Welcome to March! I am keeping this month’s message short to highlight two all district events that every Rotarian should attend, and the club planning guide. The two events are the District Training Assembly and the District Conference. Registration for both is now open so please register quickly.
There is much more news that could be highlighted in this month’s edition, and all of those great stories are on our District Website at Rotary7910.org. I urge everyone to check into the District website on a regular basis to get the most up to date stories of interest to our clubs. Of course, we are also highlighting our collective experience on social media: Facebook (click here) and Instagram (click here). Like, follow, and share!!
DISTRICT TRAINING ASSEMBLY - SATURDAY, APRIL 6TH, 7:30 AM - 12:00 PM
What better way to welcome new members to the family of Rotary. It’s time again to pull your team together and register for the District Training Assembly. Once a year we take a morning to share ideas, fellowship and hopefully a few laughs. This year we have a fantastic program in place for everyone.
The Assembly is a great way to get all of your club members, officers and committee chairs networking, engaged and aware of what’s happening with the clubs in our District. This District Wide training event is for ALL Rotarians. Whether you are a new member, committee chair, club officer, or veteran Rotarian there is something at the Assembly for you! Learn more about how you can help enhance your club’s membership experience, public image and social media efforts, and implement new ideas for engaging service projects. Learn about next year’s grants scoring rubric to obtain a District Grant. Club Secretaries and Treasurers have programs targeted to make their jobs easier. If your club is not yet qualified to apply for foundation grants, a member of your club will be invited to attend the foundation qualification seminar. Running concurrently with the Assembly is our second New Member Orientation program. Please send as many of your members as you can to the Assembly, and your new members to the Orientation program.
This year the Assembly will be held at the Courtyard by Marriott in Marlborough. The cost is $20 per person with a maximum of $100 per club for those who preregister. The new member orientation is $10 per person. It comes with a fresh continental breakfast, loads of ideas and the highly coveted “time with friends”
The event is only a few weeks away, so please register now.
Register for the New Member Orientation (in Rotary less than 2 years) <CLICK HERE>
MULTI-DISTRICT CONFERENCE – FRIDAY MAY 3 – SATURDAY MAY 4, 2019
We have a fantastic event being planned for all Rotarians from five (5) Rotary districts. That is over 280 clubs covering the entirety of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, plus northern Connecticut, Southern Vermont and Southern New Hampshire. If you have ever been to PETS (the Presidents-elect Training Seminar) you know the energy and excitement that can happen when you get Rotarians from all over New England to train. Imagine what it will be when we all come together to celebrate!
The Conference starts on Friday May 3, 2019 with a Paul Harris Luncheon celebrating the Rotary Foundation. Many clubs have already indicated plans to cancel their weekly meeting and hold it at the Conference. Consider asking your club to do the same! Following lunch, we will have our District’s annual business meeting where delegates from your club should attend. The evening’s activities start with cocktails and continue to the huge dinner dance gala celebration of everything Rotary. The Boston Common Band – one of the best entertainment groups for private functions in the area – will be there to entertain and keep us dancing until after midnight! Of course with this being a District Conference, there is a likelihood that some of you will be up much later . . .
Saturday begins with a brunch. Young Rotarians – Interact, Essex exchange students, and RYLANs – will present to us their morning activities and how our Rotaractors helped mentor them! If you are still up for more, there are optional activities after brunch and the youth summit, such as the hotel’s indoor waterpark, a Fenway Park tour, Fenway Park batting practice, and a cocktail cruise on Boston Harbor.
The conference is conveniently located at the Ferncroft Doubltree Hotel in Danvers, Massachusetts.
There is also a special on hotel rooms for this conference. To take advantage of the special pricing, <CLICK HERE FOR HOTEL RESERVATIONS>
CLUB PLANNING GUIDE AND RECOGNITION
In addition to training and celebrating, there is one more item as we hit the home stretch of the Rotary Year. That one item is our Club Planning Guide. This guide was passed out to the Club Presidents at PETS last year to help them plan your club’s year. It has been posted on the website and your assistant governors have been telling your club about it. Now that your club’s next leaders have been trained at PETS, it is important that you enlist them to help accomplish your club’s goals and finish the year strong, so your club can start even stronger come July 1.
The Club Planning Guide is also used to provide needed recognition to our clubs for all the hard work your Rotarians put in this year. Recognitions are important, especially in volunteer organizations. Please work with your President, President-Elect and club leaders to complete this year’s guide. <CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CLUB PLANNING WORKSHEET>
I am off to Guatemala with Rotarians from around the District to help reduce respiratory illness in the rural areas around Panajachel by installing fuel efficient and vented stoves. Follow us on social media for the latest updates on the project. Remember, please send in your stories. Please send flyers for your events. Please remember to invite our Rotaractors to help on your service projects! Have a great month!
The answer to the question of how early Rotarians consumed Rotary is pretty easy. It was through our traditional clubs centered around a meal and back then it was typically lunch or dinner. The advent of breakfast clubs was a bold experiment to widen our appeal to those who could not fit into what then was our typical model of delivery, how we were consumed.
