Positive Attitude.Me

Jimmy’s Monthly Newsletter

Issue 1. 2019.

With just over 1 month to go in the year for District Governor Jim Ross, I thought it may be an appropriate time to ask you to start looking ahead for session 2019/20.

I plan to provide a ‘forward looking’ monthly newsletter, probably sharing information up to 3 months in advance, so that you may promote some of your activities and seek collaboration from others for some of your projects.

My starting point is the recent District Council at which the executive shared with you the information that RI (Rotary International) had indicated that the numbers in our District, had been dropping steadily over the years and that we had passed the threshold of being able to have our own District. The discussion at Council agreed and understood that any proposed merger may result in a dramatic loss of Rotarians from our District.

Therefore:- we have PETO (President Elect Training and Orientation) It would be great if all our Presidents attending, can share the plans for our future and enhance the opportunity for a continued Rotary presence in the West of Scotland. Please, could you strive to have a representative from your club attend?

I can only be your servant as District Governor, as I have been elected to represent our District within the wider world of Rotary. To be able to do this efficiently and effectively, I need to hear from each one of you, on which aspects I should take the lead, to represent your wishes. I would have thought that the one thing you do not want, is for me to go and be an egomaniac and promote my own thoughts on what you want or need. Particularly as I may get it very wrong!!!

You may have heard or read from my previous reports during the past year, which I have been looking ahead on the issue of collaborating with other ‘community service’ volunteers in other organisations. The purpose of which will enable us to perhaps gain some new Rotarians from within these groups.

During the past 12 months, I have met with representatives from various cultural and ethnic groups in the West of Scotland, discussions are still at an early stage, although they may already be showing some ‘new shoots’ emerging, from which we may manage to record new Rotarians. If you have any links or contacts within these groups locally, share this news and you may manage to encourage their participation with you.

The representatives I have chatted with so far are The Chinese community; The Indian community; The Pakistan community; The African community also, with help from our Rotaractors, we plan to target the student cohort attending Universities and Colleges in the West of Scotland, using information in their own language, such as – Korean; Japan; French; German; Portugal; Italian and Spain, promoting Rotaract opportunities and the various youth opportunities open to them, i.e. ‘Youth Exchange’; ‘Camps’; ‘RYLA’; etc. If you have any contact within one or more of these groups, please let us know, we can then provide you with resources to reach out to them and encourage participation locally.

Not only have the cultural groups been contacted, some of us who were volunteering at the ‘Scottish Schools Athletics’ event in the Emirates Arena, managed to chat with many individuals who were showing and interest in the work which Rotary does, locally and internationally. One of those individuals happens to be a coach for the ‘Springburn Harriers’ in which they have young athletes from our (Glasgow North & Bishopbriggs) five local secondary schools. I hope to build a collaborative link and perhaps negotiate some ‘corporate’ members from the adult athletes.

Some of you may know that I swim a couple of mornings each week. I regularly meet and chat with another swimmer who happens to be the Boys Brigade Captain of a local Company in (Glasgow North & Bishopbriggs) who is also the Glasgow Battalion Secretary. He indicated that they are also in early stage talks with their fellow organisations – The Scouts; The Girls Brigade; The Guides; we chatted about offering some of the ‘youth’ opportunities through their organisations and we may perhaps gain Rotarians from the Officers and Leaders.

I must thank you for a link to the last group that I am chatting with, The Police Young Volunteers – I chatted with one of the leaders at a Paisley event and since then I have been contacted by our local group and I plan to chat with them also. My aim is to share any information gained, with each of you in the hope that you will also see the opportunities to engage with all of these groups; organisations and cultures around you locally.

We need to ‘THINK DIFFERENTLY’ and break down the barriers within our communities, allowing us to continue to provide a ‘Service Above Self’ and enhance our Rotary presence in the West of Scotland.

If you happen to have a link to – The Soroptimist ladies; The Inner Wheel ladies; or The Womens Institute ladies; please let me know and we can look to building a link with them too.

To finish this first newsletter, here are specific Rotary items to think about from the Rotary Foundation 6 areas of Focus and annual calendar:

May is ‘Youth Service’ month;

June is ‘Fellowship’ month;

You should also be planning your AGM; Assembly & Handover (May; June / July)

The District Handover dinner is Sunday 30th June 2019, at 1.00pm in the Glynhill Hotel, Renfrew.

