Host-Club: RC Bonn International

Origin
In the summer of 2023, a small group of committed Rotarians came up with the idea of forming a new, active Rotary Club with a thematic focus on the two major topics of “peacebuilding” and “environmental protection”.

Organization and anchoring
In order to allow the new club to grow organically, the initiators wanted to start with a small group of members and look for other suitable members over time. For this approach, Rotary offers the possibility of founding a Satellite Club of an established Rotary Club with eight Rotarians. RC Bonn International, a relatively young club (founded in 2016) with presently 44 committed members from different countries, was the ideal host club. The club language of RC Bonn International is English. The satellite club P&E is also set to develop internationally in the future, in any case with a reach beyond national borders. For the start, however, the club language is German because the majority of the members are German-speaking.

Skills and content orientation
The membership of the Satellite Club is deliberately heterogeneous. We believe that different professional groups, backgrounds and skills lead to a more accurate view of our world and to more balanced and sustainably effective projects. The team includes people who like to approach the topic scientifically, others who prefer to organize practical projects and still others who want to take care of public dissemination. The group combines social skills with relevant relationships in society and IT expertise. We want to achieve our objectives as a team and learn from each other. Unlike the majority of established Rotary Clubs, the Satellite Club will focus on an electoral theme: Peace-building and environmental protection – and above all with “the in-between”. The satellite club will focus on the complex interdependencies between peacebuilding and environmental protection. Against the backdrop of Rotary’s fundamental values, the members would like to work out the essential causal relationships and present them in a clear and comprehensive way in order to sensitize as many people as possible to our potential influence. They also want to design projects (blueprints for grant projects) and in some cases implement them themselves that have a positive impact in our world. The Rotarian community should be used for the outreach of the activities.

What has happened so far
Since December 2023, around 12 out of 30 people who are fundamentally interested in this topic have been meeting virtually on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month to get to know each other better and make friends on the one hand, and to crystallize a common line and derive concrete project activities from it on the other.
In the meantime, some basic papers on the topics of “aggression”, “positive peace” and “complexity” with a certain scientific basis have been produced and discussed, which have laid the foundation for the group’s further work. It was decided that the first ambitious project would be to design and develop a cybernetic, web-based game to illustrate awareness of the consequences of our actions in complex interdependencies and to demonstrate our influence on changes in our world. Our aim is to encourage people to rethink and change course in a way that promotes peace and protects the environment. In doing so, we have opted for the perspective of each individual, not that of the “state leaders”.

Outlook
In July 2024, the eight founding members will charter the Satellite Club, sponsored by RC Bonn International. The statutes for the Satellite Club have already been drawn up.
The Satellite Club is expected to grow to >20 members within a year by accepting further suitable members (Rotarians and non-Rotarians). In due course, the satellite club can be converted into a themed Rotary Passport Club. By converting to a Passport Club, the non-Rotarian members will have the opportunity to be accepted by the club as Rotarians. We want our initiative to have a lasting impact with a wide reach.

Would you like to join us? Then please get in touch with us.