Many firsts at GETS

With RI Director C Basker’s penchant for training well-known, well articulated and well enforced through training sessions not only for RI general officers and district leaders, but also DRRs, the GETS sessions at the Kuala Lumpur Institute were well planned and rigorously executed.

PDG Sam Movva was the captain of the Governor’s Elect Training Seminar for the 40 incoming district governors and their spouses from India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Conducted over three days prior to the Institute, this year, GETS kicked off with a trainers’ training session, handled by the training team leader Movva. “At this session, the finer aspects of facilitation techniques, room management and nuances of adult learning were discussed at length. This year’s GETS curriculum included, for the first time, a joint session of governors-elect and their district trainers at the instance of RI Director Basker, who wanted DGEs and the district trainers to be on the same page when it came to the training cycle at the district level,” said Movva.

This year’s GETS curriculum included, for the first time, a joint session of governors-elect and their district trainers, and a session on RI constitutional documents.

Another first time event at this GETS was a session on RI constitutional documents and “it was deftly handled by PDG T N Subramanian, who is a member of the RI constitution and bylaws committee,” he added.

Apart from Movva and Basker, the plenary speakers included the who’s who from RI, such as RI President Ian Riseley, TRF Trustee Chair Paul Netzel, RI Director John Matthews and Past RI President Rajendra Saboo. The Foundation Seminar, addressed by PRIP and immediate Trustee Chair Kalyan Banerjee and Trustee Sushil Gupta, evoked a lot of interest, and many doubts about raising funds and executing grants for sustainable projects in a transparent manner were discussed.

The various training sessions were handled by team leader Sam Movva, general trainer PDG Raja Ram, past directors Yash Pal Das, P T Prabhakar, Manoj Desai, TRF Trustee Elect GulamVahanvaty, and past district governors Dr Rajiv Pradhan, Ashok Gupta, A S Venkatesh, Ashok Panjwani, Raja Michael, Rajendra Rai, Avinash Potdar, Ashish Desai, Bal Inamdar, K P Nagesh and Gowri Rajan.

RI staff members including Abe Mcnear, Nick Smith, Jayashree Jayaraman and Joseph Thomas, the last two from the RI South Asia office, were the resource persons at the GETS.

At the feedback session many incoming governors expressed their happiness on the manner in which the various GETS sessions were conducted, the quality of training and said they felt inspired and looked forward with much greater confidence to further training at the International Assembly in San Diego.