4 minute read
CSO CORNER
COMMUNITY SERVICE OFFICER
By Mr PAUL DIPPENAAR, RTI Community Service Officer 21-22
The CSO portfolio for the year kicked off on a high note. With hundreds of ideas and the overwhelming experience of being part of the RTI board, it was time to put all the thoughts into ideas and projects and take action.
DURING THE 2020/2021 term, Paul Vreeburg and the rest of the RTI Board reinvented the CSO portfolio. On a global scale, service to the community was formally rolled out and divided into five pillars. Those would be Conservation, Education, Health, Poverty and Tabler for Tabler. The plans submitted to the RTI Board were approved, and the idea is to run at least one project per pillar for the year to come. This was because not all associations focus on the same type of events. Some associations build schools while others focus on raising food and funds for the homeless and the less fortunate. Therefore, we've decided to allow everyone to do at least one project, regardless of your associations' focus, whilst encouraging all associations to do more.The marketing and branding team met our ideas with plenty of enthusiasm. We can all agree that the publicity on Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter have been nothing but superb. All content was created timeously, with medical precision and attention to detail, and the professionalism and dedication the rondel rightly deserves.
SO OUR FIRST PROJECT got underway, which was the waste challenge. It was also the first in a line-up of side-by-side projects planned for the year. All five Round Table family members partook in this, and it was a great success. We ran from the 1st to the 19th of September 2021. What a way to honour World Clean-up Day. We specifically thank the members of Ladies' Circle and how they have embraced this project and truly live up to our combined theme for the year of being "Stronger Together". We saw terrific projects on social media. Everything from floating sea bins taking trash from the ocean and floating on the surface to joint beach clean-ups. Thank you, and a big shout out to everyone who partakes.
THEN IT WAS TIME FOR MOVEMBER. This project is close to heart as it affects us all somehow or the other. Round Table has supported the Movember foundation for a very long time now. After careful planning, we rolled out Movember to focus on awareness for men's health. The three focus areas were Prostate Cancer, Testicular Cancer and men's mental health and suicide prevention. Did you know that since 2003 more than 6 million people partook in this initiative, raised more than €409 million, and funded more than 1250 men's health projects?
ONCE AGAIN, RTI provided a platform for associations to contribute on a global scale with weekly flyers that went out as follows:
Week 1 Monday the 1st of November 2021: General flyer of Movember
Week 2 Monday the 8th of November 2021: Flyer about prostate cancer
Week 3 Monday the 15th of November 2021: Flyer about testicular cancer
Week 4 Monday the 22nd of November 2021: Flyer about men's mental health
WE ARE STILL RUNNING with the Movember website. What was truly inspiring was to see all the different posts on WhatsApp and social media. We had National boards challenging one another. Tablers growing a MO for the ultimate prize of crowned Mr MO over and above the obvious. Everything from national boards getting together to have a shavathon to associations going Commando. We have rolled out a survey on Tabler World for all associations to fill in. That way, we can see how much members have partaken and how much money was raised to help save a fellow brother.
WE HAVE ALSO started to plan for our next project focusing on the Education pillar. Please make a note of this:
1-23 January 2022, the focus will be on Education.
1-20 March 2022, we will focus on blood donation, and this will be a side-by-side project with the family members.
1-23 May 2022, we will focus on poverty and its related aspects.
1-31 July 2022, the focus will be on Tabler for Tabler and how we can assist one another as Tablers. So as you can see, we have a full and exciting year of community service ahead. We will leave today in a better state than yesterday by supporting these projects and initiatives. I would furthermore like to invite all associations to send me the information on any project you are running that you feel can be helpful other than the ones mentioned. We would be happy to promote these projects as appropriate.
OTHER THAN RUNNING a busy CSO term, we have begun the long and challenging road of corporate sponsorship. We are happy to announce that we are already on the 8th version of the RTI Corporate identity guide. We will be rolling this out in January. We will then use the data supplied by you in your google forms, Tabler. World forms or chairman's reports to compile a summary per project that we will use to attract big sponsors to contribute towards the RTI Foundation and a charity or cause of their choice.
Yours in table
Paul Dippenaar
cso@round-table.org
