Evergreen Rotary

District Conference and Strategy Meeting: An Update

Just a quick update here on the district conference in Colorado Springs and on the April 12 strategy meeting facilitated by Kimra:

[tag]DISTRICT CONFERENCE[/tag]

The conference began on Friday afternoon with a plenary session around the broad themes of literacy, water, health & hunger, family of rotary and world community service. One or two yawners in the field of speakers and panelists, but overall the session was pretty informative. As I was listening, however, I couldn’t help but think that some of our own members could just as well have been giving the presentations! The breadth and depth of our own expertise is really remarkable.

The rest of the day was spent entirely on FUN. Cocktails. Steak dinner. Entertainment featuring our own MIKE MOORE and the rest of the “Rotary Players” who sang their hearts out recounting Rotary’s history in song. Then came a hilarious and very effective speech by Cliff Dochterman, a past RI president, on the effects of “Friendly Fire” within our own clubs. All about the ways that clubs unintentionally undercut themselves and Rotary generally by “firing” or “killing” members, prospective members and projects. Very engaging.

Finally, there were the AWARDS! Not surprisingly, our club was well-represented here with THREE HONORS! Kudos to:

• Wayne Lundhagen: Outstanding Active Senior Rotarian
• Project Earth Committee members Paul Collings, Bill Hancock, Mary Debaets, Joan Spalding, Gene Wycoff, Mike Israel, Greg Kissler, Mereth Meade, Bob Hagerman and Bill Anstine: Preserve Planet Earth Award
• The entire Evergreen Rotary Club, for winning the Presidential Citation

In addition to these awards, Dick Mund was notified during the conference that our club will also be receiving this year’s Zone Award for Literacy! This is the literacy award for our entire zone, not just our district, and we commend Mereth Meade and her literacy warriors for their outstanding work! CONGRATULATIONS!

Saturday morning was spent on youth — RYLA (did you know our own BILL MANNING is running the show this year?), Young RYLA, Interact, 4-H, Rotaract, GSE presentations, and a great show by all the many foreign exchange students. Then a lunchtime show by the Air Force Academy Cadet Show Choir with an impromptu rendition of “Amazing Grace,” sung in both English and Mandarin by one of the cadets and Annabel Wang, one of the GSE team members from China who visited our club a few weeks ago. Wonderful. Keynote address was again by Cliff Dochterman, who regaled us all with his humorous conception of a phone call to Paul Harris in heaven. Hilarious.

Saturday afternoon was devoted to breakout sessions on water, literacy and health and hunger. Some really good info imparted there. And, again, the evening was devoted to FUN. Cocktails. Buffet dinner (I sat between Annabel Wang and another Chinese GSE member, Diana Zhang, and quickly learned that the little Mandarin I know is completely incomprehensible). Speech by the RI President’s rep, Edward Jaeger. And then a square-dance / line-dance “Western Fantasy.” Brenda and Bob Hagerman, among others, were seen kicking up their heels in their cowboy garb — (Dick Mund and I were happy to hold down the bar until the dance finished and the others could join us).

Sunday saw a “Celebration of Life” memorial service, a presentation by the Ambassadorial Scholars, and then a keynote address by Frank Huezo, the originator of the “Children of the Dump” project in Chinandega, Nicaragua.

All in all, a GREAT weekend with a good balance of work and fun, learning and letting the hair down a little.

STRATEGY MEETING

About 40 people attended our second annual Values, and Visioning and Vino session. Well, there was beer there too.

First, Kimra led us all through an identification of our club’s CORE VALUES. These we determined to be: Friendship, Service, Fun, Learning, and Diversity.

These values suggest to us why we stay in the club. The folks in attendance said that they stay because of the social component; because of the opportunity to serve others locally, nationally and internationally; because of the learning and growth that comes from the programs, projects, vocational talks and inspirational moments; because of the diversity of thought they encounter; and because we just plain have fun!

Second, Kimra asked us to make some decisions based on these values. Starting with an extensive listing of the many things our club does, we drilled down to those FIVE things that we deem MOST IMPORTANT. Those five things are: Water, RYLA/Interact, Literacy, Local Projects, and International Projects.

These are our core initiatives that will guide our efforts going forward. We’ll work on existing water projects and develop new ones so as to promote basic physical health around the world; we’ll continue to devote ourselves to young people, principally through our support of RYLA and the EHS Interact Club, so as to promote a healthy future for our nation; we’ll build on the good work that our literacy team has done so as to further promote the reach and benefits of reading in our community; we’ll focus our efforts on raising money to support with our foundation grants the many deserving local projects in and around Evergreen; and we’ll continue to make our resources available in the service of international projects of various kinds so as to foster the recognition that we’re all in this together. Citizens of the world, as they say.

At meeting’s end, and after several refills of vino, we turned our vision to the merits of taking on another LEGACY PROJECT, ala the Rotary Gallery at Center Stage. A show of hands indicated that interest in this may now be sufficient to proceed with identifying possible projects. Toward this end, we talked about (1) funding and/or constructing a new PLAYGROUND at Buchanan Park, and (2) funding OPERATION WARMHEART, a project through which we would provide money for the emergency needs of military families whose husbands and wives are deployed overseas. More on all this later.

Hearty THANKS to Kimra for her help in focusing our thoughts and getting us to this point. Now it’s up to the rest of us to determine with more specificity how best to proceed.

“With the leadership we have on board and with all the good hearts and hands we have to help with the follow through, I have every confidence that our club will soar!”