Site editor: Rotarian Lynn Krukowski was spotted taking notes during the Members Business Meeting and was asked if they could be published on this website. We are grateful to Lynn for the notes that follow, and for the wealth of ideas generated by the club members. If this raises any questions, please direct them to the club’s leadership.

Meeting Chair: Damien Bryan, President.

Rotary International has a website with posters etc. that can be downloaded

Messages from District Governor, Bala Naidoo, during his visit to The Rotary Club of Bowen Island (RCBI) on Nov. 14: 

• Do what you need to do to keep the current members and recruit new members. This is the major objective of the current Rotary International President, Mark Maloney.
• Age of members increasing  – how to recruit younger ones?
• Consider using teleconferencing such as Go To Meetings and Zoom.
• RCBI is a small club, but we get things done  — possibly have less constraints than town clubs with municipality laws

RCBI Projects considered. This was an exploratory session to harvest ideas.

Consider getting other Rotary clubs together socially — offer to have them join us at Bowfest?

Pool resources of other Rotary clubs. Consider linking North Shore clubs with Bowen Island.

Consider sponsoring the Round Bowen Yacht Race {At the subsequent board meeting, Adam suggested changing that to sponsoring the yacht club in its Learn to Sail Program}. 

• have RCBI as sponsor
• 1st Saturday in June
• Adam offered to make a few exploratory calls and report back

Inner city clubs, Sechelt, Lion’s Bay, Bowen Island  — we could do social things together.

A bike race at Cape Roger Curtis. Clear roads, wide verges, quiet. This might be modeled after the Ride to Cypress (a project of the club in West Vancouver) where it is fairly easy to maintain traffic. In that case, the donated proceeds go to N.Shore Rescue.

Port Alfred South Africa has high native population  – no eye care centre.  Rotary trying to set up clinic. Is there a role for RCBI?

RCBI should be collecting glasses for prescription and reading, to be donated.

 The example of a spelling bee was suggested several years ago — library took that over… but what else?

Have wine bar.

A Rotary club up North hosts a Trivia evening.

Have a Games Night — it might bring in younger or more diverse crowd.

have event at Docs or Pub  – maybe $1.00 of every drink donated to Rotary?

Damien recalled the project to set up a water fountain in Cove.

Set up car plug-in station?

Have a Coffee House with entertainers. This was tried several  years ago, and it morphed into the highly successful Variety Show. We remember the Show as too much work, but what about something simpler, like a coffee house to format local talent.

Eagle Cliff AED is needed and wanted. What about a muster station and AED for Eagle Cliff? There are other neighbourhoods lacking an AED.

Damien spoke about a family ‘Adventure in Health Care System.’

Socials held jointly with other Rotary clubs – Rotary Family Day?  The example was the successful annual Bawn’s Apolosa — his birthday celebration in Crippen Park where games set up and food brought to share.

• have games such as volley ball, badminton, soccer….
• prizes for kids
• rent picnic tables and electrical outlets
• huge Pot luck
• have a salmon cook off with judges/prizes – entry of each club
• end of June?

RCBI was originally sponsored by West Vancouver Sunrise – their members first came to RCBI meetings to help us get established and have members. It would be nice to organize to have them join us socially again too

We have some great speakers but low public turnout

• speakers bring in new people (who might join Rotary)
• need to rally our own members and invite guests
• promote our speakers to friends and family
• We don’t seem to get much response from our Ads in UnderCurrent. RCBI spent about $200 in ads over past 2 years.
• maybe we need to get listed under Current/Calendar of Events in UnderCurrent.
• list upcoming talks on our website.
• it might help public turnout if speakers self promote and self advertise
• Duane Matthews gave us an excellent summary of his power point talk and we can promote the Rotary website by telling people that his notes from the lecture, with links to other info sites, is up on our site. This would increase traffic and interest in Bowen Rotary.

December 12, 2019  Master Recycler, Daniel Rotman, is RCBI’s guest speaker

• hosted by Bowen Waste Management and Rotary
• Daniel Rotman would like questions ahead of time for him to address — please send questions to Adam Holbrook – jholbroo@sfu.ca .
• get listed in Calendar of Events in UnderCurrent.
• we need speakers for January.
• Facebook page is a problem — start new page week before and day before about speaker
• members need to promote our speakers
• maybe put up a thank you in Under Current re: talk and a “see a summary on our website.”
• BowenRotary.com Speakers Archive can have a separate permanent page for each speaker. The software connects automatically to Upcoming Speakers. The sooner we know of of a speaker being scheduled the better.
• Is there way to make conference calls using Zoom Meeting? Robert said that if the WiFi at Collins Hall is fast enough, he can use his Zoom account and has the camera and conference microphone/speaker. Maybe at a RCBI meeting we could set up to talk to Adam in Mexico end of January to test? Can we use Zoom to have a speaker talk to us? Yes.

It was great to see Steven Trende back from his hospital adventure and at this meeting tonight.

Bawn shared with us how he buys token gifts that he shares with members of the community to show them they are honoured, valued and loved. That they make “my life better because I know you”

• It is a small gift to say thank you
• he sees community as ‘common unity’
• Bawn offered to get enough gifts to give every Rotarian in our club a bundle so we would each be able to gift or recognize 10 people to say: thank you for what you do, thank you for being in my life, thank you for what you do in our community
• thus gifting more people on Bowen with regard and respect than just the group that Bawn thanks, spreading the love to a wider audience

Bawn’s generosity reminded me (note-taker, Lynn Krukowski)  of words I try to live by:

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again. ― Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier