A new Rotary club with innovative ideas Rtn Daniel Lopez from Pittsburg chartered a new club which seeks like-minded professionals and allows flexibility in weekly meetings, besides giving a slew of liberties to its members.

Being involved with his local Rotary club had always been a rewarding experience for Pittsburg resident Daniel Lopez, but it wasn’t easy making all the lunch meetings and having the time to grow his personal business.

So after serving as president in 2014, he made the tough decision to leave the club to work more on his own business endeavour.

That wasn’t the end of his Rotary story, though.

Last year Daniel decided he wanted to get back and be involved with the Rotary group, but he couldn’t do it on the terms of the local club, so he decided to look for other alternatives.

“I saw what a Rotary club in the Sacramento area was doing and thought we could do something similar here,” Lopez said.

This past December, Daniel started a new Rotary Club programme out of Pittsburg called the Rotary Club of Northern California Gateway, District 5160.

“The club’s composition is extraordinary: 12 women and 13 men, with an average age of 42 years, one a former president of a Rotary youth group,” Lopez said.

“The objective of the club is to connect committed, community-minded volunteers in the pursuit of service through friendship without the traditional meeting constraints of the past, thus the name Northern California Gateway.”

Lopez explained that there are a lot of individuals, especially young professionals, who are interested in joining the Rotary club but either because of cost or the time required away from work are unable to do so.

This group allows club members to join in on activities, meet in Rotary club meetings at any one of the 71 Northern California locations and attend online meetings once a month at a reduced fee.

Lopez explains that the new club concept embraces engagement over meeting attendance, retaining the approach of a network of community-minded friends who are the core of Rotary.

Participation in projects is a large part of attendance.

“Together we will interpret the Rotary idea in new ways, design and start new projects and make new friends. In this process, we will be guided by our Rotary values and the idea that is expressed in our club name,” he said.

Lopez and his group are working to get programmes off the ground and looking for like-minded individuals to join the club.

More information can be found by checking the club’s website at gatewayrotary5160.org.

Source: East Bay Times