Aug 26, 2008

Rotary Club Trainer


Do you know everything there is to know about Rotary?

I know I don't, and I bet your Rotary Club members don't know everything either.
And I'm not suggesting that every Rotarian should know everything, but we want to keep Rotarians in our clubs, and the best way to keep them is to make sure they are engaged in Rotary and have knowledge about the organization.

In an effort to help educate our Club Rotarians, the Club Trainer was established by Rotary International in late 2006.
Our Rotary District 5710 made the commitment to embrace the Club Trainer position to help ensure that our Club Rotarians were as informed as possible about Rotary and our programs. The more informed we are about a subject, the more we will see all the good things that are going on and the more involved we will become.

Each club needs to establish the position of Club Trainer and ensure that the position is filled each year with a Rotarian that will take the initiative to use the materials available to teach their club more about the World of Rotary.
If your Rotary Club does not have a Club Trainer, ask your Club President to do something about it !!

It doesn't take that much time. Maybe just 5 minutes at a club meeting to have a question and answer session, maybe have a Rotary minute each week with helpful facts about Rotary, or maybe at a club assembly, have some District Committee chairs come in and have some round table discussions. Anything you can do will be of service to your club and the world of Rotary.
Learn more at the District 5710 website: http://www.rotary5710.org/
Click on Training in the left column, then on the Training page, in the left column, click on Club Trainer.

Rotary Zone Institute

So, what is a Zone Institute? Well, Rotarians (you and me) are organized into Rotary Clubs, Rotary Clubs are organized into Rotary Districts and Rotary Districts are organized into Zones. Zones cover a large area and are represented in Rotary International by a Director. We are currently part of Zone 29 and represented by RI Director Tom Branum. You club presidents may remember him as he was one of the speakers at our President elect training seminar (PETS) in April 2008.

For economic benefit, Zone Institute is combined with Zone 30, so Zones 29-30 have their event together.

Zone Institute is really training. Early in the week the District Governors elect get some much needed training and the District Trainers have a day to learn more about Rotary and how to get Rotarians in their District trained.

The rest of the week is spent in different sessions, speeches and breakouts with Rotarians providing Rotarians information about what is going on, status of our Foundation, goals, objectives, projects, etc. It is really great!

We also get to hear from next year's RI President, John Kenny from Scotland. DK Lee, our current RI President, will also be there to speak to the group.

This year's event will be held in Indianapolis (hence the logo) September 9-14.

Learn more at: www.rizones29-30.org/home.php

More later.......

Aug 18, 2008

District 5710 Foundation Banquet

Rotary is an International organization.

Sure, we do a lot of local projects that help out our communities, but in the big picture, we are all about helping people all over the world.

The reason we are able to fund all these projects is our own Rotary Foundation.

By giving to our Foundation we are able to financially support our mission of world understand and peace. In the meantime, we work to eradicate Polio from the WORLD; provide scholarships to those who would dedicate their lives to conflict resolution; help young business men and women live in another part of the world for a month and see how their profession differs from their country with Group Study Exchange; more scholarships for Ambassadorial Scholars to study for a year in a university of a foreign country; in developing nations, provide clean water, provide eye surgery, prosthetics so people can walk again; oh yeah, the matching grants we use to fund our local projects....and the list just goes on and on !!!

All this is made possible by our Foundation, we need and must support it financially. How many other foundations dedicate 100% of the donations to projects?

Now, here is an enjoyable way to help, attend our District Foundation Banquet!

Block of the date, November 8, 2008.
It will be held at the Overland Park Sheraton, 6:00pm

Go to the District 5710 website http://www.rotary5710.org/ for more information and a registration form. There are many options available, buy a table for your club and give a Paul Harris Fellow recognition, have your company sponsor a table and get your business promoted or just come and enjoy with your spouse.

From the main page of the website, click on events at the top, then go to November on the calendar, there it is on the 8th. (November is Rotary Foundation month)

Hope to see you there !!

District Foundation, Membership & Leadership Seminar



Our District Foundation, Membership and Leadership Seminar (FML) was a great success. For the first time we used our new website functions for registration and 97% of our attendees registered via the website!!! Thanks, its working!!

Pictured from left to right are PDG Rick Tinucci, our Rotary Zone membership advisor, DG 5710 Vickie Randel and Todd Lindley, our Rotary Zone Foundation advisor. Rick and Todd are from our neighboring District 6060 that includes the St. Louis area. Rick and Todd were gracious enough to make the drive to Topeka and provide our District Rotarians with some great information, thanks! We also had many of our own District Rotarians providing breakout sessions on many different subjects regarding Foundation and Membership.

Another part of the seminar is the Leadership session. We had 3 excellent topics covered: the Leadership Model 1 & 2, leading volunteers and meeting management. The comments received about these sessions were outstanding!

Some of the handouts are available on the District website, http://www.rotary5710.org/ under the Training link in the left column of the homepage, then the Foundation, Membership and Leadership Seminar link in the left column of the Training page. More will be added as we can put them out there.

Mark next year's date in your calendar for this event: August 8th, 2009

Rotary International President 2008-09, DK Lee












The President of Rotary International for 2008-09 is DK Lee from South Korea. He is pictured here with his wife, Young.

DK Lee's theme for his Rotary year is "Make Dreams Real".

His top area of focus will be the reduction of child mortality rates: "Rotary will turn the dreams of a safe and happy childhood—a childhood that becomes a long and healthy life—into a reality because all of the world’s children, are our children.”


Read the press release on the Rotary International website:

http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNews/PressCenter/PressReleases/Pages/083006_pr_DKlee.aspx

View DK Lee's "Make Dreams Real" theme presentation at the International Assembly in San Diego on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsJijThnAHY

Welcome to Rotary District 5710's blog


We are now into our 2008-09 Rotary year. Our District Governor, Vickie Randel, is from the Lawrence Rotary Club. She started her term as District Governor(DG) July 1, 2008 and will be leading us until June 30, 2009.


As DG, she is in the middle of her 'club visits'. Vickie is in the process of visiting each of our District's 48 Rotary Club's. As you can imagine, quite a scheduling task. But to hear her talk about it, she is enjoying every single visit and is learning about all the great things that the clubs in our District are accomplishing.

If you are wondering when Vickie will visit your club, the schedule is posted on the District web site.

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