A number of guests have been attending our recent meetings, and they were fantastic meetings. At each of these meetings, Rotarians and guests alike had fun, thought about Rotary, found out what our superb club is doing, and heard from interesting speakers. These are great examples of Rotary fellowship and the reasons Rotarians are required to regularly attend meetings. The purpose of our club meetings is offer an opportunity for members to get to know each other. Only when we have built good relationships with our fellow members will our club be an effective force to do good in the community and to make dreams real. But our meetings do a lot more than that.

We show our commitment to the values of Rotary, and encourage each other. If a guest attends our meetings for the first time and sees the cheers I get from the club, they may think that I am a particularly popular member of the club. That is not the case at all. Our members support the club, and they do so by supporting the president of our club, whom ever he or she may be. When our members cheer, we cheer the club, represented by the president. The president’s collar has a similar meaning. Presidents of our club do not wear the president’s collar because they want to show-off, or in case they can’t remember who they were. Rather, each president wears the president’s collar to show that he or she is carrying the banner of the club and is carrying on the good work of all the previous presidents.

We are all friends in the club (some more than others) but each of us has great respect for the contributions of others. Like members of a family, our Family of Rotary is by no means perfect and I am sure not all of us have fairy-tale like relationships with each other. However, I do believe that as Rotarians, we have the same ideals and are able to work with each other to do good for the community. Through this, we learn more about each other, gain more respect for each other and build goodwill not only in the community but also with our fellow members. All this starts at our meetings.

Learning about Rotary (through Rotarian speakers and topics) and the community (through speakers who are community leaders) is also an important aspect of a Rotary meeting. We also promote Rotary by setting up banners not to remind us that a Rotary meeting is in progress, but to encourage others to find out about Rotary when they see it. This brings us to one of the most important reason for our meetings – to encourage like-minded people to join us – to make this a better world by doing good in the community and making dreams real. We can talk about Rotary to people till the cows come home but there is nothing more effective than letting them see what we do, who we are, and why we are so passionate about Rotary. The more people we have, the more fun we will have, the more we can do and more effective we can be.

To sum up, there are many reasons to have a Rotary meeting. The success of a meeting, though, is not judged by how important it is but how much fun we have doing it. As I said at the Changeover Dinner, having fun is one of the most important things. When we can serve the community whilst having fun, we really can make dreams real. What do we need to make that happen? YOU. Come to our meeting – whether you are a member, a Rotarian from another club or a guest – and we can serve the community together!


Yours in Rotary,
Gabe