Brooks Spector, Rotary Foundation Seminar, a Business Meeting and Polio Plus.

Last Week


Brooks Spector came to talk to us about America under Trump.
There was quite some confusion as to what he was going to talk about but he is very entertaining and informative so it was much enjoyed.
Unfortunately there was little time to ask questions otherwise we would probably have been there all afternoon.

We also had two visitors, Aggrey Karakunda from the Rotary Club of Kampala and Achilles Chiotis who was part of the great Greek contingent, mainly from the Embassy & Consulate, that flocked into our meeting a couple of weeks ago. Welcome back Achilles.

Aggrey Karakunda

Achilles Chiotis

And this is what Kampala looks like.....

Ken Stonestreet and I went to look at a possible International Project, the Greenacre Academy.  Obviously it is something that the committee has to discuss but I thought you would just like this picture of Ken getting to know the people there.

I have another photo where he is getting even closer and more personal but in the interests of decorum and the Club's reputation I decided not to publish.



Rotary Foundation Seminar
There is a Rotary Foundation Seminar in our part of the world, Randpark Golf Club, on Saturday morning 7th October. It finishes at 12,30 so it won't take up a whole day. Lyn has mentioned it in her letter.  The application forms only went out on Monday to be completed by the 30th September.  I had problems with trying to get the form through the web for somebody so if you are going and cannot submit via the website just print the form, scan it and send to gregst@global.co.za  Copy John Symons and he will pay as soon as we know how many and what the cost is.


Blanket Drive
Here are the final figures...

Charities. 

Phutaditjhba(Alex).    100 Blankets.

Bara(Palliative Care)    60 Blankets

.

Assemblies of God(Alex)30 Blankets.

Zandspruit(Thandani)20 Blankets.

S.A.P.S.                    30 Blankets.

St.Francis.                20 Blankets

Gracepoint.              10 Blankets.

Money Collected by Rosebank at Pic N Pay Bryanston, and paid to the Rotary Awareness Account R25,932.96.

The following paid money into the Rotary Awareness account for Rosebank but distributed blankets to their own charities.

Super Group. R72450   1035 Blankets.

Power Construction R1050   150 Blankets

K.E.S(Boikanyo) R4900.         70 Blankets.

Rivonia Catholic Church R18970.   271 Blankets.

Howarth Leviten Bonner R4600 .    65 Blankets.

Highland North Boys High R1400.  20 Blankets.

Rivonia Primary School R2800.   40 Blankets.

Gracepoint Methodist Church.R105,420.    1506 Blankets

Charities who received their blankets:-

Soweto Youth Centre.

Soweto Youth Centre(Adults).

Soweto Glenridge Park.

SANTU/HIV Aids

Lesedi Community.

Community in Lanseria & Lion Park(people with disabilities).

Meyerton Community Centre.

Mydo Mortella Youth Dev, Hammanskraal.

Johannesburg Park Station Mission.

Tosca(Alpha Inder A Tree Mission).

Community in Rivonoa/Sunninghill.

100 Main Road Community.

Cosmos City.

Disaster Mission & Social Development.

We were the highest purchasers of blankets in the District for the second year running!

This Week
It's a Business Meeting and promises to be quite a lively one!

And to get back to the Rotary Foundation it's important to see how much progress has been made with Polio Eradication.

At the Rotary International Convention in June, Rotary and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation renewed their long-standing support for ending polio in dramatic fashion: Rotary committed to raising $50 million per year over the next three years, with every dollar to be matched with two additional dollars from the Gates Foundation.

This expanded agreement will translate to up to $450 million for polio eradication activities.

Jay Wenger, director of the Gates Foundation’s polio eradication program, talks about his work as an epidemiologist and about why ending polio for good is so important.

I wanted to become a doctor ever since I was a little kid, but I originally thought I would become a country doctor – a general practitioner.

That notion changed when I had the opportunity to work at a mission hospital for a couple of months during medical school. One thing I saw during that experience was that you could deliver a lot of health care and prevent a huge amount of disease for a relatively small amount of money.  

Eventually, I became interested in infectious diseases. I liked the idea of focusing on something specific – that seemed more doable to me than knowing everything about everything, as it seemed a general practitioner needed to do. I went on to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where I received additional training in infectious disease epidemiology.

