2017-2018 District Governor Rick Istead
 
   

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District Governor Message
And our journey Continues...
Our Journey Continues …..
Here’s hoping that everyone had a great Christmas celebrating the festive holiday season with family and friends, finding some much needed quiet time to recharge the batteries, reflecting on the year that just flew past and thinking about all those things you want to do in 2018. For Rotarians, it’s giving back, it’s doing good in the world, it’s making a difference!
 
I would like to thank all of the Club Presidents, their leadership teams and the members of our 47 Rotary clubs for making me feel so welcome during my Fall visits. It was a great learning experience for me personally, but more importantly, I got to meet and hang out with quite a number of very engaged and passionate Rotarians who quite simply do want to make a difference in their local communities and around the world.
 
Although my official DG visits wrapped up on December 15th, I would love to reconnect with as many clubs as possible over the next 6 months. So, I’ve asked the Club Presidents if you would like me to come and do a presentation on something “Rotary”, induct a new member, present a Paul Harris, help out with a local service project, support a fundraiser or join you at one of your fun and fellowship events, please let me know as soon as you can.
 
Membership remains our #1 challenge! Our January numbers indicate there are 57 fewer Rotarians in our clubs compared to the start of this Rotary year. When looking at the numbers, we seem to be fairly good at attracting new members; we just have trouble keeping them! As I pointed out during my club visits, I believe if people feel welcomed, if they enjoy coming to the club’s meetings and are engaged in the club’s activities, be it a fundraiser, a service project or a fellowship event, if they feel like they’re being listened to, if they feel like they’re part of the family and they feel appreciated for what they do, then you’ve likely got a loyal member. I encourage all Rotarians to engage in a conversation in your club and ask yourselves these questions - Is your club innovative? Is it relevant? Is it welcoming? Is it engaging? Is it fun? If it is, I believe we are heading in the right direction and we will turn this train around. If it isn’t, then ask, "What do we need to do to become a healthier and more vibrant club?" - one that attracts new members and makes them loyal and engaged members in their Rotary passion.
 
Related to membership, I'm to remind everyone about the Rotary Citation. Your Rotary Club can earn a Rotary Citation for achieving certain goals by the end of this Rotary year that will help strengthen both Rotary and your Club. Goals include increasing club membership, developing sustainable service projects, giving to the Rotary Foundation and building awareness of Rotary in your community. We had three Rotary clubs, the RC of Calgary Heritage Park, Calgary Millennium and High River and two Rotaract clubs, Red Deer and University of Lethbridge achieve Citation status in 2016-2017. I want to congratulate all of these clubs for achieving this recognition and I want to thank those clubs who are actively working to achieve the Rotary Citation during this Rotary year.
 
January is Vocational Service month. In many ways, it is what sets Rotary apart from many other service organizations in the world. The concept of vocational service is rooted in the second Object of Rotary which calls on Rotarians to encourage and foster high ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society.
 
For many clubs vocational service and Youth Service are synonymous, but for some, there is a clear line of distinction. As a result, I’ve often wondered if we’re losing our focus on what sets us apart. As Rotarians we use our professional skills to serve our community, we practice our profession with integrity and guide others in their professional development. If you do any of these things, you are performing vocational service. Connect with our District’s Vocational Service Lead, Virginia Murphy (RC of Calgary Heritage Park). She is looking to build a small team to help coordinate and share vocational service ideas and best practices amongst the clubs in our District, so please reach out to her if you have an interest.
 
Lastly a reminder about three opportunities for you in the second half of this Rotary year to connect with other Rotarians; to learn, to share, to take action, to create lasting change in our local communities, around the world and in ourselves and to enjoy a good dose of fun and fellowship.
  • Conference on Environmental Sustainability & Peace (Vancouver) – Feb 9-11
  • District Conference (Calgary) – May 4-6
  • Rotary International Convention (Toronto) – June 24-27
 
Wishing you and your families a healthy, happy and safe 2018 and beyond!
Let’s continue our journey of Rotary: Making a Difference.
 
