Firstly a happy New Year to all readers and secondly a big thank you to past president Phil for his leadership of our club over the past six months.
 
In planning for this shared presidency by two old hands for 2024-25, we worked together to focus on membership promotion plans to achieve growth and leadership for the new Rotary year from July. Phil and I took on the role of joint presidents in the belief that by working with members we might bring about a change in our clubs approach going forward. A change that would bring in and retain a younger cohort of members to continue the significant contribution the Club has made to the Karori community and more widely in over 40 years of existence.
 
Remembering that today’s younger people are time scarce, budget tightly and prefer social spending to occur more with family and friends and largely gain fellowship needs through other activities, we received your support in making a major change to the way we go forward as a Club.
 
We have now largely done that and our focus now must be on actively getting out there to recruit new members. Our new membership group is getting together later this month to give you some tools for undertaking this. What about a great elevator pitch for approaching potential new members?
 
Alister Irwin, who was one of our more recent members joining us early last year after checking out a number of clubs, regrettably resigned just prior to Christmas, due to pressures of work and travel. In his short time in the Club Alister showed strong support for our community engagement meetings, being on the selection committee for RYPEN in 2024 and RYLA this month, and contributed to discussions to strengthen our club membership. Alister was a very experienced Rotarian, twice President of other clubs, serving in Dunedin, Napier, Fiji and in Auckland. We wish Alister and his wife Anne the very best for the future.
 
In this first bulletin for 2025 I want to emphasise the importance of having good numbers attending our meetings, otherwise we put pressure on ourselves for catering and effectiveness in planning our activities going forward. Remember that apologies must be in by 5pm on the Friday preceding our meetings.
 
I look forward to receiving your full support over the next 6 months as we work together to achieve growth and leadership along with sharing good fellowship.