My own early exposure to Rotary was through my Dad’s Rotary Club. It was a large lunch club. Consum-er patterns were different then. I remember listening to baseball games on the radio with my Dad. Now, while many still attend games or watch on TV, a large segment of sports enthusiasts of all types consume sports via social media, on highlights shows, or streaming over the internet. Back then TV was three major networks and some UHF channels, now it’s hundreds of channels and numerous ways to view offerings from TV’s to computers to handheld devices.
We have lots of information in this Newsletter! I would love to say it is because we have so much going on in the District (which we do), but also time demands did not allow me to get this letter out sooner (oops!). When I put these together, I have no idea who, if anyone, will read the letter, but, apparently based on the emails I received asking where is the February newsletter, more than just a few of you read this! Before I get into the substance of this month's message, I just want to encourage EVERYONE to send me articles and pictures on what your club is doing. You work hard to give back and your club should get some recognition. More importantly, what you do inspires others, so together, let's Be The Inspiration and share our stories!
February 23 is Rotary's anniversary. This year marks the 114th anniversary of Rotary's founding. We have come a long way since rotating meetings in people's offices. Just pause for a moment and reflect upon all the great things Rotary clubs have done over the past 114 years to build and strengthen communities. None of us were involved in the first Rotary project of building a comfort station in Chicago, but
It took nine (9) months, but District 7910's Global Grant to support the Guatemala Stove Project received the final approval from The Rotary Foundation on Tuesday, January 29, 2019. The global grant, officially entitled “Construction of stoves to prevent respiratory diseases in Guatemala” enables the clubs in Rotary District 7910 to work with the Rotary Club of Nueva Guatemala of District 4250 to install efficient stoves that are vented out of the residence, and to establish a committee to monitor and improve the respiratory health of the communities where the stoves are being installed in 3 rural villages near Panajachel Guatemala. Huge kudos and thanks to Westborough Rotarian Jorge Yarzebski for shepherding through the grant application to make it comply with the new Rotary Foundation guidelines.
A group of approximately fifteen (15) Rotarians for clubs in District 7910 will be traveling to Guatemala to install the stoves March 23-30, 2019. There are still spots available if you want to join in the travel. Please email Jim O'Connor <HERE> for more information about the travel. If you and your club are not sending someone, please consider making a donation to the project of any amount. The donations will help defray the expenses of the volunteers traveling to Guatemala and provide additional resources for the project. Donations can be made to the Westborough Rotary Fund, Inc., 21 East Main Street, Westborough, MA 01581. Please specify the donation is for the Guatemala Stove Project.
Imagine having your newborn placed in a neo-natal intensive care unit. You and your family are traveling, or maybe you live nearby but can’t spend every waking hour in the hospital. How can you watch your baby’s progress and growth? If your child is in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit of the University of Massachusetts Memorial Children’s Medical Center in Worcester you are in luck — thanks to Rotarians throughout District 7910.
When Shrewsbury Rotarian Roy Balfour helped to coordinate the neonatal intensive care unit web cam project (NICView) at UMass Memorial back in 2014, he didn't know that one day he would become one of the benficiaries of this multi-club project. Since it's inception, NICView has allowed families from across the state, country, and even around
The Rotary Club of Framingham—serving Holliston, Hopkinton, Ashland, and Framingham—presented its second Random Act of Kindness (RAK) award in December to a little girl suffering from a number of serious physical and developmental problems, including severe breathing difficulty stemming from a mutation of the pigngene. The club’s provision of a portable oxygen concentrator for Bialennys Polanco Mercado, now two years old, will make travel with her mother Yanitsa to doctors and hospitals for treatment much easier than with the very heavy, bulky unit they have been using. The new unit cost $2,595.
Rotary's Race Across America ("RAAM") team seeks to raise $1,200,000.00 for polio in the annual 3,000 mile bike race! Here is what the RAAM team tells us about what they are doing:
The Race
We have entered a four-person bicycle team in Race Across America (RAAM) (www.raceacrossamerica.org) for 2019…our fourth year in a row. Many Rotarians followed us last year and gave to PolioPlus in support of our effort to eradicate Polio. RAAM is one of the 25 most difficult events in the world and about 30 countries are represented in the race. With 3000 miles distance and over 170,000 feet of climbing (that’s six times Mt. Everest), it is an intense, grueling, and challenging bicycle race. However, it is not as grueling or as challenging as living with polio.
Do you know anyone who might be a candidate for our D7910 Morley Scholarship? Rotary District 7910 is pleased to announce that Global Grant applications are now being accepted for the David & Eleanor Morley Endowed Global Grant Scholarship, now open from February 1st through March 31, 2019. This $35,000 one year scholarship is open to any resident of the 117 cities and towns represented by District 7910 who is planning on graduate study abroad.
