Talking Pictures – an RID 3131 training event

I never thought that I would be able to create such fantastic videos myself. Very exciting!

“Creating good posters and ­videos to promote Rotary is the need of the hour, and now we know how to do it!”

“It was exciting to attend the first physical event of this year.”

These are some of the reactions received from the participants of Talking Pictures, the training event organised by the public image team of Rotary District 3131, says Mohan Chaubal, co-chair, public image. The event held in Pune aimed to equip the public image teams and leaders of Rotary clubs to create high quality promotional videos and posters about their projects and events. DG Rashmi Kulkarni and the district PI director Vivek Dixit strongly believe in the importance of publicising such information for membership development and fundraising. The district PI team of 2020–21 is aggressively using digital media this year and has created several interesting videos, posters, brochures and hoardings to promote district projects and events.

It was soon realised by the PI team that the clubs wanted to create effective communication tools, but many of them lacked the knowledge to do so. So a workshop to train club officers on creating effective posters and videos was organised and got enthusiastic response, and participants for the hall capacity of 100 were registered within days.

“Jignesh Pandya, an expert in digital media and the backbone of the district’s digital media initiatives, was the trainer, and along with his team, did a great job of training the participants, including those who are not very tech-savvy, and captured both their interest and active participation,” said PDG Deepak Shikarpur, RPIC Zone 7. “Everyone was just glued to their phones for two and a half hours. No surprise that the participants found the training very interesting, insightful, and motivating,” added Chaubal.

Talking Pictures was launched by DG Rashmi, and PDG ­Shikarpur was the keynote speaker. District officers ­Manjoo Phadke, Shital Shah, and Sudin Apte shared their thoughts on the ­importance of effective promotion of Rotary. Rasheeda Bhagat, Editor of Rotary News, and Jyoti Rai, Senior Coordinator – Communications & Public Relations at Rotary International South Asia Office, shared video messages on the art of ­taking photographs and effective ­communication. The district’s digital marketing platform was also launched by Shikarpur ­during the event.

This event was organised, taking all mandatory precautions on safety during the Covid ­pandemic, under the ­leadership of Vivek Dixit and Mukesh Gupta.