Weekly Program for July 8 - The Rotary Calendar Overview

[Janie]

The Rotary Calendar is a good basis for planning your speaker topics for those months that have a theme. Only two months are without a theme - July (the beginning of the new year) and May (a lot of focus on Membership Development; could also be a time to hand out awards and honors and a time to talk up the Rotary International Convention).

 

The months and their themes are:

July - No Theme. The New Year Begins; New Officers Take their Office

August — Membership and Extension Month

September — New Generations Month

October — Vocational Service Month

November — Rotary Foundation Month

December — Family Month

January — Rotary Awareness Month

February — World Understanding Month

March — Literacy Month

April — Magazine Month

May - No Theme

June — Rotary Fellowships Month

 

So for August your meetings could focus on membership growth; membership retention; club extension through membership classification survey - who is lacking, how can we extend the Club by inviting those missing classifications into the Club. September, New Generations Month, could be used to educate the membership about Interact, Rotaract, and RYLA. October - Vocational Service Month - is a great time for members to discuss their individual vocations - educate the membership on what it is you do and how membership in Rotary makes a difference. November is Rotary Foundation Month - this one is easy; what is the Foundation; what is EREY; who was Paul Harris; how does one become a Paul Harris Fellow. December - Family Month - center all of your meetings around making them family-friendly; invite speakers who will speak on topics of interest to non-Rotarians not just the ones looking for our help; maybe members in your own Club are involved in things that would serve as a good meeting topic.

 

January - Rotary Awareness Month - get out the "ABCs of Rotary" and create a program or two from that; talk about District training events - Assembly, Conference, PETS, RLI. February - World Understanding Month - focus on cultural diversity and how it makes Rotary stronger; a great time to do a program on the current year's theme. March is Literacy Month - again very easy to find programs; the local town librarian; your own literacy program - if you don't have one find an existing Club Literacy Project with which you can partner or start one; if there is  District Literacy Project or Chair, invite them to give a program. April is Magazine Month - do you know how many magazines Rotary puts out; have you ever had a program about your local/regional Rotary magazine; how do you recycle the magazines in your Club. Last June is Rotary Fellowships Month; take a poll of the number of members in your Club that are active in a Rotary Fellowship; ask 2 or 3 to do a talk about the Fellowship to which they belong; ask a local Fellowships Chair to do a program at your Club.

 

As you can see in this quick overview, the Rotary Calendar can serve as a great foundation to guide your monthly programs - and even your newsletter. Take advantage of it.

 

[Kristin K]

Thanks for posting this overview Janie.