October Newsletter - Week 1

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Recap

This week, we welcomed our 2019-2020 Rotary District Governor, Greg Maciolek. The Assistant District Governor, SueAnne Lewis came with Greg to introduce herself as well. She writes the monthly District Newsletter and is a retired Professor of Interior Design at Pellissippi State Technical Community College.

District Governor Greg Maciolek is a member of the Knoxville Breakfast Rotary Club and has been since 1999. He has a very interesting background with 26 years as a United States Air Force Fighter Pilot. He is a retired Colonel and commanded both a fighter group and the Air National Guard’s Professional Military Education Center. He grew up spending the first 45 years of his life in Detroit, Michigan, before relocating to Knoxville. He and his wife have three children and several grandchildren. He also runs two businesses here as well.



He gave us some interesting information about Rotary, before discussing his goals for the upcoming year.

• New Rotary Slogan for 2019-2020 – Rotary Connects the World
• There are 1.2 million Rotarians around the world.
• There are 64 clubs in District 6780.
• Each district makes up zones. There are 34 zones around the world. We are part of zone 30.
• Rotarians gave a total of $611,000 to the annual fund last year.
• Of that, our club gave $1,447.
• The District donated $185,228 to Polio Plus last year.
• Of that, our club donated $2,422.

2019-2020 Rotary Goals –

1. Membership – Greg’s benchmark membership goal this year is to increase membership by 128 members. However, he has set a highly ambitious goal of 192 new member additions, which equates to an additional 3 new members per club. He believes the key to increasing membership is to engage and educate new members. When people are engaged, they are more likely to stay.

2. Club Annual Reports – He would like every club to calculate the time, talent and treasure that its members give to the club. Combined with the monetary donations the club gives, this should give a complete picture of the impact that the Rotary Clubs have on their community. This report should then be made accessible to everyone so that the general public can gain awareness of how much the Rotary Club is actually doing to help their respective communities.

3. Third Grade Reading Levels – Greg would like to focus efforts on increasing Third Grade reading level percentages within our District. Up until the Third Grade, a student learns to read. But after the Third Grade, a student reads to learn. If a student is not a proficient reader by this time, then there’s only a 10% chance they will ever learn to read well. This is also what they base prison projections on! He believes that utilizing Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs may be a way to intervene for these children. Many of them can’t possibly succeed in school because it’s not a high priority to them when they are worried about not getting enough food to eat, having a place to stay or feeling safe. He wants to start focusing on meeting the kids’ basic needs first and attempting this well before the Third Grade. He suggested a few ideas including the establishment of reading and mentoring programs, as opposed to or in addition to, our Third Grade Dictionary Project. While it’s a great thing that we do, he is more interested in getting to the root of the problem and intervening early on. He referenced a great Ted Talk on ACES for those that might be interested https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_trauma_affects_health_across_a_lifetime?language=en

4. Establish a $250 Club – He challenged each member to give $200 to the Annual Fund and $50 to Polio Plus this year. He would love to see our District make a bigger impact this year and help more people!

5. Clean up DACdb & Rotary Club Central – Greg asked each club to utilize the Rotary database system. This would first require cleaning up our members on the books and adding more information about each one such as birthdates, photos, classifications, and current contact information. The system can also be used to publish a Member Directory too.

6. Bomar Foundation – Greg is looking for at least 10 clubs to step up and donate $500 each to the Bomar Foundation.

7. Public Image – Lastly, he would like to see club websites and social media channels consistently updated to create a strong presence within the area. There shouldn’t be people that live in our town that have never heard of Rotary. There’s a great video that the Cookeville Club has to help raise awareness that we could use as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rc2iBzTHwY&feature=youtu.be

Clinton Rotary Club
Meeting Address: 101 S. Hicks Street Clinton, Tennessee 37716
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 524 Clinton, Tennessee 37717