John Farrow introduced our speaker Martha Weaver who was District Governor in 2018-19. She is a member of the Chateaugay Rotary Club in Northern New York where she lives. She is leading the District committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity and Accessibility.
- Martha is part of the Rotary LGBTQ Fellowship, so this led to her being asked to chair the DEI Committee for the District. Next year she will be co-chairing it with a Rotaracter, Heather Taylor. Martha noted that it’s very important to include Rotaracters in everything we do. Everyone is welcome to attend these committee meetings which are once a month.
- District 7040 has a lot of cultural diversity within it, but for the most part it is very subtle. We have 2 nations and 2 languages.
- It is key to allow people to make mistakes because this is necessary for dialogue.
- Rotary has formed a task force to look at how we can implement diversity, equity inclusion and accessibility. This is complicated in an organization that is world wide. The goal of having 1/3 of our membership to be women is a challenge because of cultural differences. In our District it is about 40%.
- The conversation about women in Rotary began in the 1950’s, but it didn’t become open to women until 1989.
- Membership by invitation has been a problem for diversity because people tend to ask others who are like themselves.
- The RI website has a lot of information and webinars. These can be found easily at the Learning Centre.
- Our District is taking a lead in integrating Rotaracters.
- Some clubs are taking an active role in getting involved in Pride events.
- Accessibility is the first step to inclusion. Our District is multi-lingual, and although half are Francophones, we haven’t been successful in getting translators for meetings, and most things take place in English.
- The key to inclusion starts with awareness.
- How do you increase diversity in a club without having a person feel like they are a token? You aren’t inviting someone because they are filling a slot, you are inviting them because they are a person.
- Greg Mumford thanked Martha for her presentation, noting that diversity makes our clubs richer. Diversity benefits all of us.
Members only can see Martha's Power Point presentation at https://portal.clubrunner.ca/1091/Documents/en-us/8c44f218-9c7a-4041-90ca-ffe258282bde/1/