Epidemiology involves studying disease in an entire population – figuring out who gets sick, how it spreads, and how it can be prevented. It included working on outbreaks, which is like solving a disease mystery but needing to do it in a hurry.When I was at the CDC, we studied one outbreak where a dozen or so individuals in the same area wound up with the same skin infection. So I went to the affected area and started trying to figure out what these people had in common. It turned out they had all been patients at one particular clinic – that was one clue. When we looked further into the record, we found they had all had the same specific operation. In the end, we figured out that all the cases traced to a single bottle of fluid under one sink in that clinic, which had contaminated the equipment they were using. 

That’s a lot of what epidemiologists do: We track infectious diseases, try to figure out how they spread, and then, hopefully, figure out what to do to stop it.

I worked in a group at the CDC that focused on bacterial meningitis, which is an infection of the brain and spinal cord. A bacteria called Haemophilus influenzae Type B (Hib) was the most common cause, infecting up to 15,000 kids in the U.S. every year. This was when the Hib vaccine had just been developed. I got involved in monitoring how much disease was out there and how the vaccine was working, and it was really striking. We went from thousands upon thousands of cases per year to a couple of dozen as vaccine use spread to all kids across the country. 

Seeing the power of a vaccine program was a big part of what led me to get involved with polio eradication. 

I was born in 1955, which is the same year, incredibly, that the Salk vaccine for polio was licensed and introduced in the U.S. At that time, polio was the most feared infection in the country.

To understand the significance of the development of the polio vaccine, you have to understand how big the polio scare had been in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. When summer came around, parents were terrified that their children would get the disease and wind up paralyzed or even dead. When that first vaccine came out in 1955, it was hailed as a medical miracle. 

Even after I was born, the specter of polio haunted people. There were campaigns with the newer oral vaccine where drops of the vaccine would be put onto a sugar cube, which you would then eat. I can still remember getting those sugar cubes for polio as a kid.

Polio became a major example of a successful vaccine – driving down case counts from hundreds of thousands per year globally to zero in the U.S. and other wealthy countries. But polio remained a big threat in the developing world. 

The poliovirus affects a type of cell in the spinal column, and once these cells are killed, there’s no way for the brain to send messages to the muscles. The result is what’s called acute flaccid paralysis, or AFP, and that muscle doesn’t work anymore – it can’t flex or contract. The virus often affects an arm or leg, which tends to shrivel from disuse. If the disease affects the muscles of the chest or diaphragm, polio can be fatal, because the patient can’t breathe.

What makes it possible to get rid of the virus is that it can only reproduce in humans and that it can live in humans for only a few weeks to a month or so until the body gets rid of it. During that time, virus is excreted in the stool, but once outside the human body, it can survive for only a week or two. It has to find another person to infect in that time, or it dies off. So if you can break the chain of transmission – stop the virus from spreading from person to person by making enough people immune through the vaccine – you can actually drive the virus into extinction. But you have to get rid of the virus everywhere or it can come back, reinfecting places where it had been eliminated. 

This is why the World Health Assembly voted, in 1988, to eradicate polio. Rotary was incredibly important at that time. They took ownership of the mission from the beginning, and they assisted numerous countries in the early stages of this effort. 

I could see the impact they were making, and as an epidemiologist I was struck by the possibility that we could eliminate a disease from the face of the earth, if we were determined enough. 

In 2002, I had the opportunity to work with WHO in India. I directed the National Polio Surveillance Project. That’s where I got firsthand experience with how Rotary works within a country. 

A great deal of Rotary’s support resides in their fundraising, of course. With an effort like this, you need a consistent source of funding, and Rotary has made it clear that they want to see this through to the end. Their support has been unwavering.

But I think the most striking thing about working with Rotarians has been how they’ve energized the sense of commitment in each country. In the United States, they worked in every congressional district and in Washington, D.C., to promote the vaccination effort. In a place like India, I learned quickly that the support of the Rotarians is invaluable. For example, we initially faced challenges with political leaders – but regardless of who we were working with, we could always rely on a local Rotarian to connect with politicians and persuade them to support the polio program.

More broadly, Rotarians provided an instant sense of legitimacy and urgency. They were influential members of their communities, and people took notice when they advocated for polio eradication. 

Stopping polio in India was a tremendous feat. From dense cities like Mumbai to the most remote villages up in the mountains, we had to make sure every child was vaccinated. 

