Charter President (CP) T. Patrick van Kampen, Ph.D. from the Rotary Club of Bali Seminyak was our guest speaker for September 30 - our first meeting in the new Club House.

He originally came to Bali in 1992 as the Headmaster of the International School of Bali, but after a short tenure he moved on and opened his own Language School in Denpasar. He was with the Rotary Club of Bali Nusa Dua for 10 years before starting the Rotary Club of Bali Seminyak eight years ago. They concentrate on membership, seeing it as the lifeblood. They were able to reach their goal of 50 members this past June, but currently are now at 43.

He explained Rotary's Future Vision Plan in some detail (see an overview here).

It is a plan to change the current system of Matching Grants with District Grants and Global Grants, and will be phased in over 3 years. The pilot trial has already started (see an overview of the pilot here) and our District 3400 is participating along with 99 others. Rotary aims to:

• simplify administration to reduce the costs
• devolve more authority to districts
• improve Rotary's ability to work with NGOs

CP Patrick emphasized how this plan may affect the Bali Clubs. For example, even though this new RI Program looks promising, will District 3400 be ready and able to accept the additional administrative load? Since our clubs in Bali struggle with fundraising, we need to partner with Clubs / Districts that have greater resources, and during the trial period, we need to seek partners from the other participating Districts - (see the list of 100 districts here and start thinking of possible partners).