Leveraging Our Strengths to Boost Membership Engagement
by Valerie Deneen
For many Rotary Clubs, boosting membership engagement can be challenging. One approach shared by leadership expert Dr. Marcus Buckingham argues that focusing on developing strengths (instead of trying to improve weaknesses) leads to higher engagement, productivity, and satisfaction.
How Can We Apply This to Our Clubs?
Identify and Use Member Strengths: Create a brief survey asking club members to list their top three strengths or request that members take the High 5 Strengths Test. Use the results to invite members to take on roles or join committees where they can make the biggest impact.
Build on What's Already Working: Collaborate with other clubs to share ideas for successful fundraisers and service projects rather than create new events from scratch.
Leverage Community: Use our well-established community relationships to develop meaningful projects and attract new members.
We can work together to create Rotary Clubs where members feel valued and connected by embracing a strengths-based approach to membership engagement.
Has your club tried a similar approach? Feel free to email me at vdeneen@gmail.com to share your insights and experiences. I would love to hear from you!
Rotary International Official Rotary Foundation Month is November, but we can celebrate the Rotary Foundation every month.
Ways to Give
Your generous contributions are essential to Rotary programs around the world. Make a gift to honor or remember someone special.
Donate online at rotary.org/donate.
Participate in our District 7430 Day of Giving on November 19, 2024
Give a check to your club Foundation chair.
Mail your gift directly to the Foundation.
No matter how you donate, your gifts have a big impact when they’re put to use by our Foundation and by members to do good in the world. Plan for a club presentation during Foundation month. Contact District 7430 Rotary Foundation Chair Cindy Hornaman at hornamca@ptd.net
OUR DISTRICT LEADERSHIP ARE OUR “BOUNCE THE FOUNDATION BALL” ZORB WINNERS!
At our recent Rotary Zone 28/ 32 institute or Action Zone in Toronto, our leadership participated in the second Bounce the Ball Zorb contest and raised $1100 toward our Foundation Annual Fund.
And guess what? Our District Governor Nominee, Jeremiah Sensenig from the West Reading Wyomissing Rotary Club is the “King” Zorb bouncer and winner.
Since we are talking Foundation and there was a "dress up as a super hero" night as part of the celebration, we must mention PDG Herb Klotz- as Action Hero!
You are invited to our new District Wide Committee that supports Rotary International’s Focus on Disease Prevention and Treatment. This idea came our way as a result of the Rotary Foundation asking us to bring the message of the gift of vaccines home to our OWN communities.
Our project ideas include pediatric vaccine information packets that you can deliver to the Day Care Centers and Preschools in YOUR community.
Our Easton Rotary Club did an amazing job packing pediatric vaccine information, from credible sources, for the day cares in their community that needed support. A highlight was their realizing the need for six different languages and their ability to support that.
The Bethlehem Rotary Club is in the process of doing a pediatric vaccine information project that will be distributed through Head Start. Their project will include multiple languages as well.
We are also hoping to host a Young Leaders Health Care Summit in April of next year. High school students will engage in conversations with multiple professionals about public health, in a program modeled after a very special event hosted by Rotary District 7410.
We know that many of you bring something special to the table that can benefit District-wide projects like this. We would be thrilled if you would consider joining us.
As we have learned from our years of supporting polio vaccination, no child should suffer from a vaccine-preventable disease. Without question, the pain and disability can last a lifetime.
At last month’s Action Zone Summit in Toronto, the graduating 2025 – 2026 DGs from Zones 28 and 32 had to read aloud our 125 word Personal Expression Statement on what makes
me a Rotarian and why am I still a Rotarian? Here is what I spoke aloud.
Freedom. Independence. Democracy. Rights.
September 1992.
I was a young mom to three daughters, ages five, three, and one when our first long-term exchange student arrived from the USSR. I was a full-time computer programmer with an hour
commute each way. To say I was busy was an understatement.
My husband was a new Rotarian in a new Rotary Club in Kennebunkport, Maine.
I was asked to be a host mom to Lucy Pokrovskoya and I said yes. How hard can it be? What is one more child?
Freedom. Independence. Democracy. Rights.
Every night, I helped Lucy with her homework. I would translate her English words into Russian and she would then translate them into Ukrainian. I could help her, with every subject except American History.
Her Russian dictionary did not contain the words: Freedom. Independence. Democracy. Rights.
Lucy went home to a new country (Ukraine) at the end of her year.
Nineteen exchange students in 21 years, Lucy forever changed my life. I hope we changed hers.
