With the first games of the Rugby World Cup kicking off on Friday 9 September, New Zealand Rotarians will be welcoming their first international guests in a unique home hosting programme for rugby loving Rotarians.
The project is the brain child of a couple of hardworking Rotarians from 9940, Allan Brown from RC Hutt City and Howard Tong RC Port Nicholson. (See www.rotarynzrugbyhosting.org)
“We were looking for ways to bring Rotarians together, to support the Rugby World Cup campaign in New Zealand and, of course, to make a few dollars for charity – in this case the Polio Plus campaign, says Howard.
Under the home hosting scheme, visitors pay $150 a night and $100 of that goes to the Polio Plus campaign with the host keeping the rest to cover their costs.
Rotarians in nine centres around New Zealand where games are being played will host international Rotarians for a total of 131 visitor nights. 30% of the visitors are coming from Australia, 20% from England, and 17% from South Africa. A third of the total visitor nights are made up of Rotarians visiting other Rotarians within New Zealand, plus there’s a few from various other countries.
Close to $15,000 will be contributed to Polio Plus as a result of this highly successful programme.
“There have been more offers to host than we can use,” Howard Tong says. “On behalf of the organising committee may I thank all those who have offered to host, and we are sorry if you have missed out on having an overseas guest. We selected hosts who were closest to a venue first, and moved out from there.”
There have been many side benefits – in addition to the friendships forged and the money raised.
The website developed specially for this project is very professionally presented and has worked well. Visitors had to register and prepay through the site. “The spectacular graphics of upside down grass struck a chord with many European visitors.”
20,000 professionally written email newsletters were distributed to rotary clubs around the world. These newsletters generated 350 responses and much interaction between NZ and other clubs.
“That was a big plus in itself”, says Howard. ““We expect hundreds of new Rotary friendships will be made between hosts and visitors.”
Coordinators around the country were trained through the use of webinars, “and that worked well. The web technology we used is available to be cloned for other Rotary events.”
The organising committee has met over the last three years and has included several young non Rotarians who added to the technology capability in the team lead by Allan Brown of the Hutt City Club.
“Martin Snedden, the Chief Executive of RWC 2011, has been very supportive throughout and has spoken highly of the project when he addressed various district conferences. We have also gained several new members through this project alone.
“We took the programme to three international conventions -, Birmingham, Montréal and New Orleans, and we got the endorsement of three RI Presidents Bill Boyd, John Kenny and Ray Klinginsmith.
“The programme also featured in several RI magazines particularly RDU.”
For more details
Allan Brown
64 4 4957827
