Monthly Business Meeting: Project Updates and Club Governance

Ahoy Crew! This Friday we have one of the less glamorous — but most important — meetings on our Rotary calendar: our monthly business meeting. Each board member will give feedback on their area of responsibility: projects underway, projects in the pipeline, and the essential club-support functions like admin, finance, and governance that keep everything running smoothly.

Please attend (online this week) and please participate, even if you’re not directly involved in a particular project. Curiosity is healthy. Good questions strengthen clubs.

Resilience in Uncertain Times: Responding to Global and Local Challenges

I’d also like us to sit with a broader theme: resilience. We are living through a period of global instability on a scale not seen for decades. Closer to home, we face stubborn unemployment, escalating criminality, and climatic events that are no longer rare — runaway fires in some parts of our country, unprecedented floods in others. It’s a lot to hold. So how do we steady ourselves — and still show up usefully for others?

Three Principles for Managing Fear, Outrage and Anxiety

I’d suggest three simple principles in dealing with fear, outrage and anxiety:

First: name the fear, then narrow the focus.

Unacknowledged fear tends to run the room. Once named, it loses much of its power. From there, we deliberately shrink our time horizon. We may not be able to fix the world, but wecan decide what we will do this week, as individuals and as a club.

Second: choose agency over outrage.

Outrage is understandable, but it’s rarely productive. Agency asks a more resourceful question: what is within our control? Rotary has always been at its best when it converts concern into practical action — one project, one partnership, one community at a time.

Third: be the calm we want to see.

Resilience is contagious. So is panic. In unsettled times, leadership often looks like slowing the conversation down, listening properly, and responding thoughtfully. We don’t need to have all the answers — we do need to be steady.

Accredited Rotary Peace Builder Club: Leading Through Thoughtful Action

As an accredited Rotary Peace Builder Club, this matters even more. Peace-building isn’t only about resolving conflict elsewhere; it’s about how we show up here — in our meetings, our projects, and our communities. It’s about modelling respectful dialogue, thoughtful leadership, and action that reduces fear rather than amplifies it. If we can do that — consistently and visibly — we will be living up to the name we proudly carry. I look forward to seeing you all on my screen on Friday!

⚓ Yours in Service and Unity, Derek Pead | President
Rotary Club of Waterfront ⚓
www.waterfrontrotary.org