District 28 holds online alumnae meeting during the COVID-19 pandemic

At the end of March 2020, D28 should have held a long multipurpose weekend in Frankfurt, including our periodic Alumnae meeting, the chartering of a new club, an area meeting, and a district board meeting and some social events.  

But the pandemic hit D28 countries already in mid-February, sweeping away any chance of carrying on with the events as planned. Since we had some experience with online district board meetings previously, we boldly took the challenge to convert most of our planned events into Zoom meetings, to keep our district and areas business running, and especially to show our alumnae how much we care about them.

We had to make the schedule work for everyone because of the time involved, In particular, the “Great Girls meet Great Women" meeting, attended by 42 of the 60 registered to the face-to-face event, was very successful. After keynote speaker Stephanie Renda talked about start-ups and digitization, we had a very interactive discussion with attendees of all ages. 

A discussion on the challenges and chances of e-Clubs and Golden Z Clubs was conducted by the D28 alumnae who respectively formed the Zonta e-club of Italy and Golden Z club Main Taunus. The meeting ended with the invitation to our alumnae to save the date and meet us face to face at the European Inter-district Seminar scheduled for February 2021 in Frankfurt.

These online events showed each of the clubs in the district that physical isolation does not mean total interruption of Zonta activities, and that meeting online is not just for digital experts.