ROMAC goes to Salt Lake City
David and Catherine Bonifant, Bryan and Lyn Mason, PDG Lew Pretorius and then Deputy Chairman PDG Ian Wright, together with Jill Ellis (Northern Region Secretary) spent nearly all of six full days manning the ROMAC booth in the House of Friendship during the International Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah in June 2007. Other ROMAC friends joined us and helped for short periods, including PDG Lloyd and Christine Roever, PDG Una Hobday, Janice Reid, PDG John and Jean Tregurtha and several other Rotarians from Australia and New Zealand.
On the Tuesday afternoon during the convention we gave a 90 minute workshop presentation on ROMAC and how our program can be adopted in other countries. The response was most encouraging; more than 40 people from several countries expressed great interest and are still being followed up.
Some will come to Australia to observe how we operate, and Ian has been invited to speak at a District Conference in the UK in October 2008, about ROMAC and how it can be set up there. It is hoped that we shall see similar programs to ROMAC operating in Europe, North America and some parts of Asia, within a few years
Among the visitors to the booth were RI President Bill and Lorna Boyd (several times), Past RI Presidents Frank Devlyn and Rick King, RI Director Ian Riseley and Juliet, and many more. All commented on the excellence of the display and the enthusiasm of the participants.
Credit for the design and wording of the display, our colourful T shirts, and the 4000 handouts must be given to Jill Ellis and Phil Rosenberg, of RC Gold Coast Central, who worked for many hours getting it right, and to the satisfaction of David and Bryan. The result was outstanding, among the very best of the 200 or more booths in the House of Friendship.
We were fortunate that generous sponsors covered the costs of our visit to the convention. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.
Letters of appreciation for the efforts put in by ROMAC to make the convention one of the best ever, have been received from PRIP Bill Boyd and the convention committee.
(See our ROMAC crew with convention delegates)
