What’s in the bag for the District Conference?

Have a look and see for yourself!  There are lots of surprises, and certainly more contents than meet the eye from the outside.
                                                   
This year we will have two interactive forums with two very different Past Rotary International Presidents—one from California and the other from Mexico--and two very different PDG’s—one from Hawaii and the other from East Africa.  You will have the opportunity to ask questions about Rotary’s past, present and future, where the challenges lie for the organization and the Foundation in the future, and what it’s like behind the scenes to bring and hold together so many different cultures and ethnic groups with so many differing points of view and needs.  After all, the Rotary flag flies in more countries and geographic areas than does the flag of the United Nations.  How indeed do we do it, how will we do it, to remain a vibrant and healthy organization?

To add to our international flavor and substance we will have sessions with a returned and an outbound Ambassadorial Scholar, with our GSE teams to and from Argentina, and with a Peace Scholar from Australia who is now a Visiting Scholar in the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley and a lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, where he teaches courses in International Relations and US Foreign Policy in the Middle East.  Scott Field is currently preparing manuscripts on the management of Hamas in Palestinian politics, the prospects for democracy in Iran, and the implications for US policy. 

All that and more in one bag.  Register now.

(From D5110 newsletter)

This month in Rotary history -- Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland

In May 1914, Rotary clubs in Great Britain and Ireland met in London and agreed to form the British Association of Rotary Clubs.  They elected R.W. Pentland as the first president of the organization, which was to have its own constitution.  The next month, at that year’s Rotary convention in Houston, the International Association of Rotary Clubs recognized the British group as a legitimate extension of Rotary, and clubs in Britain agreed to affiliate with and pay fees to the international organization.

In his convention address, RI President Russell F. Greiner said: “Feeling that we were not familiar with local conditions in Great Britain and Ireland, I strongly favored the forming of an association of the clubs. . . . It has done splendid work in knitting into a closer union the Rotarians of the cities of the United Kingdom.”     
(cont’d next column)