Busting the stereotypes
WARREN GAMBLE
A “pent-up desire to do good” has helped drive more members to community groups like Rotary in a world scarred by Covid and warfare, an international leader says.
Canadian Jennifer Jones is the immediate past president of Rotary International, the first woman to hold the role in the 118-year history of the worldwide service organisation.
In Nelson ahead of her keynote role at the South Island Rotary conference in Christchurch last Saturday, she said that in the aftermath of the pandemic there had been a greater desire by people to re-evaluate their lives.
“We’re a collection of business professionals who do good in their own communities and around the world and that ability to have something that maybe is a little bit of a different pay cheque, to be able to do something that means something,” she said. “I think a lot of people are searching for that at a time when we have been tested.”
In Ukraine, for example, Rotary membership had risen since the Russian invasion as people looked to help families and neighbours meaningfully. There had also been an outpouring of support for Ukrainian groups from the worldwide Rotary family.
Jones and her husband visited 57 countries in her year as Rotary International president in 2022-23. The livewire former reporter and media company founder has helped bust stereotypes of Rotary as an elitist club, dominated by older men.
As a young reporter in Canada, she covered Rotary meetings in the 1980s before women were allowed to join.
It took a Supreme Court decision in 1987 to pave the way for women members, and Jones’ appointment as international head, after serving various leadership roles, was a natural progression. “I think being able to show up as perhaps a different-looking kind of leader has helped break down the gender barrier, but not just gender,” she said.
“It has broken down barriers for others who haven’t perhaps seen themselves represented in that former stereotype.
“I challenge our members to be more vulnerable, to be more compassionate, to be more empathetic.
“I don’t say that to suggest that my male colleagues would be different, but I think it’s given me an opportunity to speak more openly about that and to have it be a more accepted message.”
Jones said Rotary was not elitist “but we demand excellence, we want good people to be members in our organisation, people of integrity and people who believe in making their communities and their world a better place.’’
,She visited a diverse range of groups supported by Rotary clubs in Nelson, including the Male Room men’s day shelter, youth mentoring programme Big Brothers Big Sisters, Nelson Environment Centre’s Kai Rescue, and Days for Girls, provider of menstrual kits in New Zealand and overseas.
“Oh my gosh, the amazing things they are doing in this community are absolutely some of the best I’ve seen.”