ROTARY CLUB OF BANDAR SUNGAI PETANI, MALAYSIA
  • Home
  • RCBSP News Blog
    • Click here for Quarterly Newsletter
  • Join
    • Get Involved
  • Service
    • Tabung Cermin Mata : Free Spectacles
    • Rotaract
    • "Lend-a-Wheel" Wheelchair Project
    • Upskill
    • Seni Lukis
  • About
    • 13th Installation
    • Guiding Principles of Rotary
    • 4 Way Test
    • History of Rotary 1
    • History of Rotary 2
    • History of Rotary 3
    • Board and Members of RCBSP

RI President K R Ravindran's Speech to the 2015 Rotary Convention

1/7/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture


My dear friends:

 

Thirty-four years ago, the 72nd annual convention of Rotary International, chaired by that great past president from Brazil, Paolo Costa, was held right here in this very city.

 

On that day we were honored by a very special guest: Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa was often asked, as we are asked in Rotary, if she really felt that her work made a difference; after all, the needs of the world were so great.

 

She answered, “It is true. Everything we do is only a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be the poorer, if not for each drop.”

 

Today, I am proud to be a part of an organization that affirms the truth of those words through service; which makes the world not poorer, but richer; which replaces despair with hope; which raises up those whom fate has brought low; and which is a gift to so many, while allowing each of us to Be a Gift to the World.

 

In Nepal, when the devastating earthquake hit, Rotarians were among the first to react. Medical teams arrived from Singapore and India. Solar lanterns, ShelterBoxes, tarpaulins and tents, water filters and medicines followed. And hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised already to help rebuild the lives of the millions who have lost their homes. When the camera crews leave, when the eye of the world looks elsewhere, Rotary will continue to remain.

 

In India, where half of government schools lack the most basic sanitation, Rotary is responding by committing to build 20,000 toilet blocks in schools around the country over the next two years.

 

Each block consists of two toilets for boys, and two for girls. For countless thousands of girls, these facilities will make the difference between dropping out of school at age twelve and carrying on to finish their educations, and perhaps find a better life.

 

In Africa, as you have heard, we will soon celebrate a milestone that once seemed unthinkable: one year without a single case of polio.

 

And my friends, it will not be too long before we will come together to celebrate a world free of polio because of Rotarians who made the choice to do the work — not for profit, or for glory, but simply because it needed to be done.

 

In a few weeks, President Gary will leave us as president. He leaves us with an organization of unprecedented strength: one with more members, in more clubs, than ever before. It is not enough simply to thank him for his work — although we do! We must continue it, by building our membership, in new and innovative ways — giving potential members more reasons to join, and current members more reasons to stay.

 

One way we will do that is through an exciting new program, which will debut on July first. This program is named Rotary Global Rewards. It will allow Rotarians to connect, online and via their smart phones, with hundreds of businesses and service providers around the world — and that number is growing. These companies will offer Rotarians discounts and concessions on the everyday business that you do — and you will notice that they include major brands with a worldwide footprint. And in some cases not only will you benefit, but our Foundation will as well, by receiving a contribution with each transaction. It will be another way to benefit from being a Rotarian and being part of the Rotary network. And so I urge all of you to become a part of that scheme, by signing up for My Rotary at Rotary.org.

 

In the past 12 weeks I have had the pleasure of personally addressing nearly 14,000 club presidents-elect around the world at their multidistrict PETS. The feedback I have received on this program has been very positive.

 

And what’s more, I have seen the strength that lies in your clubs, and I know that we are ready to face the challenges that lie ahead.

 

My friends, a new Rotary year awaits us, full of promise: a new chapter in the book of our lives, its pages empty, waiting to be filled. The pen is poised over the page. I ask you: What will it write? Will it write of generous deeds, of ambition, of responsibility; of work done well, and a life well lived? Or will it write of days that follow after days, each one alike, unremarkable? In their coming, hardly noticed; in their passing, hardly missed?

 

Remember that every moment of our lives — every page that we are given to write — is a gift. And each one is a choice. A choice, as Martin Luther King put it, whether to walk in the light of creative altruism, or the darkness of destructive selfishness. To be selfish — or to be selfless. To live for ourselves alone — or to live for others.

 

Rotary gives us that choice. And I think sometimes we lose sight of that.

 

Sometimes, in the rush and immediacy of our own lives, in the rough-and-tumble of each day, our Rotary  projects become just another task, and we forget — we forget what it is all about. Until something happens that makes us remember, that brings it crashing down on us — what we are in Rotary and what it is that we do.

 

A few years ago my club, together with Rotarians from Germany, with the help of our Rotary Foundation, made a choice. We decided to rebuild a maternity hospital in the southern part of my country, a hospital which had been destroyed by the tsunami. We made a choice to build it better than it had ever been before, fully modern, fully equipped, and we built as well a mother and child ward, complete with an intensive care unit. There was nothing at all like this in that area at the time, and the need was great.