 
Rick Istead
Rotary District Governor 2017-2018

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Service Reports
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Letter from Melbourne
 
Jay Wang, Global Grant Scholarship recipient from District 5360, doing his MSc in Neuroscience at the University of Heidelberg, hosted by the Rotary Club of Heidelberg-Schloss (Germany), writes to us from Melbourne, Australia, where he is now doing a lab rotation. In District 5360, Jay is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Calgary Olympic.
 
For more information on District 5360’s Global Grant Scholarship, visit http://www.rotary5360.ca/page/global-scholarship-funding.
 
 
20 November 2017
 
Dear Rotarians in District 5360:
Since the last update, I have travelled extra 10 hours into the future, leaving 18 hours of difference between home and me. Other than standing upside down relative to the Northern Hemisphere, I am still trying to adapt to the right-coming traffic. Nonetheless, it very much feels like home in many other aspects. Melbourne has many unique features, such as its impressive modern skyline that rivals with its European and North American cousins of similar size, and its distinctively local architecture that is of the marriage between European, Asian and “North American” influences. If Canada is the perfect example of cultural mosaic-ism, then Australia, or at least Melbourne, is the perfect example of the melting pot. There are entire streets of mixed-cultural shops and restaurants from all corners’ of the world. The Queen Victoria Market is also a dazzling place to spend hours in. Instead of large congregated cultural minority communities, everything is much more spread out all over the city. However, that is not to say it doesn’t have a Little Italy or Chinatown. It has this air of alternative familiarity, which surprises me at the most unexpected places and time. Nonetheless, research and social life have been sailing very smoothly
 
In terms of research, I have just finished all the induction processes into the institute. The new project involves testing the learning-memory-behaviour circuits in mice, primarily in the sensory-motor neurons. We want to figure out if dendrites, the receiving end of all neurons, can dictate a learned behaviour, and therefore play a role in diseases. The plan is to use light-induced suppressions and stimulations, known as optogenetics, on the suspected circuits to tease out the mechanisms of action. The experimental subjects will undergo a mini brain surgery to receive these genetically modified light-responsive channels, whereupon activation by different colours of light, they can either stimulate or inhibit neurons firing. By specifically targeting the dendrites, we can figure out if they are involved in learning and memory. Currently, I am setting up a behaviour box for training the mice a specific response to stimuli around them. The mice will learn to lick and receive sugar water when the pad under its right paw vibrates and a specific tone is produced. Then we will do a series of experiments to see if we can disrupt this behaviour or elicit this response with only lights shining on their neurons. A deeper understanding of this network can help us explain how we perceive certain sensations, process that information, and use the interpretations to guide our actions. Unfortunately, these sensory-motor pathways we take for granted are disrupted in some Alzheimer’s patients. Hence, they cannot associate many sensory cues to their normal behaviours. The sight, smell, sound and touch of someone once familiar cannot trigger a reaction anymore in many late-stage Alzheimer’s patients.
 
Within the short two weeks, I have met a lot of like-minded young scientists and supportive colleagues in the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. I have joined two student groups: Students of Florey Institute (SOFI) and Students of Brain Research (SOBR). Both have provided many professional and social events such as seminars, journal clubs, career symposiums, and sports activities. I have been attending their weekly lunch talks, seminars, frisbee and soccer games. I also signed up to be a non-steering member of the SOBR committee.
 
Thanks to Dr. Kraay, I was able to quickly connect with the Melbourne Rotary Club and attend one of their meetings. Humorously, it’s the first Rotary meeting I could finally understand almost everything, apart from the Australian vocabularies. They have quite an interesting way to help rid the cumbersome coins in everyone’s pockets. An elected individual would amusingly list a number of things that will single out certain individuals in the room, and the chosen lucky few will have to drop a coin in a pan. For instance, those who checked the weather beforehand and wore short sleeves instead of formal shirts were called out to pay their short sleeve tax. Moreover, we also had a very interesting talk about leadership in institutions, with the Catholic Church at the centre of the discussion. I have been invited to the Paul Harris Breakfast where other local Global Grant Scholar will attend, as well as a Christmas BBQ (something I could really get used to, but a Christmas without snow is slightly disorienting, to say the least).
 
