Post inaugeration and I was keen to see our club start to do things. There were a couple of things going on but all on a very small scale by what I felt our club was capable of. I was keen to see action, I wanted to volunteer my time and skills (assuming I have some of use to the club) but needed someone else to come up with the cause. Then, at the end of one of the Morning meetings Jarle asked me if I’d take on the job of “Chair of Service Projects”. First response: What’s that?

The club is organised for different people to take on different roles to ensure the club runs smoothly.
The club President (Jarle for our first year) runs the meetings and acts as our public face
The President Elect (Karen) will be next years president. Karen is also Chair of the Public Relations committee.
All the functions needed to run a club have a person responsible for managing that area. Without writing hundreds of words, we also have members in the roles of Secretary, Treasurer and Membership. These members also form the club “Board”. I’ve oversimplified here a little, so forgive me for not mentioning every member in every role.

The role of “Service Projects” within the club is to oversea the activities the club is involved in. As a Committee it’s the largest within the club – involving 10 members from our 28 member total after inauguration. As chairperson I would have to run those committee meetings and report to the Board. The committee includes people overseeing our clubs activities within the “Avenues of Service”, that is International, Community and Youth (the forth Avenue is Club Service).

I had to borrow Jarle’s blue book, kind of like an instruction manual of how Rotary works to read about what Service Projects was. Before saying yes I wanted to know I’d be capable and that it would fit alongside other things I do. Having read that, I was happy to say yes – at last I could start feeling useful!

There was good news and bad news in this.
Good news: The board had decided that this committee needed a Deputy to assist in it’s running and Lucy was being asked if she’d like to take this role on. Both of us would report to the board.
Bad News: I had become responsible for organising a Fun Day. That was all I knew, my first fear was that we had to organise everything, including publicity,and it was less than a month away.

Now I had the job, I had to figure out how to do it. Fellowship, a word so often mentioned through Rotary, seemed to be the key…

So far, I’ve been invited to a new club then decided to join a new club. However, the club was still in formation phase. To start a new club Rotary needs it to have a certain number of members and an infrastructure in place. The new club members need to commit themselves to the serving the Object of Rotary. They need to pay their membership fees too (yes, there is a cost to joining Rotary – it’s what pays the expenses of running the system). I’d like to explain more about exactly what hoops the club had to pass through, but the truth is I don’t really know. I’d only been going for 6 or 7 meetings when Inauguration day had arrived. Whatever we as a club had to have achieved, we’d done it and a special meeting was arranged where the whole of Rotary (or perhaps, the local Rotarians able to visit) would get to inspect us as a new club.

Wednesday April 23rd 2008 is a day I will remember for a long time. Before the meeting I saw that the Rotary District Governor* would be joining us for breakfast to officially inaugurate our club and us as new members into Rotary. I recognised the name of the District Governor. Dennis Spiller was, for want of a better word, one of the Youth Leaders who worked with me as a teenager. It was through the Kent Association of Boys Clubs (which later changed it’s name to KABC Kent Youth Trust because there was trouble having Boys in the name, even though girls had been involved for years. It’s now known as just “Kent Youth”). Dennis is also part of a group called the “County Boys Club” (CBC), they organised a range of events and activities for young people on a county wide basis. Actually, I’m still a member of County Boys Club myself but life took me away from that in other directions. One of the things they organised was a set of weekend training courses aimed at developing young people, teaching skills useful in running a youth club. Dennis was one of the several staff organising and teaching on those weekends. One of the things I learnt at those weekends (I still remember) was how to run meetings. The role of the Chairperson, the Secretary, the Treasurer (if there was one), how an agenda works, how minutes work, how to take minutes, how sub committees work, and so on. One of my first observations of Rotary was how the meetings were run the same way as the systems I’d learnt at those weekend training events with the CBC. Meeting Dennis again brought back lots of happy memories of growing up.

The ceremony itself was run like clockwork. As our club meets at Canterbury Cathedral it already made for a most impressive venue. After breakfast, Dennis made a speech about what Rotary is and how important it is that new clubs are formed. Another Rotarian then introduced all of us new members by name and profession. Dennis then made the formal statements that officially announced the “Rotary Club of Canterbury Sunrise” as part of Rotary. He finished at precisely 07:59 and 58 seconds, then the Bells of Canterbury Cathedral rang out as if to join in the occasion (they ring at 8am every morning – but I had to admire the timekeeping of the whole morning).

So, there we all were, a group of new Rotarians, founder members of a club that, if it is as fortunate as other nearby clubs, will last over 100 years. Or maybe it wont, but it’s kind of special to be there at the beginning.

Now we’ve formed a Rotary club, what happens next? Read on dear friend…

*A quick comment on the organisation structure.
Our club is a part of District 1120. The District has a District Governor who in the year we were formed was Dennis Spiller.
The District is a part of RIBI, Rotary International in Britain and Ireland, and that in turn is part of Rotary International.

I like to understand things before I make any commitment. Joining Rotary meant I had to understand exactly why I was joining and what I was committed to. Let’s be selfish here too, what’s in it for me? Getting up earlier than normal one day a week isn’t really very demanding but even so – I like my sleep!

I didn’t join on the first meeting. In fact I think it was about 3 meetings before I confirmed I’d join and completed the application form. I had to find out what Rotary was about and why. As a large organisation it does have an objective, simply called the “Object of Rotary”. Read it, and you’ll know why it took me a few weeks to understand it!

The Object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:

1. FIRST. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
2. SECOND. High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
3. THIRD. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life;
4. FOURTH. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

Based on the Object of Rotary, the Avenues of Service are Rotarys philosophical cornerstone and the foundation on which club activity is based:

• Club Service focuses on strengthening fellowship and ensuring the effective functioning of the club.
• Vocational Service encourages Rotarians to serve others through their vocations and to practice high ethical standards.
• Community Service covers the projects and activities the club undertakes to improve life in its community.
• International Service encompasses actions taken to expand Rotarys humanitarian reach around the globe and to promote world understanding and peace.

The club service element positively encourages things to run smoothly. I can appreciate an organisation that includes it’s administration processes as an integral part of its aims. The more I’m involved in Rotary, the more I see an impressive infrastructure for organising huge events by spreading the load effectively over a large number of commited people.

The “what’s in it for me?” question is also covered by the word “fellowship” in that line. The people I’ve met in and through Rotary have all been nice people. The reward for being so community spirited is meeting lots of like minded people. I’ve had interesting conversations with Rotarians in my own club and in other clubs, sharing experiences, knowledge and their opinions on the way things are. I’ve also found it interesting that so far I haven’t seen too much politics getting in the way of the Object. People have differing opinions but seem to understand the importance of of the object of service over the detail that allows things to functions. One good example of this is when I visited another club. For that story though you’ll have to read this later blog posting. For now, the summary of this post is that Rotary is an organisation I felt comfortable joining.