President's Column By President Joyce Mak
Those Were The Days
Have any of your friends who are not Rotarians asked you why are you spending so much time at Rotary meetings and functions? It is sometimes really hard to explain. I admit that I enjoy most in participating and organizing different community service projects and of course fellowship comes hand in hand. I have always wondered why Rotarians attended so many banquets, dinners, luncheons and I do sometimes feel that we should have donated those funding into Rotary Foundation and to help out the needy. I understand fellowship has been one of the important elements in getting members and non-members together to share our professional experiences and to leverage our skill sets in organizing more meaningful community service projects.
I believe most people would agree that it is getting more and more difficult to develop new friendship as we grow older. The friends that I still have close contacts are the classmates in either primary or secondary school. Other than that, the groups of friends that I have been spending most of the time with are from Kingspark. I remember when I was a new member to the club 5 years ago, I did not actively participate in the Club and did not believe that I could develop friendship here. The problem was my mindset. As I told myself, if I have been accepted as a member of this club, I should at least tried hard to get to know the club, the people and services members have always been talking about. I was once an Interact Club member when I was studying at Marymount Secondary School. I still recall I was being elected as one of the committee members at a joint school project with St. Joseph College to organize a project for the blind. That was the very first time I had the opportunity to understand how to organize a community service project and given our energy and passion, we enjoyed every moment of our cooperation throughout the process.
Since last week, I have been invited to attend Wan Yan College Kowloon and Wan Yan College HK Interact Club's AGM for the new school year. This is my first time to have the opportunity to meet up with the new Board and the student members. Visiting the two school campus brought me a lot of good memories and that reminds me of my school days, when I had most of my happiest moments in my life¡K"those were the days". On 6 Nov, our four Interact Clubs will be attending our evening meeting and the new board members from each school will be presenting their new club plans for the coming year. I'm impressed by their organizational and coordination ability in leading the student members to organize from small to large scale projects. As the family of Rotary, I really look forward to seeing the Interactors and Rotaractors to jointly organize and participate in our various service community projects and other fellowship activities in this Rotary year.
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