Most of my fieldwork was in the north, because that’s where we saw cases. As head of the surveillance program, I would go see children with polio. One time, traveling to a northern state called Uttar Pradesh, I went into a tiny single-room house, where a little girl was sitting on a mat bed with a limp leg.

Her leg had been paralyzed for a couple of months. There were things we could do, like make sure she got physical therapy and splints. But there was no way to cure her paralyzed limb. Her mom was looking at me expectantly, and I could tell what she was thinking: “Here’s this big doctor from the West and he’ll know what to do. He’ll know how to fix my child.” 

That feeling of helplessness, those moments when you’re actually seeing the victims – that’s my strongest motivator. They’re the driving force for the eradication program, because we can’t fix polio once it happens. But we can fix it before it happens.

In 2011, I took my position at the Gates Foundation. By that time, Rotary and the Gates Foundation were already huge partners, and Rotary had played a major role in getting the foundation involved in the polio eradication program several years previously.

About the same time, the last case of polio in India occurred, which energized the community to believe global eradication was really within reach. Rotary and the Gates Foundation responded by committing to a multiyear strategic plan for ending polio for good, alongside the other partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (WHO, CDC, UNICEF). 

In June 2013, Rotary announced that it would contribute $35 million per year to the effort for a five-year period, which the Gates Foundation would match 2-to-1. In June 2017, Rotary announced that it would increase that contribution to $50 million per year for the next three years, which the Gates Foundation again committed to match 2-to-1. 

What people need to realize is that with polio eradication, in contrast to many other public health programs, we can’t choose where to go. We have to go where the disease is. 

As of now, there are only three countries in the world where wild poliovirus may still circulate: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Those are incredibly challenging countries to work in, because they have much bigger issues to contend with than polio. 

We can’t forget about those places or deal with them later, because this would mean that we lose against polio – if the virus remains anywhere, it can spread back to those places we have already cleared out. We have to extend our efforts to the hardest places in the world, and to the least-reached kids in the world. 

The question I get most often is when we’ll be able to declare that polio is actually gone from the earth. I tell them that we’re pushing hard and nearly there. 

Last year at the end of July, there were 19 reported cases of polio worldwide. This year, there were only eight. However, the only way we can know that polio is really eradicated is if we record at least three years with no new cases, and I’m optimistic that we will meet this goal soon.

In my work as an epidemiologist, I’ve seen that it is possible to stop a disease as we did with smallpox. We didn’t just drive smallpox down to a small number of cases; we drove it down to nothing. 

If I were a more romantic type, I might allow myself to dream about the future of a polio-free world more often. But I’m a worker bee, and I like to keep my head down and focused on what work needs to be done to achieve that goal. 

What I try to think about – what Rotary and the Gates Foundation keep me focused on – is the human side of all this. I can still remember from my childhood how scared people were of polio. And I’ve seen firsthand in my fieldwork what polio does to its victims and their families.

That’s what keeps me working. 

Claudine Ribeiro, Brooks Spector and Sustainable Farming...how Rotary can help.

Last Week

Claudine Ribeiro talked to us about the work done by the Johannesburg Parent & Child Counselling Centre.  The amount of work they do is extraordinary and the number of schools that want to avail themselves of their services fast outstrips the resources, both financial and peoplewise.
What did surprise me was how dependent they are on volunteers which also creates problems as
many students who assist are not going to be around for very long.
It's an extremely worthwhile organisation that has been around since the 1940's.
Also visting us was an intern from the JPCCC, Emelda Ralf.



 Jean Bernardo would like to know how many are attending the braai at the Youth Leadership Course on Sunday 8th October.

This Week
Our speaker is Brooks Spector on The Next Election.

Spector settled in Johannesburg after a career as a US diplomat in Africa and East Asia. 
He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, been a consultant for an international NGO, run a theatre, and been a commentator for South African and international print/broadcast/online media, in addition to writing for The Daily Maverick from day one. He says he learned everything he needs to know about politics from ‘Casablanca.’
 Maybe he's cynical about some things, but a late Beethoven string quartet, John Coltrane’s music and a dish of Pad Thai will bring him close to tears.

Rotary, Heifer program helps farmers provide healthier food to people in their own communities

Joe Carr bends over to pluck a handful of smooth, dark-green leaves, using a pocketknife to prune weak spots before bundling them with a rubber band and dropping the bunch into an orange crate. 

Eight neat rows of vegetables line the ground under a tunnel of greenhouse plastic, supported by a series of steel hoops.

