rotary hout bay visited by dg mike saxby

DG Mike Saxby addressed Rotary Hout Bay as part of his annual visit to Rotary clubs in District 9350. He was accompanied by his wife Eve and was royally entertained by Rotary Hout Bay.  The club was numbered forty-five on his list of about sixty clubs that will be visited in 2009/10 for the purposes of report backs.

There was a 79% attendance for the evening and partners and wives attended in what was essentially a formal evening, preceded by briefings on the club’s state of affairs and progress. Even PP Butch Liebenberg was seen in a jacket.

 

Directors of service present gave reports on the position to date with their portfolios and question time was lively and informative.

 

DG Mike Saxby, in his address, spent time illustrating the extraordinary global PR value of the annual Rotary convention which he attended in Birmingham with thousands more worldwide DGs and Rotarian delegates.

Speakers such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates and UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon not only gave speeches in which they appeared to know Rotary well and were part of the Rotary family but afterwards, the DG said, these illustrious figures gave press conferences in which the name Rotary was continually referred to as a leading world brand name. He said that he was enormously impressed by attention given by Rotary International to the value of media information dissemination.

DG Saxby said that growth of membership remained an important objective of any club but in the end the real values were to let every Rotarian do for the club that which made them happy to be a Rotarian. 

He said he was impressed with Rotary Hout Bay’s projects and stressed the value of club-to-club projects in the future in the light of the cut back in Foundation matching grant spending, bearing in mind that current grant allocations were already made for next year.