Club Planning Workshop, March 2012

We held a club planning-workshop last weekend, March 31 to April 01, 2012, at Casa Corazon, Lemery, Batangas. We were supposed to start in the afternoon of Day 1, but some of us still have work in Manila in the morning, they arrived late afternoon that day, so we started work by 6pm.

Only 7 of us were able to come -- President Norlan de Leon, President-Elect Rose Antonio, Immediate Past President Niel Antonio, me, Rotarians Eric Lucero, Meann de Leon, and Ephraem Serrano. We brought all of our respective families, spouses and kids.

The food was delicious and plentiful, thanks to Pres. Norlan and PE Rose. They shopped at the nearby Calaca public market, PE Rose brought there 2 cooks in their house plus driver, these 3 guys worked hard to prepare us really nice and yummy food, kudos to them.

Our work that night centered on four questions:
1. Where are we now, SWOT analysis,
2. Where do we want to be, at least 3 years from now,
3. How do we get there, and
4. What we are doing to get there.

The discussion on our club Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) was really lively. The key strength of the club is that we are in a very dynamic business district of the country, in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City. The key weakness is that we remain a small club (now we have 14 members) and hence, with small resources. The key opportunity is that we still have several committed members and officers who are willing to work for the club, for the district, and the communities that we partner with. The key threat is that if we remain small, delisting and forced merger with other smaller clubs will remain a continuing threat in the future.

The other 3 questions above were explored and discussed. Then the tasking of assignments, like restating the club's Vision-Mission. We concluded the meeting at nearly 12 midnight with a toast and cheer to the 12th anniversary of the club.

The venue, Casa Corazon,  http://www.casacorazonresort.com/ is a nice place. It's relatively huge, with three swimming pools, one for adults and two for toddlers and children.

The kids really enjoyed the two pools. It's a coincidence that our kids are generally young yet, so they were able to play with each other. We also brought our respective yayas/nannies for the younger kids.

The next day, Sunday April 1, we toured the place's museum. Entrance fee is P250 per head. The wide collection of vintage motorcycles and cars was really awesome. Like original BMW motorbikes, plenty of them there.

It's a nice place. We were also lucky that we practically occupied the whole place as they did not have other guests that weekend.

I will post other photos, especially the aviary and those huge birds, later.

Overall, it was a very productive weekend, both for us Rotarians, our families and kids. I am thankful to our club leadership for finding a good place, for preparing really sumptuous Filipino food. It helped that there is a nearby public market selling cheap food.

It was a good start for the coming leadership of PE Rose Antonio.