We are excited to share the creation of the District 7430 Mental Health & Wellness Committee! We are continuing the conversations and programming that took place during the last Rotary year as so many Rotarians identified this issue as important in their community, their club and with themselves, families and friends.
The mission of this committee is to promote mental health and wellness by enhancing mental health awareness amongst Rotarians and the communities we serve, to create a supportive environment to disclose and discuss personal mental health issues, to move out of the darkness and struggles of suffering from mental health disorders, to educate on the services available for individuals to take personal responsibility to improve their mental health, and to foster a positive mental health environment and a culture of caring in our clubs.
Why talk about mental health as Rotarians? Because mental health is us. Each of us lives in a world that pulls us and pushes us. We experience many losses in our life. None of us is immune from daily life’s continuous movement. Rotarians are helpful to many local and international communities. The question is, what have we done for ourselves as Rotarians for our mental health? An analogy would be the shoe maker whose children had no shoes. District 7430 now has shoes: a Mental Health & Wellness Committee.
We look forward to connecting to you and your club with resources and project ideas. If you’d like to be a MH&W Liaison for your club, please reach out to one of us.
About a third of waste in landfills is food waste. That is a frightening statistic. The decomposition of organic matter in landfills produces, among other things, methane gas, a carbon compound that contributes to climate change. There are much better solutions to our food waste problem than dumping it in the ground.
Rotary has been involved in developing solutions to this problem. One such successful project is a program established in the Frederick County (Maryland) School System. The schools worked with local Rotary clubs to develop a food separation and composting program in school cafeterias and taught students to separate their waste into usable food that could be sent to food banks, food waste that could be composted, and other waste (paper, etc.) that would go elsewhere.
Our District Environmental Sustainability Team, under the guidance of Audra Frank from the Easton club, has been looking into how to develop such a program in municipalities and school districts in our communities. In the meantime, you may want to read about the food waste problem and the successful program that Rotary helped establish in the Maryland schools:
Rotary Day of Service – A Focus on the Environment
The Environmental Sustainability Team is once again encouraging the District clubs to do an environmental project on the Rotary Day of Service. It has been scheduled for Saturday, April 19, 2025. For the past three years, at least 40 clubs have participated in doing an environmental project on the Rotary Day of Service, or sometime during the month of April. Start planning now. And, why not schedule a speaker who can talk to your club on an environmental topic for one of your April club meetings?
Conflict resolution is a skill that all Rotarians would benefit from. On October 14, as part of the 2024-25 Learning Plan, all Rotarians in District 7430 will have the opportunity to attend a learning session on Conflict Resolution led by Dr. Bob Gordon, former Allentown West Rotarian, who now resides in Florida.
Robert M. Gordon Ph.D. ABPP is a licensed psychologist and a Diplomate of Clinical Psychology and a Diplomate of Psychoanalysis, and served on the governing council of the American Psychological Association. He was president of the Pennsylvania Psychological Association and received its Distinguished Service Award. He authored over 100 scholarly articles and five books in the areas of ethics, psychotherapy, forensic psychology, personality assessment, and differential diagnoses. Dr. Gordon is rated by ResearchGate as a top researcher. You can view his latest book and see his TEDx talk at www.mmpi-info.com.
Want to know more about Shelter Box and Rotary? You can view a 40-minute webinar about how Rotary and Shelter Box work together. The video highlights Shelter Box’s response to the September 2023 earthquake in Morocco that killed nearly 3,000 people and injured 5,600 more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GeR6-_XAR8. The Shelter Box response was aided by having aid prepositioned in Turkey so we could deploy more rapidly with a shorter supply line. This is made possible by your generous support of the Stock the Box campaign. Learn more at https://www.shelterboxusa.org/ .
Do you want a Shelter Box presence at a club event or do you need a presentation to your club? Contact D7430 Ambassador Bill Tuszynski at bill.tuszynski@gmail.com or 267-374-1631 to put us on your calendar. Contact Bill if you are interested in getting more involved with Shelter Box, either as a co-Ambassador or Club Champion.
At press time, the District 7430 Friendship Exchange is still underway. Rotarians from Australia have been visiting southeast Pennsylvania's places of interest, including making pretzels in Lititz, learning about the Amish in Lancaster, touring the Cloister in Ephrata, and sharing lots of meals with their hosts. From a potluck at Allentown West member Gail Micca's house to lunch and tasting at Folino's Winery, to dinner at the Limeport Inn and many more chances to taste the best of PA, guests and hosts enjoyed each other's company until the next part of the experience began. Guests were joined by the Ambler club and we'll learn more of their escapades in a future newsletter.
.png)
