Rotary District 3150 Assembly at Guntur - My impressions

As a Rotarian and Director of Rotary Club of Secunderabad West and District Chairman for Career Guidance 2008-09 of Rotary District 3150 [comprising 64 Clubs] in Andhra Pradesh State, India, I attended the one day conference entitled Rotary District Assembly on 1st June, 2008 [Sunday] at Guntur hosted by Rotary Clubs of Guntur.

(1) All the topics and the speakers in the plenary session were very interesting and worth listening to know more about Rotary from past and present District Governors. I felt the presenter Rtn. Sam [Immediate Past District Governor] who made a well prepared ppt presentation on Pulse Polio could have been alloted more time to cover his subject. A good beginning has been made by Rtn.Dr.Ravi [Past District Governor] to communicate very effectively as to how to get visibility in the Media on Rotary projects. The current Governor Rtn.Vijendra Rao has dealt in very effectively on "Sharing Rotary to Make Dreams Real. Rtn Sam Muvva [Past District Governor of neighboring District 3020-Vijayawada] on "Leadership ininformal organisations" was par excellent. I met him during Lunch break to revive my introduction. I appreciate his memory of recalling his attending and experiencing a Career Guidance event addressed by me to 300 students in Maristella Womens' College, Vijayawada few years back.
(2)I have participated in the group discussion on "Rotary Public Relations". The resource person Rtn Suresh Kemani, District Director, Vocational Services provided initial inputs to the 20+ group members to make them understand as to what Rotary Public Relations mean. After eliciting the views of Members, I have summedup the discussion in Telugu. The Members expressed the Rotary Clubs / District to: (a) Induct a media person as honorary Member, (b) Request RI to get free resource material like posters or CDs by ordering on Rotary Store on www.rotary.org (c) Inform Media office about Club events to include in Engagement columns or depute their rep to cover the event. (d) Hold press conference before and during the event. Prepare press note and Send Press releases to Media offices frequently (e) Send timely reports to Rotary District, Rotary News-Chennai, Rotary International with action photos and supporting material to get appropriate coverage of Rotary events (f) One of the best PR generating project is to organise Career events [For students, Lecturers, Parents etc.,] for which one page handout brought out by me has been distributed [The pdf file can be downloaded from: http://www.clubrunner.ca/Data/3150/3553/HTML/36426/CareerGuidanceByRotaryClubs.pdf
I thank Rtn Dr. Sarat Babu, District Governor 2008-09 to whom I have handedover few printed copies were distributed to Club Presidents and advised them to implement this project in their respective clubs.
(3) On the administrative front, the organisers would have thought over to arrange lunch with an option of Buffet or Table meals. Though the Quiz questions were good to enhance our knowledge, the quiz could have been conducted in a perfect manner to commensurate with the preparations and expectations of the participants. A feed-back sheet in the kit to be filled in by the participants could have helped the organisers to get more ideas for future events.
(4) In all the organisers, particularly the all ladies Rotary Club of Guntur Adarsh and the team headed by Rtn Rajya Lakshmi [District Governor Nominee] deserve appreciation for their best efforts to make this Assembly quite informative.