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President's Message
July 27, 2010
Fellow Rotarians:
It is truly a great honour and privilege to have the opportunity to lead the Rotary Club of Victoria for 2010-2011, as its first woman President. We are a vibrant organization, one of Victoria's oldest and leading service clubs, and we have a very distinguished history with many dedicated past-Presidents. With this in mind, and with the help of the membership, I intend to work enthusiastically to fulfill our ideals and visions in the coming year. I am very grateful for the encouragement that I have received during the past year, and for that, I must thank you all. With great anticipation I am looking forward to an exciting year ahead.
As many of you may know, the training for the President-Elect is extensive. In preparation for my year as President I was actively involved with meetings, seminars and workshops. I have been working with Tav MacPherson, Assistant District Governor, and the other Presidents-Elect once a month for the past year. As well, I attended the DTLA, the District Training Leadership Assemble in Port Angeles with Dr. Robert Martin, our District Governor, and the Pacific Northwest President-Elect Training Seminar in Seattle with 850 members from many other districts.
As part of the further preparation for 2010-2011, the new Rotary Board and Chairpersons of all the committees met this last May where I gave a Power Point Presentation with an overview of the year's plans. In it, I provided details of some of the proposed programs and services at the local and global level that we have the opportunity to sponsor. To help keep us focused on our goals, I will happily present it again at an upcoming luncheon in early August. As part of our readiness, each President is asked to choose a focus for his/her year from a very wide variety of possible choices. As a retired teacher with an interest in literacy and young people, I have chosen our theme for Rotary of Victoria, which is:
To Empower & Support Youth-Locally and Globally.
In addition, the theme chosen by our District Governor, Dr. Robert Martins for District 5020, is to take every opportunity to remind us to be PROUD Rotarians. He also asked us to make certain that we utilize our PUBLICITY to celebrate the many accomplishments of Rotary throughout the year. Because of the focus on publicity, we divided this area into three components: Public Relations, Communications, and Media. As a result, we have three Directors devoted to publicity and, together, they will share our accomplishments and achievements with the public at large.
Furthermore, the President of Rotary International for 2010-2011, Ray Klinginsmith, when looking for the words he believed captured the essence of Rotary, emphasized his theme for the year to be "Building Communities-Bridging Continents". He felt that Rotary is able to build spirit and resources because it is still the best in the world at globally linking people of goodwill. He wants us to remember that Rotary International operates in 200 countries, making up 33,000 service clubs with 1.2 million worldwide members of every religion and race. Rotary's motto, "Service Above Self", exemplifies the humanitarian spirit of our global organization.
During its second century of service, Rotary International has asked each Rotary Club to implement a District Leadership Plan to ensure stability, growth and success. This approach, which is to "get back to basics", includes strategic planning and goal setting. We have had our Strategic Plan in place, implemented by our 2008 President Terry Toone, with David Stocks as our facilitator. This year, we have used it as a fundamental focus for our Club, and the chairperson, Patrick Hunt, has kept us on task, setting the stage for future plans and progress. The Leadership plan has now been extended to include an aspect called "Visioning", the Facilitator of which we have scheduled for Saturday, September 25th. This program encourages members by eliciting, designing and endorsing the club's own goals. He/she sets out the steps necessary to achieve these defined goals, resulting in a "Vision", not decided by the Rotary District or Rotary International, but one designed and endorsed by the club's own members.
So, with that brief overview of the themes for the coming year, I will be calling on all of you to support our goals. It is these collective humanitarian efforts that link us to a proud century-long tradition of worldwide public service, and I am anticipating that by working together for the good of our Rotary Club of Victoria, we can make this a fantastic year.
Carol Livingstone
President 2010 - 11
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