August: The Membership and New Club Development Month, by PDG Kenneth Wong & PDG HW Fung
Register for the District Membership Forum on 22 August 2020, 2:00-5:30 p.m. at this link: https://rotary3450.org/?p=39754#en
The Month of August
The month of August is designated by Rotary International as the Membership and New Club Development Month. It serves to remind Club Presidents and Club Membership Committees that at the beginning of the new Rotary Year, they should set membership goals and draw up concrete plans to achieve the goals for their clubs.
Rise to the Challenge: Opening Opportunities
Membership development is facing serious challenge from the Covid-19 pandemic. Never have we experienced such prolonged periods of social distancing and isolation. Not only social and economic activities have been seriously affected, but also Rotary activities involving the physical presence of Rotarians have completed ceased. This has inevitably caused traditional means of connecting and engaging with members non-applicable, and may also render traditional means of retaining and recruiting members not as effective.
But Rotarians are leaders, innovators, people of action and problem solvers, and should take the lead in rising to the challenge and opening new opportunities, especially in membership development which is of top strategic priority to Rotary. For this purpose, Rotarians of D3450 are invited to join the District Membership Forum scheduled to be held in the afternoon of 22 August 2020, Saturday, from 2:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., in which we will share knowledge and experience on best practices and new opportunities of achieving membership growth.
Membership Forum on-line
For the very first time, our Membership Forum will be held in the virtual form, with a plenary session broadcast on Youtube live, followed by six breakout sessions which will be conducted by Zoom. A rich programme has been organised. Apart from words of wisdom which will be delivered by senior Rotary Leaders, a Performance Coach will speak on how young people at the age of 30’s may leap frog in their careers; the Director of Toastmaster District 89 will participate in one of the breakout sessions to explore with us how Rotary and Toastmaster could collaborate in membership development; and Rotary leaders in our district will lead discussions in the breakout sessions on how to grow membership organically, why Rotaractors may turn into Rotarians, the benefits of satellite clubs, the usefulness of digital platforms for organizing Rotary activities, and how such digital means can be applied to the design of Virtual Rotary Exchange programs which will be attractive to young people who wish to benefit from Rotary’s Group Study Exchange or Vocational Training Team projects, the physical form of which can no longer be implemented due to the pandemic.
Register for the Forum
Pre-registration is necessary for joining the Forum. Please see the e-Poster attached. To register for attending the Forum, please click on the link given at the beginning of this article, or use the QR codes shown on the e-Poster. This will lead you to the information page of the Forum, and the registration link for the Forum can be found at the very beginning of the information page. Details of the Forum’s programme including the topics, the time slots and the speakers and panelists of the various sessions are available on the information page.
For each session, be it the plenary or any one of the six breakout sessions, you may choose to attend either the English-speaking session or the Cantonese-speaking session. While the plenary session will run during 2:00-3:00 p.m., the six breakout sessions will run by two time slots, one during 3:15-4:15 p.m., and the other during 4:30-5:30 p.m. It is therefore possible for a participant to register for and attend two breakout sessions.
Get your souvenir
Last but not the least, every participant who stays on to attend the breakout sessions will receive a nice back-pack as a souvenir. The souvenirs in various color schemes are shown below for your easy reference.
We look forward to welcoming you at the District Membership Forum on 22 August, Saturday!
