Our incoming President, Katie Slaughter spoke to us this week about her aims and aspirations for her leadership of our club in the next Rotary year.

She started with Breaking News- that she has won the Rotary Tesla experience and will have the fun of driving a Tesla Electric car for a weekend. She explained that this was a funny coincidence as she has recently flagged to us that climate change will be a theme of her leadership this year.

 

She reminded us of how adaptive we had been over the last few years with the constantly emerging changes and challenges brought on by the pandemic, our club seamlessly and effortlessly adapted and just got on with it.

 

During her term as President, Katie challenged us to continue to adapt and  develop activities that capture the attention of our communities. She wants us to “continue to grow and develop , to help people and foster fellowship, to provide a safe space to share ideas and imagine possibilities. “

For her term, she wants us to maintain the momentum of fellowship, past initiatives and fund raising (such as Foodbank appeals, Circus Quirkus , cheese rolls, quiz nights, Art Incognito etc)  and continue to “Create Hope in the World” ( this year’s Rotary International President’s vision).

Rotary’s Action Plan through 2024 is to increase our impact, expand our reach, enhance participant engagement, and increase our ability to adapt. Our centennial project at Rotary Park aligns with all of our action points, and it is a project that will bring all the clubs together in Dunedin, enforcing the power of Rotary to get things done and bring people together.

Her special theme for the year will be on looking at how we can reduce our impact and footprint, on our planet. With this in mind, she reminded us that it’s the small things we can do that will help.  For example, bringing our own coffee cup or drink bottle with us, using cold water washes, reducing the use of single use plastics from the supply chain, gifting plants for presents. Reducing personal food waste is an easy change we can all make- the ODT reported recently that there were 157,000 tonnes of food wasted every year in NZ. This could feed 336.000 people for a year.

Her secondary focus will be on thinking about how we can support other groups such as the Womens Refuge, foodbanks, the Night Shelter, Curtain Bank, St John and supporting other clubs’ initiatives, so that we can make a difference.

Katie also told us about a new initiative being run by Dunedin Central to collect and recycle wine bottle tops with funds raised going to Starship Childrens hospital. She is proposing that we collect these to bring to our club meetings and Katie will collect them up and drop off to the president.

She ended by thanking us for electing her as President,  pledging to make this a fun and successful year, and promising to be open to all ideas and feedback that could grow our club and fellowship.