Chairman for the night was PP Dave Griffiths who welcomed Marg Ahrens and Harrison.
PP Tony Atyeo advised he had met with the incoming exchange student Sara who will be staying with the Gawler Club from January 2020 her initial stay with the Prospect Club.
PP Brian Burt was guest speaker and provided the following detail of his additction which he has had for a number of years. He explains his concerns in detail below.
Addiction is a physical or psychological need to do, take or use something, to the point where it could affect oneself, family and the wider community. Addition is most commonly associated with gambling, drugs, alcohol, and nicotine, but it’s possible to be addicted to anything, such as work, TV, food, computers, phones, shopping hoarding and the list is endless.
MY PERSONAL ADDICTION has lasted over the last 40 years. Tens of thousands of hours many of which should have been spent on productive work or with my family. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on wine, meals, travel accommodation, subscriptions, donations. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres – which has taken me to Alice Springs, Darwin, Cairns, Brisbane, Toowomba, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Perth, Broome, and even places like Allora and Mungindi in Australia and overseas to places like Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the UK, Scandinavia, Europe, the US and Canada. Met and befriended hundreds of people, stayed in their homed and many of them have stayed in mine. Hosted half a dozen exchange students and 9 GSE awardees. Contact with thousands of people and affected millions. Tried to overcome it several time, but failed and returned to my old habits.
The Gawler Rotary Club has a proud record of service. For those of you with failing short term memories, I remind you that we recently held our 3000 meeting. We have been involved in almost every project of significance in this town for the last 65 years and initiated many of them. (If anyone can prove that is an exaggeration, I will donate $1000 to the Rotary Foundation).
This century our membership has fallen by 43%. From 2015 to 2018 the fall was 30%.
Has the need for what we are doing fallen proportionately? Has the value of what we are doing diminished? Attendance at our meetings has dropped far more than this and we have had several meetings with only about 20 people present. That is not sustainable.
It is hard to get volunteers to chair our meetings. On 2 occasions I have chaired the meeting and acted as sergeant. Exchange student Ava chaired one meeting.
We are at the crossroads. At last Monday’s Club Service Meeting 3 possibilities were discussed.
A We just go on shrinking and fade into the sunset.
B We merge with another club.
C We get off our individual and collective bums and rejuvenate our club.
The committee adopted option C. My plea to the club is that we commit ourselves to that.
Put in place a succession plan (Dave and I undertook the role of acting joint presidents elect on an interim basis at the June 24 meeting.) Had we not done that, holding our 3000 meeting on July 1 would have breached the Association’s Incorporation’s Act of 1985 and that “Inc” in the Rotary Club of Gawler Inc is enormously significant.
Answer these questions.
- What are we going to do?
- How are we going to do it?
- Who is going to do it?
- When are we going to do it?
- What do we need to do it?
- How are we going to fund it?
Please think about what you can do to achieve this and make a personal commitment to make it work.
I look forward to hearing from you soon. THIS IS WAY BEYOND AN EIGHTY YEAR OLD ADDICT!!!
