Deepening the fellowship across the District

Here is the lead article from the March 11 edition of the Caribbean District News Desk which looks at the spread of joint-zone meetings/conferences taking place certainly on the Jamaican side of the District. Feel free to post your comments and to send me reports of anything you wish to be included in the News Desk.

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ANY CARIBBEAN Optimists are this quarter expressing a feeling of rejuvenation and new sense of mission emerging within the District. This is due to a series of joint zone meetings – a platform that Governor Lynden Buchanan is calling, “a cost effective opportunity for many more club members to benefit from quality training (and) fellowship” outside of the District conferences.

While this is not a novel concept, joint zone meetings have become a vibrant feature during this year particularly because of the reintroduction of the Parallel District Conferences (PDCs), a decision at the 2012 District convention to cut back on the number of District level meetings, and a commitment made by Governor Lynden last August to meet more often with Optimists in their communities.

“The joint zone meeting concept was designed to reach out to members who for a number of reasons don’t usually attend the quarterly conferences. Members faced serious financial constraints and a zone meeting was a less costly affair”, argues the Governor.

“Interestingly, at the last three such meetings we have had very good attendance with approximately 180 members present across Zones five to nine… and we are seeing people who have never attended a District conference”, he affirms.

District Secretary-Treasurer Latoya Wade is also excited by what she is seeing at the zone meetings.  “The absence of four District Conferences has left no permanent damage so far”, says DST Latoya. If anything, she asserts, “it has reduced costs to the District and its members; we have been forced to come together in smaller groups which has inevitably reached more people, and caused better fellowship relations with more training”.

The training, deeper fellowship and motivated members seem to be the running thread from all the reports coming out of these meetings. 

Lieutenant Governors Kerisha Pinnock (Zone 8) 

and Maxine Francis (Zone 6) are heaping praise on the quality, dynamism, and leadership of the training, the heightened interest of the members, and the great fun and camaraderie coming out of their joint meetings in Runaway Bay and Fort Clarence Beach recently.

Little wonder then that DST Latoya is answering her own question in the affirmative: “Do I support joint Zone meetings? Yes, I do! There are so many positives; they help the LTG's to bond more with planning, they reduce the overall cost to attendees; they provide better grounds for creativity and less costs to the District Governor for travelling and he still gets to address a mass”, declares DST Latoya.

Caribbean District News D