By Bob Groeneveld/Langley Advance Times
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Rotary is a bunch of old bankers and lawyers who go to stuffy meetings to hobnob, smoke cigars, and ostentatiously write cheques for charity… right?
That stereotype is old and dusty, and it never applied in Langley, where men and women representing a wide range of ages and professions join local Rotary clubs so they can roll up their sleeves to earn the millions of dollars they put into local, regional, and international charity work.
Rotarians from Langley clubs can be found with those sleeves rolled up everywhere, from the fieldhouse at the Derek Doubleday Arboretum to the annual Fraser Valley Wine Tasting Festival (yes, it’s coming back this year!) to last summer’s wildly popular Langley Ribfest (which is also coming back this summer) to shipments of medical and other supplies for less privileged parts of the world to health and water and education initiatives… to literally hundreds of projects and events organized and staffed around the world by Langley’s Rotarians.
And if that’s hardly what you’d expect from stuffy old lawyers and bankers, Rotary is reaching out even further in Langley, drawing on more youthful enthusiasm through a new concept, called “satellite” clubs.
Satellite Rotary clubs are not entirely new to Rotary International, the parent body that represents a network of 1.2 million members of more than 35,000 clubs around the world.
But the Satellite Rotary Club of Langley Central Sunset is the first of its kind in Rotary District 5050, which comprises clubs throughout the Fraser Valley and the adjacent part of Washington State down to about Bellingham.
The 10 members of the new group are actually members of the Rotary Club of Langley Central, but the association is somewhat loose.
The satellite group doesn’t hold as many meetings as the regular club, and its focus is more on “getting out and doing things,” explained Travis Strain, who is the chairman of the fledgling outfit.
Strain’s position highlights one of the differences – the satellite club oesn’t have a president like its more traditional parent, Langley Central.
“We function like a committee,” said Strain. “We have short meetings, just to discuss where we are.”
Membership dues and fees are significantly lower, and both meetings and projects are geared to needs of younger members with families or others who might not fit into the traditional weekly lunch or dinner meeting structures of the established clubs.
“Langley Central has some great fundraising projects,” noted Strain, who has been an active director of the parent club for several years, “but we [the satellite club] are more hands-on than fundraising.”
The goal is to effect about two projects per month.
But there is an especially big project coming up in June, Strain said.
The satellite club is collecting bicycles, to donate them to families in need.
The bikes don’t have to be in perfect condition. Volunteers will fix them up with help from Mountain Co-op Equipment. Store manager Andrew Brumby is a member of the club.
Any that require more work than the volunteers can handle will go to Mike Kirk of Bikes for Humanity, who can arrange bigger repairs and subsequent placements in Africa.
They have about 30 bikes already.
“The hardest thing,” said Strain, “is to give them away – to identify the people who really need them.”
But he pointed out that Rotarians, whether from traditional clubs or the new satellite, have always found ways to get a good job done.
Anyone interested in joining – or donating a bike – can contact Strain through the club’s Facebook page: www.facebook.com/LangleyCentralSunset or website http://langleycentralsunset.ca/
(Bob Groeneveld is a member of the Rotary Club of Langley Central)
