Mr Robinson met his wife-to-be on the Greek island of Corfu — she was on another bus — and they returned to New Zealand in 1982.
He went farming again, moving from Herbertville to Wimbledon to Castlepoint to Mount Bruce and finally to the Waikato. He managed a deer stud near Cambridge for
21 years and retired in 2019.
Mr Robinson’s first contact with Rotary came when his younger daughter went on a student exchange to the Northern Territory in 2002. She later did the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) programme, and the Robinson family hosted an international student from Norway.
In 2006, Mr Robinson felt it was “payback time” so he joined Rotary Cambridge. He was
co-chair of the district RYLA committee from 2008 until last year. He also served as president of his Rotary club and, for his services to RYLA, he was made a Paul Harris Fellow.
Rotary International president Gordon McInally, of Scotland, has called on Rotarians to get behind his theme to “Create Hope in the World” by working for peace and mental wellbeing.
Mr Robinson said clubs could work towards the realisation of this theme by supporting the Rotary Foundation. Three years after a district’s contribution to the foundation, half of its funding would come back to that district for use in projects. The rest would be used to provide international help in such forms as disaster relief, polio eradication efforts and development projects.
He noted that for every dollar Rotary committed to polio eradication, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave two dollars — up to $US150 million a year.
Rotary depended on its members for the achievement of its philanthropic goals, but building and maintaining membership was a challenge, he said.
Ten years ago, Zone 8 — Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific Islands, Timor-Leste, Nauru and the Solomon Islands — had 39,000 members. Now the figure was 29,000, yet in the intervening years Rotary clubs had inducted 35,000 members.
The problem was that studies showed
60 percent of new members left within two years. That, plus natural attrition, meant clubs in Zone 8 had lost over 40,000 members in
10 years.
One approach was to promote regionalisation to make the organisation more streamlined and promote the sharing of expertise and knowledge.
Zone 8 was one of two zones across the globe to pilot a regional approach to governance (the other was the zone encompassing Great Britain and Ireland). Clubs could also focus on their core values of fellowship, diversity, service and leadership.
Evidence of diversity was the selection of a woman — for the first time — to the position of Rotary International president last year, and the selection of another woman to the role next year.
As 9930 district governor, Mr Robinson’s theme for the year is “Let’s be Sustainable”.
Catch-phrases and questions in service of the theme included “keep it simple”, “can I be smarter”, “do I need it” and “can it be re-used”.
Rotary-led collections kept 37 tonnes of e-waste (discarded electrical or electronic devices) out of dumps in Te Awamutu and Cambridge in a year.
“We collect domestic and lithium batteries and keep them out of the dump,” Mr Robinson said.
His district goals were keep things simple, don’t reinvent the wheel, don’t be afraid to try new things and focus on mental health.
His chosen charity was Kids in Need Waikato, which supported foster children and their carers. Its reach was 600 families with 1442 children, and this year 180 families were added to the list of those needing help.
