Seminars Last Weekend & Things

I attended the Membership Seminar which was really refreshing. First of all we had a presentation on what actual membership figures were by Zone, internationally and it is interesting that our Club is smack on the average membership for South Africa! We then split into groups and discussed various issues in a session run by Rais Pearson of Benoni Aurora. The questions we were asked were relevant...Why do so few Black People join Rotary?....Why so few Young Members? I'm not going to report back on this as we will get a breakdown of the discussions in the future.

As membership is so important there will be a bit of a Board reshuffle that will come into operation in the New Year. Allan Beuthin will be taking over Membership and staying on the Board whilst Joan Donet will join the Board to take over his Admin Portfolio. Linda Vink will also join the Board. Having PR outside the Board hasn't really worked and I'm sure that having Linda there will make a big difference. At our last Board Meeting of the year on the 7th December we will discuss changes to the Committees, where necessary, as Membership is probably too small and Ian Widdop has lost Joan from New Generations. Just give this some thought as we will discuss this at the Business Meeting on the 9th December.

Mike Vink attended the Foundation Seminar and I don't know what happened there as he said it was quite complicated. He'll give a short report back on Wednesday.

Dominic Moss's talk on African Zoos - the way forward, was fascinating and it was particularly interesting to hear how the Johannesburg Zoo is so well recognised internationally and how it continues to make progress in terms of research and mentorship for the benefit of our continent.

I'm really looking forward to our guest speakers this week. It is always a pleasure to have young people to entertain us. The suggestion came from a former colleague of mine who was a music compiler at the SABC Maggie Fletcher.