This is one of the best presentations I’ve seen for a long time, so that’s two phenomenal presenations over the course of one weekend! I was worried at first, there was no title in my original programe and I really had no idea on what the topic would be. Some tired, aged Rotarian on an obscure detail of Rotary perhaps?

Geoff began by standing behind the lecturn, a slow introduction, tediously slow first presentation slide of his name coming up, the longest possible introduction ‘President of this, presedent of that…..’ and eventually ‘ and my fellow Rotarians’. Then the pace changed, he said ‘ photo! ‘ and dashed to the side as a photographer was taking a picture. Returning he said ‘Sorry, I didn’t want the microphone to be in the way of the shot’, which had most of us in laughter the joke being he was clearly larger than the microphone stand.

It got better from there on, video clips of silly things being used to highlight different points of his presentation. Covering all the good things of Rotary in his, if I rememember, 20 years of service. Dressing up as Father Christmas, helping build things in third world countries, meeting a myriad of different people united by the objects of rotary.

The presentation was both motivating and entertaining. He said that Rotary needs to change today as it has always changed with time in the past. We, as Rotarians, need to tell people what we are doing and invite them to our clubs not for the boring bits of ‘business meetings’ but to the events and activities we organise. The long term future of Rotary as an organisation is up to us as members today. He did the best presentation gesture I’ve seen for many years. At the back of the stage, hanging from wires was a large Rotary emblem. During the part he was telling us that we could make a difference he took some paces back, pushed the emblem so it started swining and said Look even I can move Rotary, to great appluase from the audience.

I read later the topic he was speaking on was Laughter to the end! , pretty accurate then.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
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The Yellowmen of Kadongdong was a short presentation by a club called Senlac from Sussex. Their members have worked on building a health clinic in Kenya. It really is quite inspring to see what a group of people can achieve when they work on it. It’s also nice for me to see the variety of club activities and ‘service projects’. This club has made a big difference to the international community in the same way other clubs have made a big difference to their local communities. As time goes on, I wonder what our club will achieve, maybe there’ll be a group of Canterbury Sunrise members on stage in 10 years time, inspriing members of a new club not yet imagined.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
<--- Previous Post or Next Post in this series —>
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Orpheus centre with Richard Stilgoe. I have vague memories of Richard Stilgoe on TV. Circle of children around and to the side of him. Guitar maybe, piano or organ. I can’t recall any of his music but imagine he was once quite famous.

Today, he runs the Orpheus centre providing an education for a few 18-21 year old disabled students. They skills they teach are about self sufficiency, the things I would take for granted like paying the gas bill his school will teach. They also use music and drama as a tool to build self confidence and we were treated to a performance by 4 students. It really was a treat. Richard would accompany them on his keyboard but they would sing and play instruments adapted to meet their needs. At the end, they had the whole theatre singing along to an upbeat song they’d written, they had us doing the actions too.
Orpheus is a school to be proud of, making a real and visible difference to the lives of people in our community, teaching skills we don’t (can’t?) measure with any standard of GCSE or A level grading system.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
<--- Previous Post or Next Post in this series —>
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