So, all of a sudden it seemed Club Assembly day was upon us.

Lucy spent an evening with me planning what we would say and preparing a flip chart pad as our presentation tool. Now, you’re probably aware that I’m not afraid of doing a presentation but I generally hate every second of it. I fret all the way through, I miss bits I wanted to say, I speak far to fast and at the end of it I go over in my mind all the things that I should have done better. I can’t remember ever doing so complex a presentation as this one. Complex in that I wanted a lot of things to happen in the right way and it wasn’t just me speaking, there were parts for 4 other members.

I was taught that when presenting it is perfectly acceptable to control the room and event in order to get your message across. I sort of decided that this would apply not just to my allotted presentation time but to control of the whole assembly meeting. The week before Lucy had read the “Object of Rotary” at the start of the breakfast meeting. She stumbled upon a word or two at the end at which point John made light of it. Ours is a happy and light hearted club, so all was taken in good humour. At the beginning of our Club Assembly meeting we gave John the Object of Rotary to read…. in French. Well, seeing as Lucy is French and stumbled over the English version we thought it would be fun to get John to read the object in something other than his first language. This wasn’t done purely for fun though, I wanted everyone to remember the “Object of Rotary”. Having it read in a different language was more effective than my original plan – to get someone to give the object of rotary from memory. As I said earlier, the object is a tough set of words and no one in our club has memorised them. Much merriment later, the Assembly meeting continued in what I assume is the normal way, with each committee reporting their progress to everyone in the club – finishing with a short speech from Martin who was visiting to represent District. Poor chap, It was his first visit to us and I don’t think he quite understood our approach to Rotary.

After all the other committees had spoken, we were the last to go. The meeting was slightly overrunning so I made the decision to condense the first part of our presentation. Referring to the object of rotary I challenged anyone to stand up and say it. Obviously no one could. If I had more time I might have managed to get the gist of the object from those around the room. We had the full objects printed and taped into our flip chart so everyone got to remember what the object was, then we gave them our “Object of Rotary in 3 words” version:

Do Good Things

Having set the objective clearly, the next question is ‘What counts as a good thing?’. This is where I got to introduce Craig to talk about what Playing for Success is. Following him was Steve Auty on the Pilgrims Hopice, with Diane following Steve on how we will be helping Pilgrims by organising and running a Summer Ball and how she would eventually be getting more of us to help as things developed with her plans. I think this is the part we lost Martin from District, when Diane said with a straight face she expected us to raise 50,000. I gather that’s a large amount for a club in it’s first year but the amount itself is a side effect of knowing what we can achieve. The week before Assembly the target was 40,000 but a local farmer offered a better venue so Diane expects us to raise more.

Closing the presentation I wanted to get across two messages. Firstly, I wanted everyone to at least remember our short object of rotary (Do Good Things) if they weren’t going to remember the full version. Do Good Things is something everyone is starting to say. Secondly, I wanted them all to realise that as members it’s up to them all to find the Opportunities to Do Good Things. Present the opportunity to the club and maybe someone in the club can help. Maybe we can’t, we’ll certainly not be able to help in every case but the first step is always to identify the opportunity to serve. I’m not sure I got that message across so well.

What next? Well, time start Doing Good Things…

You might get the feeling that my involvement in Rotary is a lot of meetings. That might be true, but think only in the good sense of meetings. That is, the good thing of meeting people, talking and learning, rather than boring meetings that drone on forever with no aim.

Meeting Steve Auty, another new Rotarian, at the Pilgrims Hospice was another huge learning experience for me. Firstly, let me tell you what Pilgrims is and what it does. The hospice movement steps in once the NHS step out. When you have a terminal disease and you can no longer be treated, the hospice movement will help you and your family cope with that news and make sure the last stage of your life is the best it can be. As Steve said to me, as a society we rarely speak of what happens when you know you’re going to die and we should probably speak to each other more about it. While some of us will die suddenly, for others there will be a period where a doctor runs some tests and tells us there is little that modern medicine can do for us. If that’s said to you, what will you do?

The hospice movement is entirely funded by charitable donations. They will be there with specialist staff to help not only you come to terms with things, including managing treatment that can ease suffering through to the end of your life, but the hospice movement will be there for your family too. Steve explained to me that many people view the hospice movement as somewhere you go to die, but in reality only 40% of … i don’t think patient is the right word but it will do for now, only 40% of patients die in the hospice. Many make a decision they would prefer to die at home and the hospice will do everything they can to allow people to stay at home instead of in the hospice itself. While the number of volunteers at the hospice outweigh paid staff by a huge amount, some staff need qualifications and resources cost money. The hospice needs around 8 million pounds a year to run. This funding allows them to care for around 4,000 people in the final stages of life, out of around 6,000 people that deserve their care and attention in the area Pilgrims Hospice covers.

