TACOMA 5020 CONFERENCE REPORT

Peter Bradley shares his impressions from the District 5020 Conference recently held in Tacoma:

The district conference of Rotary District 5020 was held at the Sheraton in Tacoma, Washington. The function of District conferences is to bring clubs within the district up to speed on what is happening at the district level as well as to inform Rotary International of our District activities as well as apprising our District of the latest developments at Rotary international.

One of the problems of belonging to a large international organization such as Rotary is that a lot of communication becomes essential. At an individual level, this translates into the dreaded word meetings! It is impossible to attend everything at a district conference. Therefore, I made my focus international service.

I attended three presentations, one on drilling wells in Uganda, another on education for women and children in rural Mexico, and a third on feeding malnourished children in Bolivia. Part and parcel of some of these projects is the ongoing microcredit projects for which our own Project Unity is doing such an admirable job. There were presentations on Polio Plus, a project of which as Rotarians we can all be justly proud.

I spent an interesting couple hours at a presentation by Jerry Hall of Vice President of RI discussing how our organization at an international level interacts with clubs at the club and district level. In my opinion, attendance at a district conference is a valuable and informative experience for anyone involved in the Rotary movement.