On Saturday, April 7, all Rotarians in District 7190 are invited to attend the annual District Training Assembly.  This year our training theme will focus in on an issue affecting us all: The opioid crisis.

The morning event will be held at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs.  The Training Assembly will bring in content-experts to orient us all to this complex issue which has taken root in all our communities.  We will use what we learn about the crisis to engage our training objective: to understand and practice how to identify complex issues in our local communities and engage collaboratively with community partners.

We will use the One Rotary Summit (ORS) design to facilitate our training. ORS is designed to shine a light on the relationship among club membership, public image, and service through engagement with local communities and the Rotary Foundation.  In short, more members means greater service projects, more service projects means more visibility for Rotary, and more visibility leads to more members, more members leads to more grant support, etc.

In the context of the opioid crisis, the ORS model will showcase how community collaboration can lead to a stronger public image for each Rotary club, how that image can help to identify like-minded prospective members in the community, and how the Rotary Foundation might provide support and funding to assist with the community effort.  This virtuous cycle can quickly gain momentum and offer benefits to the community and the club for years to come.

More details will be forthcoming soon.  The most important detail, however, is that many clubs already are nibbling at the edges of this very complex and insidious problem plaguing our communities.  Some clubs already are sponsoring community forums; and, some clubs are actively engaged with partners to deliver education and support. Other clubs don’t know where to start despite a passionate desire to help.  It reminds me of the old saying: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Look for registration information and additional details coming soon. Thank you for all you do, for your communities, for your clubs, and for humankind.

— District Governor Fred Daniels