to ask. We can offer help as well as invites perhaps.

Without more ado it is my pleasure to introduce our fantastic team for next year:

Now not to forget our new officers to be IPP Paul Frostick, PE Patrick Donaldson and VP Steve White our very new Secretary John Cooper and Treasurer David Stedman We have Committee chairs as follows:

Social Committee led by John Coles
International and Foundation Committee led by Graham Dawson Community Fundraising led by Cara Grant
Community Service committee led by John Meadows
Youth Service Committee led by Charles Taylor
Outreach (Publicity and Membership) led by Richard Harrison.

Graham Forster