|
This week
Plans for the future of the Rotary Club of Balwyn were clear, carefully thought through and detailed when delivered to the Club by President-elect Ken McQualter in his `State of the Union’ message to members.
His introduction to plans for the Club began with a `Behind the Badge’ summary starting with his birth in Yarrawonga in northern Victoria. He married Alison, and now has two sons and a daughter. He worked in chartered accounting and then spent 27 years in the travel industry and five years in a manufacturing business.
Ken McQualter (left) will take over from architect President Bill Goodwin (right) at the end of June. He addressed the problems he saw the Club facing in the coming year though the prism of the recent members survey of how they would like to see the club change. McQualter has been a member of the Rotary Club of Balwyn for 17 years.
His message included a mission statement to the Rotary Club of Balwyn and it bore evidence of a careful consideration of Rotary’s message and what Balwyn Rotary Club could do to address its weaknesses after a survey of its strengths. Club strengths included its financial strength as shown in the members’ survey. Changes on which he had been working in detail for the past six months sprang from the desires of the members as revealed by the membership survey, he said.
Threats seen for RCB included vocational imbalance in membership, the need for more family involvement and boosting fellowship and the potential development of the car park site of the market.
Part of McQualter’s plan would involve cutting the Club’s main geographic area into four and the creation of four teams under captains to run the areas to lift the involvement and nurturing of members. The four divisions of the club were to be named for four of the founders of the club – Stevens, Clark, Martin and Rigby.
Four areas of focus for 2010-2011 to go with the four new divisions included expanding fellowship, projects, better communications between members and members with the community and the membership numbers. It was necessary to seek greater membership numbers through more assiduous recruiting.
Camberwell market provided a cash flow for the club that needed to be conserved and there were plans to guard this in future. Rotary’s involvement with the community was another topic for further future work so that the community of Boroondara knew what Rotary was and what it was doing.
One of these projects was the establishment with the Bendigo Bank of a respite centre in Balwyn. Talks between Bendigo Bank and the RCB had already produced $500,000 towards the project which was to be done by the RCB. The respite centre work was to be overseen by Andrew Sudholtz and Mike Nolan.
Fellowship needed attention and the captains of the four new divisions of the Club were to keep an eye on members, whether they were sick, why they were not attending meetings and so on and to promote a relaxed ambience for members to get together. He envisaged each of the captains of the four divisions taking a special interest in their teams.
``Each captina has to look after his flock,’’ said McQualter indicating a caring attitude between members towards each other. ``Members needed more friendly social interaction like barbecues,’’ he added.
On communications, he said that 82 per cent of the members read the Bulletin but more attention was needed to inform members of the activities of their RCB.
There were plans to twin Balwyn’s district 9800 with 5840 in San Antonio in Texas in the United States.
An emphasis on the environment through RCB was to be headed by Clarke Ballard. This would include work in East Timor.
Another initiative was to increase the focus on Interact, the Rotary young peoples group, and particularly in girls’ schools. Julie Grey would head up this activity.
There were plans to establish a Balwyn Business Valued Employee Award so that RCB would be involved more in the community life of the Balwyn area and the Balwyn Traders Association.
To read more of Ken McQualter's presentation,click here.
|