The ‘District Conference’ is 12^th/13^th October 2019 in the Golden Jubilee Hospital & Conference centre, Clydebank. More information on the conference will emerge in the future ‘Monthly Newsletters’ – make sure that you look at the various options to attend and participate, bring family and friends, encourage potential Rotarians to attend and hear about the great work you do as a Rotarian, locally and internationally.

Thank you for selecting me to represent you as your District Governor next session, I can only perform at my best with your support and input, therefore let us build up a dialogue between us, so that I am able to focus on the route District wishes to go.

Yours in Rotary Service

Jimmy

There are several projects being worked on at this time, personal and emotional, is the decluttering of the house and selling off some of the tools / equipment used over the years – that I am no longer able to use, due to my age and lack of ability.

Although I may not be able to work physically hard, my mind is working in overdrive, as the education project with a colleague has gone into a new sector, which we hope will engage; encourage and educate all participants.

Also on the go at present is a new Rotary inspired product, one which will raise the profile of Rotary across the world – if Rotarians get behind the product and purchase / sell – to contribute to their own local fundraising activities.

The Engineering / Education projects are still moving forward slowly; as are the other Rotary inspired projects – these though need additional funding, well in excess of that which I have available.

If you wish to chat about investing in any of the projects, please feel free to get in touch, or arrange a suitable time and place for a face to face meeting.

Hi Folks

During last year – the server hosting AARANDEE Ltd was held to ransom by hackers – since then I have moved to another ISP and as a result have to rebuild the site from scratch – which is very good – as it allows for new ideas and developments to be implemented.

I shall therefore be promoting all the activities through ‘Positiveattitude.me’ for the foreseable future. (until new site is up and running). As it is we are working on the development of a number of projects and these will be shared here.

The projects are in various sectors – Rotary (5 different projects – all with fundraising opportunities at the core) they range from consumer projects; through board / card games; into computer games and mobile apps’.

Education & Engineering – (numerous projects linking education & engineering, as well as – merchandising; etc. Also under the education element with be several projects / products related to autism.

Engineering – several projects which may range from ‘social enterprises’ to ‘power generation’ using offshore… these may also provide new business / work opportunities and sector growth.

I hope there is enough here to whet your appetite and if you wish to be involved as a collaborating partner, let me know.

Hi Folks, here it is, the second video for the ‘release your inner Einstein’ project.

I really think that I would like to record it again, with participants this time, to help it flow more smoothly.

Tragically, so far this year (i.e. 24 hours) there has been almost 3,000 suicides around the world, from data that I have access to.
Surely, these folk should have had the opportunity to talk with someone, perhaps some business or local authority could provide suitable work – to enable a sense of purpose.
Surely society has the capacity to listen and support others who are close to being another statistic in the next 24 hours.
Come on folks – can we do something to help prevent another soul from ending their own life?

Planning to update regularly again, linking to new ‘video’ blog being done in Google+ and fb

The video blog aims to help folk release their inner Einstein… take the crazy ideas they have, explore the options and perhaps help them become entrepreneurial with the idea and even launch a business if possible.

Hi Folks, have been having a tremendous time working on some of the projects – myrentals; 10-two; 4hexample; and the multitude of education topics.

While working towards bringing these to market, I have had to do a great deal of data mining, which has been such fun and has allowed me to have a great respect for other creatives out there.

The Nobel Prize, recently announced during this month – shows the breadth of research and the lifetime of work done by a broad range of individuals and institutions.

Also, recently announced, for the X-box game ‘overwatch’ – has been new ‘loot’ boxes, being released just in time for halloween. There is also – Gears of War 4 releases.

Sony Cyber-Shot DSC RX100 – new camera has also been released – and yahoo / verizon communications buy-out seems to be going through.

I shall attempt to bring the top 5 trend searches each day for your consideration.

Hi folks
thought it would be worth sharing that we are doing a course on Chinese Mandarin, learning the basics so that we can at least greet visitors from China to Scotland.

We may not be the best speakers of the language as of yet, but the fact that we are making a positive attempt to learn, will no doubt stand us in good stead.

Today was our third lesson and we hope to be able to move forward into basic ‘coffee conversation’ in the near future, speaking about arranging meetings; the time; the weather; how many cups of coffee or glasses of drinks; etc..

The language structure is fascinating, the character build up and the tones used in sentences are also quite intricate, even a simple change in tonal speaking – could convey the wrong message. We were learning to move our hands in the direction of the tones and it soon looked as if we were doing some form of ‘Ti-Chi’, which was seen as very funny by our tutor.

Keep a watch on this blog for further ventures – [ni hao]

‘But now, the end is near – we start to face the final curtain’…not a direct quote but close enough.