Rotary
International 2014 International Assembly Speeches
Theme speech by RIPE Gary Huang, RI President-elect
"Light Up Rotary"
Good morning! Ni hao! Let’s
try that again, everybody. [Audience: Ni hao!]
Great! Your Chinese is good! You can go to
Taiwan or China now. Please give yourself a big round of applause.
Fellow Rotarians, welcome to the 2014 Rotary International Assembly!
I am sure you are all very happy to get started with our wonderful
year!
I woke up quite early this morning and watched
the news on TV. As usual, news can remind you that there are so
many people in this world who need help. But this morning, I’m
facing 537 powerful people from all over the world. And together,
we are going to take a good look at some of those problems. And
we’re going to start working on how to fix them.
And that is why we are here, bright and early
on a Monday morning in San Diego. We’re here to get started
turning some of that bad news into good news. And, you know, I think
that is a good way of looking at our job this Rotary year. Our job
is to make the news in the world a little better — a little
happier, a little more hopeful. It’s our job to make the good
news. And it’s also our job to get the good news on the news!
This is a very exciting year in Rotary. And
next year, our year, is going to be even more exciting. It’s
going to be Rotary’s 110th year. All of us are proud of Rotary.
We want a Rotary that creates a huge, positive impact in this world.
Well, we all know great things don’t happen by themselves.
They happen when we work hard, when we have strong clubs, and when
we have Rotarians who love Rotary.
We’ve been talking a long time about
membership. I think you all know that we have a goal of 1.3 million
members by the end of our year. We’re going to talk a lot
about that this week. We’ll talk about bringing younger people
into Rotary, more women into Rotary. If you look around this room,
we see many good-looking people. That’s great! But how many
of you are actually Rotarians, and how many are spouses who are
not Rotarians?
Well, I have a suggestion: Everyone in this
room should be a Rotarian! Every Rotarian should invite their spouse
into Rotary. Make Rotary for the whole family. Let me tell you what
we found out in Taiwan when we started doing this: We found out
that our wives have more friends than we do! We invited our wives,
and then they invited their friends. Now their friends see Rotary
isn’t just for men. They said, “OK, we’ll join
too!”And when you have men and women in a
club, energy goes up, you do more. Membership didn’t just
double, it more than doubled! And our service level also went way
up. This is something I think all of you need to try.
I wrote a book, in Chinese, called Find Solutions,
Not Excuses. This is something I think we all need to be doing.
We need to make things right, not say why we cannot. We need to
assume leadership for building strong clubs, and that starts with
bringing in new members. And we need to take initiative for our
Rotary Foundation, which starts with making our own donations. Our
Foundation belongs to us. Everybody in Rotary benefits from the
Foundation. And everybody in Rotary needs to support the Foundation.
All of you are leaders who know how to lead,
who know how to take initiative. I don’t think anyone here
today will delegate all the hard work to other Rotarians and do
nothing themselves. And no one here will say, “You should
all give your money to The Rotary Foundation but I’m leaving
my money in the bank.” Am I correct? If you want to be a Rotary
leader, you have to lead by example.
That’s why President Ron asked all of
this year’s district governors to be the first class to have
100 percent district governors-elect donate to The Rotary Foundation.
They did it: They became the first class, and they are always going
to be the first class. Well, President Ron is very proud of this,
which he should be! And after his assembly, he gave me a challenge.
He said, “Gary, I want you to beat me. I want your class to
raise more money for the Foundation than my class.”
Maybe you know I am Taiwanese, and Taiwanese
people are very competitive. So I said, “OK! We’re going
to take the challenge!” But this gave me a problem. His class
is the first class. Now what? I’m not going to ask you to
be the second class. Who wants to be second class? No! Instead,
I am asking you to be the best class. I am asking you to beat last
year’s record of $750,000. I want all of you to show the Rotary
world that this class of district governors is truly the best class
yet!
I think all of you know the Chinese philosopher
Confucius. Sometimes I call him the world’s first Rotarian,
because even though he died 2,500 years before Rotary was founded,
his ideas are very much Rotary ideas. And one of the things he said
was ????,????. In English, you say: “It is better to light
a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness.” This
one line sums up everything we think in Rotary.
There are so many problems in the world, so
many people who need help. And many people say, There’s nothing
I can do.” They sit there. Do nothing. Everything stays dark.
But this is not the Rotary way. The Rotary way is the Confucius
way. The Rotary way is to light a candle. I light one. You light
one. More than 1.2 million people all light one. Together, we light
up the world. And this is what I want you to do.
I want you all to Light Up Rotary.
Fellow Rotarians, this is our jacket [indicating
jacket]. I hope you like it. And this is our tie. And this is our
scarf. Light Up Rotary! This is our theme. And this is my challenge
to you. How you Light Up Rotary — how you light your own candle
— is up to you. You know where you are strong. You know what
your community needs, and you know how you can help. There are so
many ways to Light Up Rotary. I hope many of you will choose to
host a Rotary Day, to show your community what Rotary is and what
we do. I hope that you will involve your Rotaract and Interact clubs
in your service, to bring the new generation of Rotary closer to
Rotary membership.
And perhaps the most important thing we can
do to Light Up Rotary is to finish the job that we’ve been
working on for more than a quarter of a century. That, of course,
is the eradication of polio. Right now, we have a goal to achieve
full eradication of polio by 2018. That would be an incredible thing
for all of us. But it will only happen if we keep up the fight and
keep up the momentum. And that means helping to fill the funding
gap for the polio endgame plan.
When we eradicate polio — and we will
— we’ll have proved ourselves as an organization capable
of great things. We’ll be even better equipped for the next
challenge we choose to take on. And we’ll have given the world
a gift that will last forever. It is our responsibility to bring
about that moment.
My friends, I want to see a Rotary that is
brighter, with a light that shines out clear and strong. I want
our light to be warm and inviting so that other people want to come
closer, to be a part. I want this light to inspire, to show everyone
what one person can do, what we can all do when we work together.
Light Up Rotary is our theme, but it is more than our theme. It
is how we live in Rotary, how we think in Rotary, how we feel, how
we work.
It is how we make a difference — every
day, in every club, every district, and every country where we serve.
We are the ones to Light Up Rotary and to let its light shine. We
are the ones to say, yes, there are people who care, and who are
capable, and who are making a difference. We are the ones who say
no one should sit alone in the darkness. Instead, we can come together,
all 1.2 million of us, to Light Up Rotary.
This is our job. This is our challenge. And
this new Rotary year will be our year to let our Rotary light shine
stronger and brighter than ever before. Thank you. - RIPE Gary Huang
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