Rotary Club of Stirling
For the last few years, I've been proud to be a member of the Rotary Club of Stirling. Founded in 1905, Rotary International has over 1.2 million members worldwide, in 168 countries. In theory, I can visit any of these and would be made welcome. In the Great Britain & Ireland alone there are over 1845 local clubs, with an average membership of 30+.
Rotary Foundation does amazing good works - it's the world's largest charity, instrumental in eradicating polio in 122 countries. But it's Rotary activity at local level that I find so engaging. Being self-employed, and working in the countryside, I was finding it easy to become isolated from my local community. Nowadays, whenever I'm not travelling, I go along each Friday lunchtime and enjoy fellowship and a wonderfully diverse set of talks. The formula suits me well: lunch, followed by a 20-minute talk, all finished by 2pm sharp.
The latest talk was from Ian Richardson, about Bhutan, Buddhism and the monarchy, and was supported by fine photographs. Since I am about to leave for Nepal, just to its west, I found that very topical. Last week's was from Peter Philips, about single-handed sailing, from Joshua Slocum to Francis Chichester to Peter's own race to the Azores and back. And the previous one was by John Rankin, a Stirling GP, talking about his "other job" as a police surgeon: fascinating! It'll be six weeks before I can get back to Rotary and I shall really miss the traditional values, the fellowship and the encouragement.