President Lia introduced District Governor Al Purwa to the members and visitors.

DG Al said he was pleased to be back in Lovina after a long break, and to see many tourists and improvements. He presented a theme card, to President Lia, and D3400 Directory sporting the colour for the year - burgundy, and a D3400 banner so that we will remember his visit. We paused for a group photo with the banner.

So now for the big picture, Rotary has over 1.2 million members in more than 33,000 clubs that are located in more than 200 countries (which is more than the number of countries that are members of United Nations). Usually, District Governors visit all their clubs in the first 3 months of the year, then evaluate and initiate actions based on the evaluation. District 3400 with 83 clubs spread across Indonesia makes this task daunting. For some clubs there are long road journeys after a flight. DG Al aims to complete the evaluations by November.

He sees membership as a very high priority. Last year he visited a small club in England – Rotary Kings Norton – which met in a castle and had great food, but the problem was that the average age of members was 76. What would happen in 10 years? They had tried to attract younger members – but they did not stay. Perhaps they needed to invite larger groups of potential younger members at the same time so that they could so they could network among themselves as they tried to connect with the club. (To see more about Kings Norton, you can visit a District 1060 web-site and look at the articles relating to Kings Norton – see http://www.rotary1060.org.uk/user/lbeedham/tag/Kings+Norton+Rotary+Club) All our clubs need to be attracting younger members – in the 35-45 age group. We also need to keep a good balance between men and women, and to attract

In this context, DG Al mentioned his Facbook page which is http://www.facebook.com/aloysius.purwa . Later he also mentioned his weblog page at http://www.alpurwa.com/ . He is recording details of his club visits here and it is really good to read. Where he sees problems he is not afraid to mention them.

Next topic was District Grants and Global Grants – going over the way it is driven by what members have contributed in earlier years. District Grants can be used for many different purposes. Global Grants which are from $30,000 to $150,000 may seem large, but every club should aim to be involved with a Global Grant.

He talked about the current theme Building Communities, Bridging Continents. It describes what Rotary is really good at, and is outward looking. He illustrated his points by talking about Rotary Youth Exchange where students spend 12 months in another country (see http://www.rotary.org/en/studentsandyouth/youthprograms/rotaryyouthexchange/pages/ridefault.aspx) , and the Group Study Exchange where the participants are 25-40 and the stays are 1 month (see http://www.rotary.org/en/serviceandfellowship/fellowship/groupstudyexchange/pages/ridefault.aspx ).

Finally, he looked at the challenges for District 3400. Indonesia is a big country where the distance from Aceh to Papua is similar to the distance from Los Angeles to New York. But all of Indonesia is in just one District (3400) with only about 1,500 members in 83 clubs. Compare this to Philippines with 10 districts and tens of thousands of members. We need a vision where we grow the membership in Indonesia enough to support multiple districts that will then be more manageable.

Before the meeting, DG Al and some Board members visited Yayasan Citra Usadha as volunteers prepared the AIDS awareness entry for the Singaraja Parade.  Next, they visited Window to the World  School to see work of our Literacy and Education Project.