Rotary Club and Sellling Hartsville

One of the institutions that has always been at the forefront of making Hartsville a better community in which to live is the Hartsville Rotary Club. Rotary International is one of the most 'can-do' organizations in the world. Today I got the opportunity to talk with the Rotary about the Selling Hartsville initiative. If the entire Selling Hartsville idea is going to take hold in our community it is going to have to be the civic clubs who play a major ongoing role. Looking out at the audience it was also apparent that we need to find ways to bring additional people to our community and get more people involved in all facets of the community. Several groups of people you might expect to be significantly represented in civic organizations are there in the numbers they used to be. Over the past several years --as Putnam has observed in BOWLING ALONE, there has been less participation in these groups and one of my beliefs is that if a community is going to thrive it has to reverse this trend. As noted in other blogs there are communities fighting not to survive -- but to thrive. I'm hoping that we see a lot of Rotarians and lots of other Hartsvillians at the October 2 launch of Selling Hartsville. The invitation tody was that they come to the launch to meet neighbors and gather with friends to remind each other what a treasure trove of assets we have in the Hartsville community.