I want to ask if you and your family are healthy and doing well! Please share with me if you know of any of our club members are sick or are having any difficult times. We have our Club members and our Sunshine Fund to help out our fellow Rotarian in need.
This Friday the 20th of March marks our 2nd meeting cancelled due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Everyday seems to be new restrictions and forced closings. The government is looking at 8 or more weeks before we peak with the number of infected. Once the Recreation and Senior center opens their doors for group meeting of our club’s size, we will be back to our weekly members meetings. But I don’t see this happing in April. So we need to keep up with our communications with our Club members and come up with alternative strategies in keeping us all engaged.
I plan to keep in touch with our Club weekly to update our members. Your President and your Board leaders are also wanting to maintain engagement during these times of reduced in-person meetings, projects and social events. Some ideas we came up for weekly engagement. I would like your opinions.
An interactive meeting where several people can jump in will be a bigger technical challenge, but does add more interactivity. We would have a similar meeting format but will keep it much shorter. This platform may not be for the majority of our members since a camera and microphone would be needed to make it interactive.
Weekly Presidents Message in a pre-recorded video or a weekly interactive virtual video meeting. A pre-recorded video the member could view at their leisure. As you all probably know, my strong suit is not in entertainment. To make it interesting, in addition to my weekly president's message, I would want to collect content for the video. Video presentations from speakers and our club members who want to record videos like bios, stories, happy bucks messages, etc.. We can post the weekly video on YouTube or Facebook and link in the weekly newsletter. It could be public or a private link, depending on what the members think do to our happy bucks messages.
We could use social media through our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/StrongsvilleRotary/ to have interactive engagement with our club members.
Pick a day of the week and support a "To Go" night for our local restaurants Rosewood, Trivs, J Bella, Square 22, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Olympia...all have been great supporters of our club and our community. BTW...we should not only support a "to go" night, but we should encourage our club to buy gift cards from these establishments... Thank you Brian Allen. Restaurants have been impacted. But don’t forget the many other businesses in our community and our Club members’ businesses that are being impacted too. We not only need our support, but we should encourage our families and friend to help support them.
Remember our motto “SERVICE ABOVE SELF”! We still have a responsibility to help others in need. Let’s be creative in how we can continue help during these reduced in-person restrictions. This is an opportunity for us to demonstrate that Rotary Connects the World in innovative ways.
Here are announcements of upcoming events.
- The Child Safe Day event on March 29th is cancelled. Jeff Ellis is planning to reschedule in the fall.
- The Arbor Day event where we give tree seedlings to the Second Graders on Friday, April 24th. This event will most likely be cancelled.
- Baldwin Wallace Rotaract Silent Auction Dinner on March 31st to raise money for Action Against Hunger is cancelled. They are hoping to reschedule the event for this upcoming fall. They are still asking for basket donations or any donations our club is willing to make! Please feel free to contact Joey Bernardo, Rotaract President, (440)813-0263 or jbernard17@bw.edu.
- District 6630. The 4-Way Speech Contest on April 11th is cancelled.
- District 6630. The District Conference, DLA and Past District Governors Dinner at the Sheraton Suites in Cuyahoga Falls on April 23rd, 24th and 25th is cancelled.
I want to end this message by asking for us to continue to unite as a Club. Please send me your thoughts, creative ideas and concerns to me by email or phone.
Kindest Regards,
Bill DeMarco, Club President
440.223.2580
Rotary Club of Strongsville
PO Box 360401, Strongsville, OH 44136
www.strongsvillerotary.org
