The first face to face District Assembly for 9685 in two years plus took place on Sunday May 1 at the Castle Hill RSL Club. More than 400 Rotarians filled the auditorium to over flowing. The District is huge stretching in the west from Blackheath to Manly in the east to North Lakes Toukley in the north. In all, the District encompasses nearly 12,000 square km.
Ms. Jennifer Jones, the first woman to be President of Rotary International opened The Assembly with the "Imagine" theme in a pre-recorded speech. She focused her remarks on Rotarians’ commitment to serving the community as well as the necessity to broaden our membership base and be inclusive as possible.
Mina Howard (who represents the Blackheath Club and is our District DG for 2022-2023) served as the moderator/MC. Mina shared with all of us the thematic logo of President Jennifer which is “Imagine.” The logo is a purple doughnut surrounded by seven smaller circles. Underneath is a lipstick smear of uneven green ink. The background is all white.
As Maya explained it: the doughnut and seven circles represent the meeting of people; purple represents the conquering of polio; the green, the greening of the world; the white background; peace.
The highlight of the speakers was the keynote address by Shane Fitzsimmons. Mr. Fitzsimmons became a household name and a very well known personality from his previous position of NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner. After his brilliant leadership shown during the bushfires of 2020, he was chosen to be Australian of the Year.
Recently, he left the Rural Fire Service and was appointed The Head of Resilience NSW. This is a new department in State Cabinet. Resilience NSW helps communities rebuild and recover after natural disasters like floods, droughts and bushfires. Resilience NSW leads disaster and emergency efforts from prevention to recovery.
The second part of the “upskilling” was scheduled on the following weekends in separate two hour blocks, with one block reserved for each discipline.
Roughly half of the sessions were via Zoom with the rest, face to face at St. Josephs, Norwest. The session that this editor attended on Sunday, May 22, was focused on Public Image. The session was hosted by Mina Howard who introduced Jade Catherall who, in turn brought in additional speakers who had expertise in individual areas of Rotary Image building. The key point Jade made was that Rotary members should be prepared to explain what Rotary is; what it does; and why it is an important asset to the local community at every opportunity.
Michele Ellery then spoke about the importance of social media, in particular, Facebook and Instagram. She was followed by Ian Stuart who then spoke about the “forgotten media”, Community Radio. Finally, Bob Aitken emphasized the importance of having a relationship with traditional media, which in our case, would be “The Blue Mountain Gazette.” Bob gave numerous examples of how our Club could nurture the traditional press so that, they, in turn, would support us.