Chatterbox 0612 - Rotary Club of Belper

Meeting - 25th June
Club Assembly
There was a good turn out of members to this special meeting, along with two
guests who are potential members and AG Chris Elkin. President Martin was in
the chair for the first part of the evening and after the meal, he reported on the
previous week’s visit to watch the 20/20 cricket at the Derbyshire County Ground
and thanked John Frankland for organising it. He also reminded members of his
‘Curry Handover Lunch’ on Sunday 8th July to be held at David and Carole Soul’s –
this would be his last official function before the Installation of the new President
on 9th July. We also had a report of the Duffield Carnival held on the previous
Saturday; the weather kept fine, there were plenty of people trying the ‘Put & Pot’
and we raised £40 for our charities.
President Martin then invited SVP Graham Wright to lead the club through the
Assembly. A booklet of the various speeches and reports to be presented had been
prepared and distributed to the members prior to the meeting and full details of
the proceedings can be found therein; there was the opportunity for members to
raise questions with the incoming officers. Graham’s address - ‘The Year of the DG’
follows:
The coming twelve months are going to be very different for the Rotary Club of Belper
and Duffield. For the first time since 1935-7, when the Rev A Forbes Fletcher was DG of
District 107, we have one of our members, David Ashley, taking over the role of District
Governor. This appointment is a major honour for our Club and it will bring some exciting
opportunities but also some real challenges.
During his year David will be visiting all the clubs in the District along with their associated
Charters. Paul Taylor has taken on the responsibility of arranging transport and drivers for
the majority of these visits and he is doing a splendid job; clubs are making his job more
difficult with changes to their diaries. This in itself represents a major commitment by the club
members and we have to be very realistic, bearing in mind the relatively small number of
members that we have, regarding projects for the year. The Club will also be out in force for
the District Conference at Southport.
The two areas that I would like to concentrate on this year are firstly to begin to make
the Club more a part of District 1220, especially with the Erewash Clubs and secondly to try
and move the Club to a position where we are more attractive to potential members and in
turn keep our own members stimulated.
The fact that David will be DG this year will help enormously with the first part as the
majority of our members will be visiting other clubs in the district. We will also be including
at least two Scatter nights in our programme when I hope our members will take the
opportunity of visiting other Clubs, in particular those in the Erewash Group. Hopefully we will
be able to have this year’s GSE team visiting the Club giving us the opportunity of inviting the
other Erewash Clubs to join us for the evening. We will take the opportunity to have more
joint meetings when possible. A programme with more variation is planned along with an
experiment of taking the meetings out to other venues within our catchment area. These
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