Rotary Presentation -- July 18, Jim Movius and Alicia Childs

Posted by Erik Hulbert

on Jul 20, 2011

Jim is a long-standing member and leader of our club, and he came to speak with us today about the generational differences in volunteerism. Members of different generations tend to prefer to do so in different ways, and perhaps for different reasons, but understanding how each other thinks is key in helping them work together. Also, Alicia Childs presented information about Rotaract, and this fed into the conversation about how the generations relate to each other.

Each generation has different life experiences. Each member is not only shaped by numerical age, but also by formative experiences that they share as a group. The 4 most identifiable generational divisions are: "Silent Generation" (born before 1945, Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1975), and Gen Y (1975-present).

Jim wrote a script for a club member of each generation to read out loud to help illustrate, in an entertaining manor, the strongest attributes of each generation. It was fun, with some gentle ribbing between each group. It was structured in a way that was not only educational on its own, but even some of the humorous interchange provided insight into how the generations communicate with each other. Jim provided a wealth of statistics and facts to help make the case about changing times, and connected the facts to how each generation experiences the world.

Rotaract's Alicia Childs and Courtney Enright made a presentation about Rotaracts activities and showed how their generation communicates with each other these days. As an example, Alicia and Courtney helped Jim Movius set up a Facebook account while doing the presentation. There were some technical issues at first, and the older members of our club could not help but smirk a little bit. In the end, it was done and the younger generation showed how easy and how useful Facebook can be as a new tool.