Please read this with the notation that I’ve typed these figures from memory, if they’re grossly wrong I’ll correct them but I’m sure they’re near enough. Pilgrims would very much like to expand their service to look after all the 6,000 people in East Kent and they are working hard towards growing their fund raising base to provide this.

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve visited a lot of places through my business. I’ve seen large offices and small offices, offices for designers with no expence spared and offices for workshops with sawdust or machine oil on every surface. Visiting Pilgrims I felt straight away that every penny donated to them goes to the cause and not to the office furnishings! Part of Steve’s office was occupied by a folding bed. When I asked about it he said it had been donated by someone, along with another pile of things in another corner. His office was used for storing lots of donations, if the space was needed it was used. Steve is the Chief Executive of Pilgrims Hospice and his coffee table, chairs, desk and filing cabinets looked like they’d seen service since the 1970’s. That’s not to say there was anything wrong with the furnishings, they were all fully functional. If anything it made me appreciate even more how this charity is focused directly on it’s cause and that niceties like matching furniture really aren’t important. I can say with 100% confidence this is a cause worth supporting and definitely within the ethos of “Do Good Things”.

But what to do? Well, another new Rotarian, Diane, already has that in hand. She’s organising a summer ball to take place next May in order to raise funds for Pilgrims. Pilgrims haven’t had a summer ball before. Diane’s original target was to raise 40,000, although that’s since been changed to 50,000 because in her words “I’ve been offered a better venue than I thought I could get”.

Wow! To me those figures sound huge but the more I get to know Diane the more I just know it’s going to happen.

So, two good causes, presentation day next – how we presented it and how it all went.

Oh, I almost forgot, I spent some time with Steve talking about his past as well. He made the rank of Commodore in the Navy (that’s very, very senior officer!) and told me a couple of great stories of his time in the forces. There’s some amazing experience and knowledge in our Rotary club, the more I meet with people, the more I’m glad I joined.

One of our members (Craig) was working as a teacher in an organisation called “Playing for Success” which brought them to the clubs attention. Playing for Success is a scheme part funded by the Education authority locally, part funded by a special national education fund and part funded by a sports club. Why the sports club? They provide the venue and their superstar players.

The theory goes that children can be motivated to learn things outside of school within a sports environment. The program takes 14 children each evening (56 children per 4 day week) from different schools for one term. They use a session around 2 hours long to do activities with the children that will help develop their confidence and attitude to learning. Being at the sports club means the children get to meet professional sportsmen and women and that is woven into the course as an integral part of the motivation (professional sportsmen and women are always motivated people to have reached that level).

I went to see Craig on a Thursday afternoon to find out what Playing for Success Kent is and what their goals are. They run sessions at the Kent County Cricket ground. I wanted to find out if there’s any way we (as a Rotary Club) can “Do Good Things” in a focused way. Talking with Craig was interesting in itself. Craig is from Zimbabwe but had been forced to leave due to the current political troubles there. The school he was working at had a falling student roll as farms closed and people moved away so he too had to leave with his wife. He hopes to go back one day, having seen how good a teacher he is the selfish part of me would rather he stays teaching in the UK. Still, for the time being he’s teaching the children at Playing for Success and the benefits of the program are instantly visible. Seeing work of past groups and the excitement generated by meeting different cricket stars, the way he handled and motivated this group, it’s easy to understand why the scheme is in such demand. As they are outside of the national curriculum they can focus very much on those hidden skills of confidence and positive mental attitude. These are the things that you can’t measure but intrinsically know are important.

At first glance you’d think Playing for Success has everything it needs. Great venue, all the IT equipment necessary to deliver the course. Great teachers and volunteer mentors (each class has 1 teacher and 3 volunteer mentors). The organisation is itself naturally motivated to deliver this training to as many young people as it can and to increase the use of the facility they’ve been running courses outside of school term time. For these courses they have to charge which means they don’t get to choose the children that will most benefit from the course. One of our Rotarians suggested that if we raise funds to pay for the additional course then the additional spaces can be directed via the local Education Authority towards the children that would normally be targeted. This would definitely fall within the ethos of “Do Good Things” and as I write is still being investigated as an opportunity our club can work on.

After meeting Craig I next had to learn about Pilgrims Hospice, more reading here!