HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!
We brought in the new Rotary Year with a bit of fun and work this past Tuesday at our first club meeting of the New Year. Every new Rotary year has a new theme and this year’s is: “Reach Within to Embrace Humanity“. Rotary International President Banerjee describes the theme as follows: “Through service, we are able to look within ourselves to find reserves of generosity, of grace, and of care and concern, and to seek a deeper meaning to our daily lives. We discover what it means to help a human being and, in so doing, become more fully human ourselves.”
Our new club president, Chuck Schoonmaker, decided our club should “reach within” by reintroducing ourselves to fellow club members via his favorite “ice breaker” toilet paper game. In this game, members had to tell something about themselves for every piece of TP they previously had chosen for themselves (not knowing what President Chuck was up to). Besides some fantastic new stories we also learned why each member was a Rotarian, what their favorite part about our club was, and the greatest opportunity for improvement our club has. Some highlights were:
· Many members joined because “THEY WERE INVITED”
· We have a lot of Rotary as well as worldwide experience
· Overall, Rap music is not even near the top of our list but we have many Hard Rock & Jazz fans.
· We have way too many Boston Red Sox or Bruins fans (really if you have one that’s too many right?).
· Sam Van Leer has been a Rotary President 3 times but that exorcism story will be most remembered from that night.
Most importantly though was the lessons learned about our club. We heard great stories of strong friendships, great fellowship, and the service projects that have come from those. Like many clubs though, membership has suffered and we need to do a lot better job telling our story to the local community. Although small, this club obviously has a strong base we can grow from and accomplish great things this year.
