Blog Archives

Gen. Secretary John Hewko Shares Rotary's progress and updates at the Seoul Convention

16/6/2016

At the 2016 Rotary Convention I shared our progress and updates with these five points:

1. We need to reach our fundraising goal of $35 million for polio eradication. Through the End Polio Now: Make History Today campaign, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will provide a $2 match for each $1 we spend on polio, up to $70 million per calendar year through 2018.

2. A successful fundraising event held this Rotary year was the bike ride to End Polio in El Tour de Tucson. This year almost 100 Rotarians raised over $13 million, with a Gates Foundation match, an effort that was boosted by the support of 207 staff members who participated in an All-Staff Challenge.

3. This past year, 33 top tier news stories focused on the milestones in Africa, progress in Pakistan, and World Polio Day. In 2015 the media relations team placed more than 500 articles in 20 countries. That’s a 33 percent increase in coverage from 2014.

4. We began the 2016-2017 Rotary year with the second-highest membership figure in our history. We have a tremendous opportunity to achieve our highest membership ever.

5. The Rotary Foundation will be celebrating its centennial year with a grand celebration at the 2017 Atlanta Convention. In more than a century of doing good in the world, we’ve changed millions of lives, and our Foundation consistently earns the highest possible reviews from charity rating agencies. The Endowment Fund’s current and projected net assets have already exceeded $1 billion, ahead of our 2017 target.

- John Hewko in Facebook

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RI President-elect John Germ’s Speech to the 2016 Rotary Convention

14/6/2016

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My friends, my fellow Rotarians:

A Greek philosopher once wrote that great enterprises begin with small opportunities. That sounds good, doesn’t it? But you know what? I don’t think it’s true.

Great enterprises don’t begin with small opportunities. They begin with great opportunities. It’s just that great opportunities sometimes have a way of looking small. Every one of us here has been given a great opportunity: the opportunity that came in the form of a Rotarian saying, “I’d like to invite you to a meeting of my Rotary club.” It might have seemed like a small opportunity at the time. But for whatever reasons, for each of us, it also seemed like a good idea: an interesting chance to meet some good people, and do some good work, and have some fun along the way.

Looking back on that now, I think every one of us recognizes the opportunity to serve through Rotary for what it truly is: not a small opportunity, but a great one — the great opportunity that led all of us to the great enterprise that is Rotary.

And what I want all of us to take from that — today, tomorrow, and in the year ahead — is that the only difference between a small opportunity and a great one is what you do with it.

Each one of us has been given the opportunity to serve in Rotary. What we do with that opportunity, that’s up to each of us. But the decisions we make — they won’t end with us.

The effects of our work, our decisions, will ripple out all over the world to people we’ll never meet but whose lives Rotary will change.
Like the women who, right now, at this moment, are walking down dirt paths with water jars on their heads, on their way to get water from a polluted stream that’s an hour away from their homes. Next year, they won’t have to carry that water anymore, because of the bore wells that Rotary will dig.

The girls in India who have to leave school at age 12 or 13 because their school has no toilets: Next year, those girls won’t have to leave, because of toilet blocks that Rotary will build.

And the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, who live every day with the risk of being paralyzed by polio: Next year, they won’t have to worry about that, because we’ll have vaccinated those children. And soon, their countries and the whole world will be polio free. All of that is what can happen — not what will happen, but what can happen — when we recognize that the opportunity to join Rotary was the opportunity of a lifetime. A great opportunity to change the world for the better, forever, through Rotary Serving Humanity.

My friends, we are at a crossroads in Rotary. We are looking ahead at a Rotary year that may one day be known as the greatest in our history: the year that polio finally falls. All of Southeast Asia, and all of Africa, are now polio-free. Only two countries now share one remaining reservoir of the wild poliovirus. And those two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, are giving it everything they have, with all the help we can give them, to make this the year that the last child contracts the last case of polio caused by the wild poliovirus.

But it is so important that we all understand that when that happens, it won’t be over yet. Because getting to zero doesn’t mean that we’ve gotten to the end.

We’ll only be done when we’ve reached our goal: a world that is certified polio-free. And that means three full years without one single case.

That means that we have to keep up all of our efforts, not just for another few months but for at least another three years. And we can’t forget that we are still $1.5 billion short of the money we’ll need to get the job done.

It’s not our job to raise all of that money ourselves. But it is our job to advocate, anywhere and everywhere we can, to make sure that it is raised. We need to be talking about polio, tweeting about polio, putting polio front and center in the minds of our communities and our elected officials.

We started this more than 30 years ago now. We’ve stuck with it all this time. And soon — 1.85 billion Rotary dollars and more than 2.5 billion immunized children later — we’re going to finish it.

And when that moment comes, we need to be ready for it, to be sure that we are recognized for that success, and leverage that success, into more partnerships, greater growth, and even more ambitious service in the decades to come.

We need to make sure that everyone knows the role that Rotary has played in making the world polio-free. That is tremendously important, because the more we are known for what we’ve achieved, the more we’ll be able to attract the partners, the funding, and — most important of all — the members, to achieve even more.

We’re working hard at RI to be sure that Rotary does get that credit. But it can’t all happen in Evanston. We need you to get the word out through your clubs and in your communities about what Rotary is and what we do.

And we need to be sure that your clubs are ready for the moment that polio is finally eradicated. When people who share our values, who want to do good, see that Rotary is a place that can change the world, we need to be ready for these members. Every club needs to be ready.

My friends, we are entering into historic times.

