My induction as President was delayed until 19th July 2016 largely due to our club’s substantial involvement with the Rotary organised event called RYLA. This was successfully completed early in July. With the changeover to Gavin Green on the 20th June 2017, I was effectively a President for just 11 months although officially from 1/7/16 to 1/7/17!
The selection of a good team is always helpful to ensure a good year. This certainly was the case in my year. Combining the International, Youth and Vocation responsibilities into one committee (sometimes referred to as “The Composite Committee”) was a good initiative in light of the clubs reduced membership. At times this placed the leader, Fred Holland, under some stress however this was very capably handled by his committee in a very professional manner. Effectively our club now has three committees-down from four in previous years.
 
Recommendations have been made to include the projects “Apprentice of the Year” and “Police Awards” under the Community Committee responsibilities for the coming year.
 
My Board decided early on that we would have a “Fun Night” at least once a month and this was well and truly achieved, however at times putting pressure on the organising and planning of Guest Speakers - so ably handed by a well-organised Rob Mouncey.
 
Early in the year we needed to change to a new Editor for the Keyway, and this was very successfully taken on by David Moat of the newly formed Business Builders Group. He did an excellent job week after week with never once a complaint about receiving copy late and sometimes none at all from certain members. He calmly produced a well put together Keyway with plenty of contribution from myself. Late in May, David had to resign from the club for business reasons and again I was left with the responsibility of finding a replacement. Initially no one came forward and then to the club’s good fortune a new member started coming along to the Tuesday morning Rotary Business Builders Group meetings. Juergen Arndt quickly became aware of the opportunity to help the club and volunteered his services as Editor of the Keyway. What a huge relief this was to be able to both thank him for his kind offer of help and then later on induct him as a member of the Club.
 
It became clear to the Board that the initiatives started last year for the promotion of the club’s activities through Social Media was essential in our endeavours to gain new members. Rotary International had developed a software package called “ClubRunner” and all clubs have been encouraged to subscribe as users. This has now been actioned and we expect to use it for a wide variety of club processes such as membership records, Keyway editing and distribution, website development, meeting procedure, speaker planning, budgeting and financial control.
 
ClubRunner and the development of our Social Media exposure should enable us to spread the word about Rotary in our District and locally, and this will ultimately help with membership growth.
 
This year’s District Conference was held at the Royal NZ Yacht Squadron, in Westhaven, in May and four couples attended from our club. It was an amazing weekend giving all participants an opportunity to hear some excellent speakers, enjoy the company of Rotarians from other clubs and have a real fun time socially. Our four couples all stayed for two nights at the Adina Hotel in the City and thoroughly enjoyed the socialising helped along by Gavin’s drinks and nibbles!!.