“I got a little bit of bok choy here. It’s a favorite of a lot of the customers. Generally, I can get about $2 a bunch,” Carr says. “These are totally organic, no chemicals whatsoever, totally healthy, leafy green, and all the vitamins that go with it.”

Volunteers from Rotary and Heifer International built the hoop house, also known as a high tunnel, to let Carr extend his growing season, getting an early start on crops like bok choy and tomatoes. 

Carr is one of 24 farmers scattered across central and southern Arkansas who are engaged in small-scale sustainable agriculture to grow organic produce, filling an increasing demand for locally grown food.

Heifer has been using the small-scale agriculture model for decades to alleviate hunger and fight poverty around the world. The approach has the added benefits of being environmentally friendly and offering healthier food options.

That mission dovetails with Rotary’s mission to grow local economies and improve health, so it’s not surprising the two groups have teamed up on a number of occasions in the past 30 years to improve communities by helping families escape poverty.

The connection has strengthened because several Heifer employees are members of the Rotary Club of Little Rock, Arkansas, USA, the city where Heifer has its headquarters.

“Our values line up very well,” says Ardyth Neill, a member of the Little Rock club and president of the Heifer Foundation. “With Rotary, it’s Service Above Self and helping to serve others. Heifer has been working with farmers to be accountable, pass on their gifts, train other farmers, and work together in community. It’s learning to share and care, basic things that work well together.”

Sustainability is the latest trend

Sustainable agriculture, a hot trend globally, refers to a method of growing or raising food without harming the environment, while providing fair treatment for workers and supporting local communities.

In the United States and other developed nations, a lot of food production is controlled by large industrial operations, which produce cheaper food by focusing on a single crop and using specialized equipment to cut labor costs.

But advocates of sustainable agriculture say those operations can also damage the environment by using commercial fertilizers, heavy pesticides, and other chemicals. 

The corporatization of farming has also contributed to the failure of smaller family farms, increasing the poverty rates in places like rural Arkansas. 

In addition, people become more detached from their food. 

Nationwide distribution networks have resulted in food deserts in urban areas, particularly in the U.S., England, and Australia, where poor neighborhoods have little access to fresh produce and instead rely on less nutritious fast foods and packaged products.

Small-scale sustainable agriculture, on the other hand, tends to benefit communities by keeping things local. The money you spend on food stays in your community and helps your neighbor. Farmers maximize land use by planting multiple crops that replenish the soil and reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides. If needed, organic fertilizers are used that improve a plant’s root system. 

And many nutritionists say fruits and vegetables grown closer to consumers’ homes keep more of their nutrients.

Consumers are increasingly aware of these health benefits, fueling the market for local produce.

“There’s a phenomenon going on, really nationwide, about people becoming more and more concerned and thoughtful about where their food comes from,” says Sharon Vogelpohl, a past president of the Little Rock Rotary club and a volunteer on the project. “I’m a mother of two. That’s something that I take very, very seriously.”Jordan Beard, another Rotarian involved in the project, says: “I think people see that they can change their habit around how they eat, and it can make a big difference in their life and health. It’s connected with the idea of a more active lifestyle.”

Farming around the world

The tools of small-scale sustainable agriculture look different around the world, but the principles are the same. Noel Mace, Heifer International’s program manager for Africa, explains that cooperatives play a crucial role in bringing together groups of farmers — many with both livestock and crops — and connecting them to markets.

“We are now developing more of a market-driven approach,” says Mace. “Historically, Heifer has spent a lot of time on how to bring poor farmers to a subsistence level where they can feed their families. But our mission is to end hunger and poverty, not to lessen it. Poverty is a big challenge without connecting to markets.”

How do we move you beyond a family-level production to participating with others in a market” that creates income and increases livelihood?

Heifer’s model also strives to increase women’s decision making and encourage groups to form common goals, because when a community faces poverty, everyone’s part in fighting it is crucial.

Africa has a strong dairy program, so much of Heifer’s work there flows out of milk. Tight groups of 15 to 20 farmers join with other groups in cooperatives that then have enough scale to access chilling plants and, ultimately, processing plants. The farmers then look to diversify further by using their milk co-op to sell avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, and other produce.

“If I am a consumer, I now can go to the co-op and buy milk, but also buy fresh fruits and greens, and I know it will have the same level of quality,” says Mace. “It’s really about marketing a brand, something I can rely on and know they will have when I go there.”

