Matt Hawksley, the Rotary Club of Kingston's president for 2023 - 24 got off to a flying start with his inaugual speech. Hawksley signalled his intention to be a change agent with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi "You must be the change you wish to see in the World."
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With that as his starting point Matt launched into his vision and key goals for his presidency. First however, he showed how his vision and goals "synergy" aligned with Rotary International's 23-24 theme "Creating Hope in the World" with its three goals: Prioritizing mental health, building peace, and empowering girls.
Matt's "centre piece" for the year however is his "vision" statement. He wants "positive impact,,. service, connection, and engagement" to be the "lens" by which we judge our actions. Out of this macro view Matt defined three specific strategies: To put the club at the centre of our community, to spark positive change while respecting our traditions, and to have fun.
To achieve the first goal he challenges us to align ourselves with the city's and Queen's University's goals. He wants us to "bridge" our traditions with modern trends in society. Rather interestingly he aligned having fun with the "more power" we will have as a club.
Hawksley, then went one step further in his strategic plan by actually defining the five "pillars" each with 3 or 4 "actions" further refining how we are going to implement each of the three strategies. The graphic before requires careful study and will provide a lens by which we can judge our success over the 23-24 year.
Some action highlights are to increase members' "engagement" and "interaction" rather than just listen, to make the MusicFest an annual event, to create a special project which left us hanging, and to create a way to measure our impact numerically. In summary form Matt quoted Simon Simek and our need to "trust" in one another to accomplish what he has laid out before us.
He then concluded by asking us as "people" to be visible Rotarians, to build our club's unique "brand", and to build a tradition of service, connection and impact in the year ahead".