The Vibrant Club training was held on Saturday, October 15. Rotary Club of Greater Houston Veterans, Membership Chair Patrick Houck was one of the attendees. Click Read More to see Patrick's take on the training.
The Vibrant Club training was held on the 15th of October at the Houston Community College – West loop campus.
After the opening session the first breakout session I attended was the Public Image session presented by Tommie and Charlie Buscemi and Patrick Harrison. A couple of takeaways was:
Rotary’s global image – Only Non governmental organization to have a seat at the United Nations (unverified) and Rotary International is represented in more countries than the UN!
Rotary’s global image – Our golden wheel is recognized in countries abroad way more than in the US as far as being the number one service organization in the world. This is partly due to universal messaging and partly due to a myriad of variations in the use of the logo. The only source for the Rotary brand elements is the Rotary brand center (Our Brand (rotary.org))
Our why - every club should have three areas of focus that support Rotary International’s seven areas of focus. The three area of focus would be our “why” and should be highlighted in all our public image communication.
The overall club feel – Every club should take time to think about when a guest comes to a meeting, what is their perspective? Are they greeted? Is there social interaction the tables? How’s the food? All of this is a part of the public image.
The second session I attended was “Connecting for Good” presented by Stacy Brevard and Jeff Tallas. This was an open discussion about membership retention and participation. A lot of good ideas were exchanged like taking time during a meeting for every member to tell their “why”, members taking on roles having a complete understanding of the role, mixing up the seating so that seasoned members sit with new members. I communicated how our club has a rep at each table to introduce guests and how that prompted me to get to know the guests at my table. One of the things I liked about this session is that there were Rotarians in the room that had been members for 30 years and one Rotarian was only a member for 3 days, so a lot of interesting feedback.
After the sessions, the speaker for the day was MARINE Veteran Walter Ulrich CEO and President of Medical Bridges. Medical Bridges provides assistance to people and communities in need Non-profit | Medical Bridges | Houston. Walter talked about how they are a repository for medical supplies, when requested they load up shipping containers and ship them to places in need like Ukraine and Florida. They recently partnered with Texas A&M to convert shipping container into medical clinics for Ukraine Helping Ukraine: Texas A&M Students and Medical Bridges convert shipping container into Mobile Clinic (click2houston.com). Walter expressed that they are constantly looking for volunteers to load containers.
Next, our District Governor Mindi Snyder spoke about upcoming district events Calendar | Rotary District 5890 (clubrunner.ca) and spoke about the work our RI President did in Pakistan Rotary International on Twitter: "Rotary International President @JenJonesRotary and our @WHO partner, @Dr_HamidJafari, reporting from outside Islamabad, Pakistan, where front-line female healthcare workers are the key to polio eradication. #EndPolio #EmpoweringWomen https://t.co/bWFwdWkrCL" / Twitter. Past District Governor, veteran, and regular guest at our meetings Bill Palko spoke about the next international convention in Melbourne Australia Melbourne | Rotary Convention. He said for anyone in our district that plans on going there are a couple of district events being planed and even a zone event while in Australia.
Overall, great use a Saturday morning, met a lot of great people, and looking forward to the next one.