Mace believes the sustainable farming movement is driven internationally by a growing middle class that wants access to healthy food and can now pay for it.

“They don’t want the broiler chickens anymore with the huge breasts and giant legs. They want local poultry and are willing to pay two or three times more for it,” says Mace. “It creates a great opportunity for individuals to come together and produce poultry, vegetables, or fruits using sustainable methods and in a way this market wants.”

Figures & Form, the Flying Johnston...not Amy...Johannesburg Parent & Child Counselling Centre and Rotary's Disaster Relief Efforts.

Last Week

Joan Sainsbury brought a number of models who she works with at Figures & Form to demonstrate posing for portraiture and figure drawing and painting.  She also brought along examples of work done as well as portraits. We all enjoyed this meeting with a difference and I wonder if Joan has been successful in recruiting any of her fellow Rotarians either as models or potential artists.

Jack Young, Joan's husband was also there...or was he?

Whilst all this was going on Rotarian Howard Johnston was flying over Wanderers and looking down on us.

This Week

Our speaker this week is Claudine Ribeiro, Director of the Johannesburg Parent & Child Counselling Centre.  The Johannesburg Parent and Child Counselling Centre (JPCCC) is a counselling, training and development agency which provides short or long term therapy for adolescents, families, adults and couples and play therapy for children. Trauma, bereavement and crisis counselling are also offered and counselling is undertaken in numerous schools on a weekly basis in order to identify young people's problems early on and intervene where necessary.

We provide consulting, training and mentoring for schools and other organisations and educational, psychological and career assessments are undertaken for children and youth ranging in age from 2-25 years.

The Centre works with parents/caregivers and families in the community to strengthen their ability to care for their children and provides psycho-social support and development projects for families in difficult circumstances by providing them with opportunities to mobilise themselves to reach their full potential.

The Evolution of JPCCC

The Johannesburg Parent and Child Counselling Centre has a long standing history within the community, and hopes to continue providing support to families, children, and individuals in the years to come.

The Johannesburg Parent and Child Counselling Centre was established in 1944 as the Johannesburg Child Guidance Clinic to provide counselling and guidance for parents and children with emotional and developmental needs. For the past sixty-four years the service has gone from strength to strength, and now operates under the name of the Johannesburg Parent and Child Counselling Centre. Our services extend throughout Gauteng and we operate from premises in Soweto and Parktown.

​

In line with modern Child and Family Care Philosophy and the Children's Act of South Africa, the strengthening and preservation of family life is the focus of our services to the community. Early detection of and intervention into challenges experienced by children and their families is vital to build capacity in families and communities.

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We deal with issues such as the psycho-social impact of HIV/AIDS and poverty on children and their families, bereavement, divorce, separation, custody conflicts, marital problems, bereavement, unemployment, depression, anxiety, work-related problems and other psycho-social and emotional difficulties.

Severe storms, an earthquake, and hurricanes are wreaking havoc across the globe from the United States and Mexico to South Asia and Africa. The Rotary Foundation and Rotary clubs in affected areas are helping bring emergency aid to battered communities. 

The Rotary Foundation is collecting emergency relief funds to help victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. 

Severe rainfall caused historic flooding along the Texas coast, including in Houston, the fourth largest city by population in the United States. About 6.8 million people have been affected by the hurricane.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Irma is in the Caribbean and headed for Florida and the Atlantic coast of the United States. Already, the storm has directly affected 1.2 million people and millions more are in its path.

“The power of Rotary is in the Foundation's ability to pull help from around the world while local clubs provide immediate relief in their own communities,” says Don Mebus of the Rotary Club of Arlington, Texas.

Rotary districts along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana are collecting emergency relief funds and providing immediate aid to flood victims. 

The most powerful earthquake in a century hit the southern coast of Mexico Thursday. At least 61 people were killed in the 8.1-magnitude quake. Rescue and relief efforts are expected to be hampered by floods and a dangerous storm surge off the Gulf of Mexico as Hurricane Katia moves into the area .

In Sierra Leone, torrential rains and a mudslide in August has killed more than 500 people and destroyed nearly 2,000 homes. An orphanage where more than 60 children slept was one of the buildings swept away in the slide on the outskirts of Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital.  More than 600 people are still missing.