 

And so our German friends stepped forward with tremendous commitment, we worked together over many months, and in the end we had a hospital of which any country would be proud. So when then chair of our Rotary Foundation, D.K. Lee, visited Sri Lanka, we took him to see our new hospital.

 

We saw the mothers coming to deliver babies and others bringing their newborn babies for care — hundreds of families receiving these vital services, which had simply been absent from that area. From there we went into the neonatal intensive care unit — the product of so much work and investment. Inside it, nine incubators, every one of them with a Rotary wheel, and every one of them occupied. In one of them lay a baby girl, weighing just 900 grams — she could have fit in the palm of my hand — covered with tubes and wires. And she was fighting for every breath — fighting harder than someone a hundred times her size.

 

As I watched that tiny chest rise and fall, I realized I was holding my own breath — waiting for her next breath, and the next, and the next. Each one, a result of so much effort, from someone so desperately small. And my heart went out to her, this little baby who came into the world too soon. I whispered “Fight, baby, fight! There is a wide world waiting for you out there — if only you will fight!”

 

She was small, she was poor, she was sick — but she was not forgotten. She would not be left to die by a world that saw no value in one baby’s life. She was someone’s precious child, a nd we had cared for her.

 

We had done all we could to give her that chance to live. The rest was up to her.

 

And as I walked out of that hospital, I hoped, I prayed — and then, for months, I wondered.

 

In January of this year, I had the chance to visit that hospital again. We were allowed into that same intensive care unit; this time only a few of the incubators were occupied. And then after our visit, we all came out into the hall, where we stopped and talked to the doctors and nurses, who told us that 140,000 babies had been born in that hospital since we built it.

 

And there, I was introduced to a young mother with a child, who had come for her routine visit. Sweet kid, big, dark eyes, beautiful smile — a year or two old, busy learning to walk and talk. I love kids, so I just reached out and picked her up and carried her around as I chatted with her mother. And just then, one of the doctors came up to me with a smile on her face, and asked, “Do you remember, Mr. Ravindran, the last time you were visiting, there was the one child you seemed anxious about?”

 

“Yes, of course! How could I forget?” I replied.

 

She reached out and patted the little girl I was holding, and said, “This is that child.”

 

And it was I who struggled to breathe.

 

That was the child. There in my arms: a little girl who lived because of Rotary. Who smiled, who laughed, who gave joy to her parents — because of Rotarians who had chosen selflessness over selfishness.

 

Rotarians who had chosen to Be a Gift to the World.

 

When you think about that, everything else just falls away. And you see it so clearly: the choice that we have. We all have so much. Others have so little. We have received so many gifts; others, so few.

 

And I am asking you all today: when you go home, when you go back to your clubs, when you make your plans for next year: Remember what it is we do. Remember why we are here. Remember who it is we serve.

 

And so, with God’s blessings behind us, and your prayers before us, let us set forth together. This is our time. Let us grasp it.

 

Let us Be a Gift to the World.




0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    By RCBSP

    Keep up-to-date with Rotary Club of Bandar Sungai Petani

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    October 2014
    August 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    AIMST University
    Alor Setar
    Assembly
    Aurangabad
    Autism
    Awards
    Chennai
    Children
    Clean Water 4 Students
    Colouring
    Community
    COVID 19
    COVID-19
    Derma Organ
    Disaster
    DISCON
    Disease Prevention And Treatment
    District 3310
    District Governor
    Education
    End Polio Now
    Environment
    Evanston
    Festive
    Fire
    Fund Raising
    Induction
    Installation
    Interact
    Langkawi
    Lions
    Medical
    Medical Camp
    Membership Development
    Mental Health
    Mentor
    Micron Malaysia
    Newsletter
    NGO
    OCBC
    Occupational Therapy
    One Rotary Center
    Organ Donation
    Pantai Hospital
    Peace
    Penang
    Polio
    Public Relations
    RCBSP In The News
    RED Association
    REF
    Refugee
    RFE
    RICON
    Rotaract
    Rotary Education Fund
    Rotary Family
    Rotary Foundation
    Rotary Friendship Exchange
    Rotary International
    Schools
    Seberang Jaya
    Senior Citizens
    Speakers
    Special Needs
    Sports Day
    Sungai Petani
    Tanjung Bungah
    The Rotary Foundation
    Training
    Uniforms
    Virtual Run
    Vision
    Vocational
    Water And Sanitation
    WGMeal
    Wheelchair
    Women
    Yayasan Kelab Kelab Rotary Malaysia

    RSS Feed

Home
Join
Get involved
RCBSP
RCBSP Facebook Page
District 3300
District 3300 FB Page
Rotary.org
Rotary International
EndPolioNow
EndPolio.Org
Rotary Club of Bandar Sungai Petani ​(ROS Reg. No.: PPM-007-02-26052011) (R.I. Club No.: 83288)