For our first meeting of the new Rotary year, we were grateful to be able to grab some of our brand new District Governor Tim Mason’s time on Zoom, to give us an early steer of his plans for the year.
Tim has had a varied Rotary career with numerous clubs, mainly around the south and east of the UK and including two spells with the Rotary Club of Swindon, where current Swanage President Steve knew him from his previous club of Swindon Old Town.
He has always been determined to play an active role in all of those clubs, not content with hiding in the background, and was one of the founder members of the District 1100 eClub which has since attracted members from well outside its original catchment area.
But Tim felt that something was missing, and since moving from Wiltshire to Portsmouth a few years ago, he realised that the club he had joined was not dynamic enough for his ideas.
And so Rotary Social Innovation was born. This is billed as a different kind of Rotary which aims to harness the power of social media and the enthusiasm of social enterprise to encourage more engagement whilst maintaining the original ethos of the Rotary movement all those years ago in Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Based in the Portsmouth area, it aims to offer a more flexible and innovative way of doing Rotary, and Tim is bringing much of its objectives into his year as District Governor. Undoubtedly it won’t be something that everyone will embrace, but it will be interesting to see how the year develops.
Following Tim’s address there were a number of questions from club members. On behalf of the club, President Steve thanked the DG for taking time out of what must be a hectic schedule to come and speak to us.