I spent this past raining Saturday completing my Rotary President-Elect (PE) Training. Cleopatra kept a close eye on me, making sure I stayed focued! It was a LOT of information – even for someone like me with a dozen years of experience with Rotary.
The training was through the online portal myrotary.org. (https://my.rotary.org/en/login). Once you log in, you can click on ‘Knowledge and Resources” scroll to the bottom to find, “Rotary Tools”. Here you click on “Learning Center”. A plethora of topics awaits! My PE training was loaded and waiting for me. I had a feeling that our current president Kate Hoath likely took the “intermediate” training that followed the basic training…so I took that also. (I may not be competitive on the golf links….) I’m glad it was a rainy day, because all in all – both trainings took about seven hours to complete. Some takeaways I wrote down to share with you:
- Diversity spurs innovation & creativity which leads to clubs having a greater impact.
- From July 2021 to today, we have a 66.67% retention rate. Most club members leave between years 3 – 5, the second highest is years 10 – 15 (the gap I’m in now!)
- As Rotary Members we are “People of Action” – we make decisions based on evidence and are able to demonstrate our impact.
- DEI has not been removed from Rotary materials or initiatives
After completion of the PE training, I started clicking around on other topics. A recent one that was added was called, “Microaggressions”. A microaggression is a subtle, often unintentional, verbal or nonverbal communication that subtly communicates a negative message about a person's identity or background. A friend of our family recently dropped by Care & Share and introduced me to his girlfriend. The couple identify from two different minority groups. I asked, “Have you been here before?” and she immediately responded with “I grew up in Souderton.”. I quickly apologized, and clarified, “No, I meant, have you shopped at Care & Share before?” I could see her quickly relax with my clarification. I’ve thought a lot about this interaction and how difficult it must be for her when she is always defending WHERE she is from. This 15-minute training was a helpful reminder on how we each should be kind, patient speakers and make sure we are clearly communicating.
A great delight at the end of all this training was a “Leader Board” – yippee! So far, I have earned 8 Badges and 66 Points! The top of the leader board has over 33,000 points – good grief – I’ve got a long way to go!
Expect to hear more about this portal during my presidential year. I would really like to see more of our members use these resources. In addition, if you are contemplating leadership in our club, the resources on this site are very helpful! Not all the trainings are geared JUST towards Rotary topics – there are many Professional Development topics. As with most things Rotary does – it is top notch! In addition to the Microaggression training…a few titles I would like to see club members explore:
- Protecting Youth Program Participants
- Creating an Inclusive Club
- Areas of Focus
- Membership – How to attract young people, how to retain our membership
Since we are on “Spring Break” this week, and do not have a meeting – consider logging on and checking out a few of the options. I’d love to hear which trainings you attended and how many points you have on the leaderboard!
Thanks for your support of our club.
Sarah Bergin
President-Elect