Sincerely,
 
Jay Wang
Guerilla Tips for Marketing Your Club.
Guerilla Tips for Marketing Your Club.
 
The Rotary year of 2018 is about recruiting and retaining members. Sometimes the most obvious marketing and branding tools are the simplest. We call it Guerilla Marketing.
 
Marketing involves sifting through a world of creative ideas and message delivery methods in order to put your brand in front of potential customers. It is the process of engaging and intriguing them so they want to know more about your product or service. Check out 10 easy-to-activate Guerilla tips for marketing your club.
 
 
 
From the Archives
 
 
Robyn Braley
Rotary Club of Calgary West
 
Family Trees: Not just for Families anymore

The Rotary District 5360 Family Tree confirms our roots are strong and the branches continue to grow.

There are also 21 Interact Groups in the District - Click for the Report - and a new Community Corps has recently been Chartered in High River.
 
 
 
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Ian H.S. Riseley

PRESIDENT 2017-18

ROTARY CLUB OF Sandringham
Victoria, Australia

TENNESSEE, USA
     
 

In Rotary, our diversity is our strength. This idea dates back to the earliest years of our organization, when the classification system was first proposed. The idea behind it was simple: that a club with members who had a wide variety of backgrounds and abilities would be capable of better service than one without.

In the years since, the idea of diversity in Rotary has come to be defined more broadly. We have discovered that a club that truly represents its community is far better able to serve that community effectively. Looking ahead, it is clear how essential diversity will remain in Rotary: not only to strong service today, but to a strong organization in the future.

One of the most pressing aspects of diversity to address in our membership is the age of our members. When you look around at almost any Rotary event, it becomes immediately obvious that the age range in the room does not promise a sustainable future for our organization. Our membership is near a record high, and we are bringing in new members all the time – yet only a small minority of those members are young enough to have decades of Rotary service ahead of them. To ensure a strong and capable Rotary leadership tomorrow, we need to bring in young and capable members today.

We also cannot discuss diversity in Rotary without addressing the issue of gender. It is difficult to imagine that just three decades ago, women could not join Rotary. Although we have come a long way since then, the legacy of that misguided policy is still with us. Far too many people continue to think of Rotary as an organization only for men, and that idea has had a detrimental effect on both our public image and our membership growth. Today, women make up just over 21 percent of Rotary's membership. While this is certainly a great improvement, we have a long way to go to meet what should be the goal of every club: a gender balance that matches the balance of our world, with as many women in Rotary as men.

Whatever brought each of us to Rotary, we stay because we find value in Rotary membership and believe that our service has value to the world. By building clubs that reflect that world in all its diversity, we will build even more enduring value in Rotary: Making a Difference.

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ClubRunner

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Rotary International District 5360

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Upcoming Events
AG Check-in
Jan 10, 2018
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
 
District Board Mtg.
Jan 12, 2018
12:00 PM – 3:00 PM
 
Lethbridge PETs - President Elect Training
Lethbridge Lodge Hotel
Jan 13, 2018
9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
 
Calgary PETs - President Elect Training
Rotary Challenger Park
Jan 27, 2018
9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
 
Medicine Hat PETs - President Elect Training
Medicine Hat Lodge Resort, Casino & Spa
Feb 03, 2018
9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
 
Rotary Conf- Environmental Sustainability & Peace
Vancouver
Feb 09, 2018 8:00 AM –
Feb 11, 2018 4:00 PM
 
Red Deer PETs - President Elect Training
Olds College
Feb 17, 2018
9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
 
Family Day - Alberta
Feb 19, 2018 11:59 PM
 
AG Check-in
Feb 27, 2018
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM