Goodness!! The first month of my Governorship has passed very quickly, even if the second half of the month was in lockdown again.
My first surprise for the month was the decision by the Rotary International Board that District 9810 should form a new district with D9820 because their membership had fallen below 1,100 members. The two districts are required to prepare a Consolidation Plan by 1 December 2021 with a view of it coming into effect on 1 July 2024. The plan will not come into effect if D9810 can increase their membership above 1,100 members by 1 July 2022. We should not gloat because our membership is only 1,138. The District has prepared a Membership Initiative Plan to improve our membership numbers under the leadership of our District Membership Chair, Linda Humphries. Linda will be running a number of membership summits around the district and engaging membership champions in each cluster.
As well as attending the District changeover luncheon at Quality Inn, Traralgon where I was inducted into the Governor position, I have managed to travel around the District attending changeovers at eleven clubs. Unfortunately, there have been a number of clubs since then that have cancelled or postponed their changeover event because of the Covid-19 outbreak.
I have also attended a couple of virtual meetings with the leaders of District 9810 to discuss the planned consolidation of the district, a MUNA planning meeting by Zoom, a luncheon with the members of the Community & Vocation teams in Warragul, and a Council of Governors meeting by Zoom. Although MUNA will be a virtual programme this year, delegates still need to research the country they are representing for their presentation. We are pleased to see that we have 58 student delegates representing 29 countries. This is a record number of delegates. Well done to the MUNA committee.