As estimated 40 million people across India, Bangladesh, Nepal have been affected after massive floods hit the area last month. UNICEF estimates 31 million people in India have lost their homes, and 8 million people in Bangladesh and 1.7 million in Nepal have been affected.

Rotary's partner, ShelterBox, is providing support to families displaced by the storms. 

ShelterBox teams are working with Rotarians to assess the damage and provide supplies, housing and resources in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Panama, Nepal and Bangladesh.

In Texas, hundreds of light privacy tents were deployed to evacuation centers for families to use temporarily.

Linear B, the Greek Invasion, Joan Sainsbury tells us about herself and demonstrates Figure Studies. A Rotary Club's innovative approach to Membership.

Last Week

I guessed wrong!  I assumed that Alkis Doucakis would talk about his book.  So many people who have written books do in the hopes that someone will buy it.  Instead Alkis spoke about Linear B and its deciphering and how it is effectively the first non hieroglyphic writing and an ancestor of Mycenaean Greek.  How the tablets were discovered by Sir Arthur Evans during his excavations at the Palace of Minos at Knossos, Crete and their subsequent deciphering by the self-taught analyst Michael Ventris years later and his eventual realisation that they were an early form of Greek with the same monosyllabic characteristics.

It was a fascinating talk and I hope he returns to talk about Gandhi.

We really had a Greek invasion!

Gkolios Dimitrios, Apostolos Michalopoulos (Greek Embassy Counsellor), Costa Qually (Rtn), Georgius Vlachos, Fr Georgios Tsifitsis, Varvara Passiakou.

Niki Souris & Terry Anastopoulos

Martha Cavaleros

This Week

Joan Sainsbury's turn tell us about herself.  Last week she won the bottle of wine for guessing the amount of money in the Foundation Bottle...President Lyn hands it over.  

This week it's an exciting glimpse into the weekly figure drawing sessions at Figures & Form.

Joan Sainsbury and Bianca Rathbone will share various dress-up themes, introduce some of the models and explain a typical art morning for their 55 members.

A very brief overview of Joan’s career will precede the model demonstration plus… a collection of free, unframed figure drawings as gifts will complete the presentation.

Who knows…maybe this ’exposure’ will lure some of the Rotarians to try their hand…at art of course! 

The Rotary Club of Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA, merges features of brick-and-mortar clubs with e-clubs. 

Club members load medical supplies bound for Nepal

The Rotary Club of Stone Mountain in Georgia, USA, was facing a common problem: The membership was aging, and the club struggled to attract younger members. “When you recruit, it ends up being people like you, people in the same neighborhoods and who do the same kinds of things,” notes immediate Past President Margie Kersey. “It’s a stretch for us to ask our older members to recruit people in their 40s.

As an alternate to the 2016 Council on Legislation, Kersey followed closely the discussion of changes to membership rules. “When I saw they had removed the barriers between e-clubs and regular clubs, I thought, we can be both.”

The district was encouraging her to embrace the e-club model, but the club didn’t want to lose the fellowship of in-person meetings. The solution was to become a hybrid, preserving in-person meetings but making them available online. The club launched online meetings in February.

“We use an online video conferencing service,” explains Kersey. “Many members had already used video conferencing for business, so they knew the software. And with a camera on the computer or on the person’s phone, they can see you and you can see them.” The first meeting had two online attendees, and the number has climbed steadily. Now six to eight people attend online in any given week.

This new model made membership more manageable for some current members. “We have a real estate agent in the club who is very busy,” Kersey says. “Before hybrid, the meeting was hard for her. Now she can attend from wherever she is, using her smartphone. So it’s increasing overall attendance.”

And the club is seeing clear indications that this model will draw new members as well. “We have eight potential members, and the hybrid model is part of the appeal.” One potential member is a restaurateur who can’t leave his business during the lunch rush. Attending virtually would let him keep an eye on the restaurant and still participate.

This new model may even prove useful for older members who are contemplating moving for retirement. “They can continue to be members in Stone Mountain, even if they move to Florida,” notes Kersey.

Remaking the club meant rewriting its bylaws from the ground up. “We had to rethink many things,” recalls Kersey. “We put in a requirement for 18 hours of service a year.” But they are flexible on how that requirement is fulfilled. “You could do service for a club near you”

She is convinced that Stone Mountain has found the way of the future. “I think most Rotary clubs will be hybrid eventually, with members attending in person and online.”