You told us that we need to change and become more flexible so that Rotary service will be attractive to younger members and recent retirees and working people. You spoke with clarity, and groundbreaking legislation was passed this year at the Council on Legislation. I am pleased to share with you that Rotarians the world over are responding with great excitement.

You told us that Rotary needs to be relevant in our second century of service, and because of this, we are entering into the most progressive year in our organization’s history. Clubs have the opportunity to be who they want to be but at the same time remain true to our core.

We need clubs that can not only attract new members but engage them in Rotary service: clubs that are welcoming and active, that truly follow The Four-Way Test. The reason Paul Harris founded Rotary, 111 years ago, is still very much the reason people come to Rotary today: to find people who share their values. People who believe in honesty, diversity, tolerance, friendship, and peace. People who believe that serving humanity is the best thing they can do with their time on this earth.

Whether we’re reading to schoolchildren or building a clinic or fighting polio, even as we change and adapt and move forward, the essence of who we are and what makes a Rotarian doesn’t change.

We’re still based on a classification principle, because our diversity is our strength. We still hang The Four-Way Test on the wall, because high ethical standards don’t ever go out of style. And we still believe, as Paul Harris believed, that serving humanity is the most worthwhile thing any one of us can do with our lives.

We need to seek out new partnerships, opening ourselves more to collaborative relations with other organizations, to achieve even more together. And we need to prioritize continuity in our leadership. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from polio, it’s that if we want to go as far as we can, we all have to be moving in the same direction. We have to be serving humanity.

My friends, we are doing so much incredible work already. Judy and I have seen so much of it this year, all over the world. But we could be doing so much more. We need more willing hands, more caring hearts, and more bright minds to move our work forward.

We’re all in this together. We’re all on the same team. If one of us scores, we all score. And we take just as much pride in an assist as we do in a goal. Because the goal we have is one that we all share: to transform the lives of the people who need our help the most. They’re waiting for you. They’re waiting for us — to dig the wells, to build the schools, to put an end to polio.

Every day that you serve in Rotary, you have that opportunity to change lives. Those opportunities might look small. You might sometimes think that what you do doesn’t matter.

But they’re not small. And everything you do matters, especially to the people you help and the people you love, in this generation and the next and the next. Every good work you do in your life makes the world better for them all.

One good work at a time. One day at a time. That’s all it takes.

That’s what we’re here for in Rotary. That’s what we do. That is the responsibility that each one of us accepted when we accepted the privilege of wearing a Rotary pin. To serve humanity — as much as we can, as well as we can.

To change as many lives as we can, for the better.

Not alone. Not as individuals. But together — as a team — through Rotary Serving Humanity.

Source: Rotary International

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RAVINDRAN MOVES AUDIENCE WITH PERSONAL STORY

7/6/2016

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Examples of Iron Lungs

RI President K.R. Ravindran closed the convention in Korea on Wednesday, 1 June, with a poignant story about his mother's fight to survive polio at age 30.

When Ravindran was 11 years old in his native Sri Lanka, his mother awoke one day feeling weak and short of breath. Sitting down to rest, she found herself unable to move. The polio virus had quickly invaded her nervous system, resulting in paralysis.

She was placed in an iron lung at the hospital to enable her to breathe, and was told that her chances of walking, or even surviving without a ventilator, were slim. But most Sri Lankan hospitals were not equipped with ventilators in 1963.

Ravindran's grandfather, a Rotary member, hosted a club committee meeting in his living room the evening after his daughter was rushed to the hospital. Rather than simply offer consolation, his fellow members went to work, using their business acumen and professional connections to find a ventilator.
One of the members was a bank manager who called a government minister to facilitate a quick international transfer of funds. Another member, a manager at SwissAir, arranged to have a ventilator flown in. The next day, it arrived at the hospital.

"There was so much red tape at the time in Sri Lanka, but somehow, those Rotarians made it all fall away," Ravindran told the packed audience at the KINTEX Convention Center in Goyang city.

Ravindran's mother spent a year-and-a-half in a hospital bed, but her condition gradually improved. She eventually left the hospital walking -- with a walker, but upright, on her own two feet.

"Fifty-three years ago, my mother's life was perhaps one of the very first to be saved from polio by Rotarians," Ravindran said. "We have saved millions of lives since then.

"Tonight, I stand before you as her son, and your president, to say that soon -- perhaps not in years but in months -- Rotary will give a gift that will endure forever: a world without polio."

At the convention's general session the day before, Rebecca Martin, director of the Center for Global Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had described how close we are to polio eradication. Earlier that day, Rotary released an additional $35 million in grants to support global efforts to end the crippling disease.

This year's convention, one of the largest in Rotary history, attracted more than 43,000 attendees from over 150 countries. Ravindran, in his final speech to members as their president, emphasized what it really means to be a Rotarian.

"There are people on this planet whose lives are better now because you traversed this earth," he said. "And it doesn't matter if they know that or not. It doesn't matter if they even know your name or not. What really matters is that your work touched lives; that it left people healthier, happier, better than they were before."

LOOKING AHEAD TO NEXT YEAR

Following Ravindran's remarks, members of Ravindran's Rotary Club of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and RI President-elect John Germ's Rotary Club of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, took the stage to exchange club banners, a tradition that unofficially marks the changing of the guard.

Germ told the audience that Rotary is about to begin the most progressive year in its history.
"You told us that we need to change and become more flexible so that Rotary service will be attractive to younger members, recent retirees, and working people," Germ said. "You spoke with clarity, and groundbreaking legislation was passed this year at the Council on Legislation.

"Clubs now have the opportunity to be who they want to be, but at the same time remain true to our core. I'm pleased to share with you that Rotarians all over the world are responding with great excitement."