The Fascination of Rotary
If you have always wanted a crash course about Rotary, go to rotary.org and sign up for the International Convention. You will find out more that you ever thought you could learn about Rotary in 4 (long) days.
RI International convention is a microcosm of the world. You meet fellow Rotarians who are more than happy to share their stories of how they became a Rotarian; what their clubs do and what projects, both locally and internationally, that they support.There are booths featuring so many projects from around the world that you could spend the whole convention in the International House of Friendship and come home to your club with so many projects that it would take months to sort them out and concentrate on 1 or 2 for your club. You will meet new friends and remain in touch with them for the rest of your life. (I stayed with Rotarians I met on the GSE exchange in 2007 before convention giving me a chance to see more of their areas than we were able to do during our GSE experience.)
Then there is the formality of the meetings and plenary sessions and the speakers. You will be moved to tears by the stories shared by speakers and will want to immediately take action to make the world a better place for all. Our speakers ranged from the UN Secretary General to Mia Farrow. The breakout sessions are on a variety of subjects ranging from how to help feed the world to clean water and health care. One of the things that we have to keep reminding ourselves of is that we have to find out what the people in a region truly see as their needs, not just come up with projects that we think will help, and then develop a plan, with their assistance, to help solve their problems and enable them to be self sustaining in the future. What better place to research and come up with ideas than at an International convention!
The home hosting evening is not to be missed. In Birmingham, Karen Ryan and I were fortunate enough to be hosted by a club from Stratford-Upon-Avon in the school house where "William and the boys" attended school. One of their members is a history professor and he entertained and regaled us with stories that brought history alive. We all said that if we had had him as our history professor, we might all have become history majors.
Take the plunge, sign up for convention, come a few days early and visit the area, stay a few days and visit with Rotarians that you met and then come back to the Rotary Club of LaConner filled with Rotary and charged up for the coming year.