There will be a new Rotary club starting in the Comox Valley. At 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 29, at the Old House Hotel and Spa, the group will meet to officially charter the club and affirm the inaugural leadership team.
Rotary is an international organization with over 1.2 million members and 35,000 clubs around the world. The goal of Rotary is to bring together people to exchange ideas, form friendships and connections while taking action to make positive contributions to their communities.
As with all Rotary clubs, the new club will give members the opportunity to build friendships with positive and motivated people who come from different backgrounds and professions and share a desire to do good work for the betterment of our local communities. It will also promote opportunities for networking and professional development, host parties and fundraisers, work for charity and community improvement projects, and promote relationships with fellow Rotary Clubs to support them in their projects.
The motivation for starting this new club is to offer a Rotary option in the Comox Valley that can fit more easily into the lives of people who can’t make weekly meetings work with their existing commitments to family and work. To that end, the new club will have two meetings per month and a culture that is understanding of members who might need to miss the occasional meeting due to other commitments. To ensure the club stays organized and co-ordinated in its efforts to serve the community, there will be a strong focus on using technology to make information available to and gather feedback from the members.
The new club is also focused on making sure it is economically accessible to as many as possible. The annual dues will be $200/year (just enough to cover the required dues for the district and international Rotary organizations), and the club will focus on community projects and service goals where its members can contribute through volunteering time and expertise to either work on the project directly or fund raise to contribute to the goal.
The Rotary Club of Comox is very generously sponsoring the new club, and will play a key role in providing guidance and support for the club during its start. Dale Roberts, an existing Rotarian with many years of experience in club operations, will be joining the new club to help and advise the leadership team.
If you are interested in finding out more about Rotary and whether the new club might be the right fit for you to become a Rotarian, please contact Kevin Niemi (kniemi@comoxmortgages.com) or Greg Chadwick (greg.chadwick@investorsgroup.com).