I am on Spring Break this week, so most of my Rotary interaction has been taking place with family and random strangers. Yes, I am wearing my Rotary pin and yes, I have the one-minute elevator pitch at the ready.
This is World Rotaract Week. Has your club considered starting a Rotaract club in your community as a way to bring younger leaders into the Family of Rotary? If your community has a Rotaract club—whether you are the sponsoring club or not, what are you doing to get these young Rotarians involved with your club? What are you doing to support them and their events?
On a weekly basis, I hear from at least one Rotarian who says, “why does Rotary only do things to help those less fortunate abroad?” Well, on March 25th we will be “Celebrating Your Local Community Day” at Beachside High School just off Florida 210.
- As we celebrate RYLARIANS with their leadership training, we are also doing food packing in the afternoon. Unlike previous food pack events, this event is intended to have Rotarians standing side by side with our youth leaders as we pack for Meals of Hope. What makes Meals of Hope so unique is that all meals packed will stay in our district to help address the problem of food insecurity in so many in our communities. If your club would still like to get involved either with financial support or sending people to “pack” it is not too late. Just reach out to District Governor Nominee Mickey Ulmer. Our goal is to pack 100,000 meals. Do you want to say you and your club were a part of this event or missed it?
- We also have grant training for two members of your club. Some have asked why we have to drive to St. Johns County, Zoom would be just as effective. There are two reasons we are doing face to face: 1) this will be hands-on and each participant will have their own computer, and 2) our experience over the past three rounds of Zoom training is that it is not effective in getting the important information to those submitting the grants and we have turned down more grants than in the past because of incomplete or incorrect submissions. We want to fund your community projects!
- The combination of these two events is guaranteed to impact on your community.
On March 6, 2023, the Past District Governor Frank Rasbury from the Rotary Club of Ocala celebrated his 95th Birthday! Frank has been an awesome Rotarian since he joined Rotary in 1975.
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Have you talked to members of your club about attending the District Training Assembly and Conference? We are open and want you to sign up. We promise that this will be an exciting weekend of fun, fellowship, amazing speakers and stories of doing Good in the World. We can IMAGINE Rotary. Imagination is a clear strength of our spotlighted speaker this week—Colonel Bob Springer (USMC, RET).
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Robert (Bob) Springer (Colonel, USMC, RET.) Bob” Springer is a Naval Academy graduate and earned a Master of Science in operations research and systems analysis from the U. S. Naval Postgraduate School. He is a veteran of Vietnam, where he completed 300 combat missions flying F-4 phantoms and 250 missions flying helicopters. In 1981 he became an Astronaut and has logged more than 237 hours in space. He has been a Mission Specialist on two spaceflights: STS-29 aboard Discovery and STS-38 aboard Atlantis. Bob was scheduled on the next shuttle flight after the Challenger and, as a result, had a chance to join the task force to sort out the road ahead for the US Space Program after this terrible tragedy.