Rtn Keith Brownlie: Our District Governor

Our District Governor, Keith Brownlie, spoke to us online at today’s meeting. He mentioned how much Zoom had enabled Rotary to hold meetings with an international spread and told us the District Forum will be held on Zoom on 22 February.

His talk had four main themes:

• Teamwork
• Membership
• Foundation
• Youth

Teamwork

He praised our Club’s strong tradition of working with others, including the other Chelmsford Clubs. Districts within RIBI are also doing more work collaboratively, an example being the Multi-District PETS. This year’s PETS would be residential at Wyboston Lakes at a cost of £185 per person.

Membership

The membership figures were not encouraging. In the last twelve months RIBI had lost 2,700 Rotarians. District 1240 was one of only nine Districts to expand its membership during the last Rotary year, with a net increase of twelve. Chelmsford has a new Club, the Rotary Club of Danbury & Villages, which hopes to have 36 members by the end of June.

One of the things that would attract new members to Rotary is a project that appealed to them, such as one for protecting the environment which our Club is already involved. District 1240 will be holding an EcoFest at Chatham Green from 1-3 July.

Rotary Clubs can also attract more members if they promote diversity and reduce formalities.

In addition, Clubs need to keep track of those young people who leave Interact and Rotaract Clubs in order to encourage them to become Rotarians. We could also try to recruit those recently retired.

Foundation

We need to do more to support The Rotary Foundation. Last year the grants given in District 1240 totalled $27,500. Next year only $7,000 will be available. The Rotary Foundation deserves our support as it does not have the overheads of other charities.

The Foundation’s efforts to eradicate polio have been a great success. Pakistan has been free of polio for a year; if it remains so for another two years it will be declared polio-free. The only other country not to be polio-free is Afghanistan, which had twelve new cases.

Keith urged us to hold a tea party in aid of The Rotary Foundation in the presence of “Nessie” (a stuffed toy “Loch Ness Monster”), encouraging children to write stories about Nessie’s journey from Scotland to Essex. Their parents could be invited as well and told about Rotary.

Youth

Youth are the future of Rotary and we need to support activities for them, including Interact and Rotarct Clubs.