Unique to D7910, the Morley Scholarship was established by a generous WPI graduate and Rotarian. It is managed by The Rotary Foundation Permanent Fund in cooperation with the D7910 Rotary Foundation Committee (Scholarship). The window of application of two months will be followed by an interview, and the announcement of one qualified candidate. Read more for the qualifications and application information.
In 2011, Kiran Singh Sirah turned 35 — “halfway through our life’s journey,” he says, citing Dante’s Divine Comedy. The UK native had been living in Edinburgh and Glasgow for a decade, working on a variety of cultural endeavors. “I felt I had done everything I needed to do and learn in Scotland. It was time to take my experiences and move them to the next level.”
That’s when Sirah heard about the Rotary Peace Fellowship. Since the program began in 2002, more than 1,200 peace fellows have received fully funded scholarships to study at one of six peace centers at universities around the world. With help from Rotarians in Scotland, Sirah eventually landed one of those scholarships and headed to North Carolina, where he earned a master’s degree in folklore studies and a graduate certificate in international peace and conflict resolution.
Many of you know or participated in the Bandey-Hefler Friendship Exchange between Rotarians in the suburbs of Boston (District 7910) and London (Districts 1110 and 1145). Since 1977, approximately 20 couples have been traveling across the Atlantic from England to the U.S. followed by 20 couples the following year going from the U.S. to England. In the fall of 2018, it was our District’s turn to host. Rotarians that hosted are eligible for an all-expenses-paid 12-day trip (excluding air fare) to England in 2019.
In addition to Bandey-Hefler, the Rotary Friendship Exchange is now another international exchange program for District 7910 Rotary members and friends that allows participants to take turns hosting one another in their homes and clubs. Rotary friendship exchanges are organized around at least one of three themes: culture, fellowship, and vocation.
Participants may travel as individuals, couples, families, or groups, and may be Rotary members or not. For help in finding potential international hosts and planning your itinerary, contact the District 7910 Rotary Friendship Exchange Chair, P.J. Avella, of the Littleton Club at avellap@comcast.net.
So you joined rotary? You had a fireside chat or a breakfast with an experienced club member. He or she told you what you needed to know to function as a good club member. Needless to say you did not learn everything about rotary in that hour!
Or, maybe not!! If you think there is more to learn, like what is Rotary's Manual of Procedure, or just how to learn more about Rotary and what other clubs do, read on. There are many resources to learn more about this great organization. Just attending meetings and talking to your fellow club members will give you a little bit of knowledge each week. But if you want to know more and faster, there are some ways to get to know more.
Posted by Logan Johnson, Communication Specialist for Rotary Alumni Relations on Jan 10, 2019
or the past few years, Rotary International has been promoting Reconnect Week as a time to remind Rotary clubs of the value of reaching out and “reconnecting” with alumni of Rotary programs like Interact, Rotaract, scholarships, Rotary Peace Fellowships, youth exchange and other regional programs. But celebrating alumni and making them feel welcome to your club is something you can and should do year-round. Alumni of Rotary make great leaders and innovators and may possess the skills you need for your next service project.
So in that spirit, we collected five events that impressed us during this year’s Reconnect Week in October to encourage you to think of ways you can reconnect with alumni in the new year.
District 7020 Alumni Association – Video Conference
District Alumni Chair William Inniss of Cayman Islands has made it a tradition with his district’s alumni association to hold an annual video conference for Reconnect Week. Since his district is made of many islands, travel between them is more difficult for in-person meetings, so this is simply the best way to keep up. During the meeting, members of the alumni association discuss their past experiences and decide how best to partner with local Rotary clubs.
Northern Illinois Rotary Alumni Association – Networking Event
Members of the Northern Illinois Rotary Alumni Association, Rotaract Club of Chicago, and Rotarians in the greater Chicago region came together for an evening of networking at One Rotary Center in
Has your club recently hosted a service project that you want to showcase to be the inspiration to other clubs? Are you planning something in the near future that you would like to share with your fellow District 7910 Rotarians?
Our District 7910 eBulletin, Website, Facebook and Instagram depend on the content provided by our clubs, so please submit your stories and we will publish them on the district website, in the next eBulletin, and on social media. Stories that showcase your club's service projects should be submitted in plain text along with a photo. If you are promoting an event, please send the flyer along with a sentence with the details of the event. Please send your stories to ssager@sagerlegal.com with the words Rotary Story in the subject line.
Rotary Connects the World! 2019-2020 Rotary International President Mark Daniel Maloney announced next year's theme to the District Governors Elect at the Rotary International Assembly. The theme for the 2019-2020 Rotary year is: Rotary Connects the World.
President-elect Mark writes: "I encourage you to share our theme widely with your fellow club members and throughout your districts to help create enthusiasm and excitement for the year ahead. . . . It is only by working together that we can truly accomplish great things."
Imagine having your newborn placed in a neo-natal intensive care unit. You and your family are traveling, or maybe you live nearby but can’t spend every waking hour in the hospital. How can you watch your baby’s progress and growth? If your child is in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit of the University of Massachusetts Memorial Children’s Medical Center in Worcester you are in luck — thanks to Rotarians throughout District 7910.
