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Dear Fellow Rotarians, Rotaractors, and friends,
January is finally here. As we look forward to 2021, our thinking
doesn’t have to stop at the end of these 365 days. Are you
thinking ahead about what you will be doing in 2022, 2023, and beyond?
We cannot foresee the future, but we can steer ourselves
where we want to go. I think it is important that every Rotary club
hold a strategic meeting at least once a year. Past RI Director
Greg Yank, who has a lot of experience working with clubs on their
plans, shares his viewpoint.
A famous aphorism states, “By failing to prepare,
you are preparing to fail.” Planning is essential to achieving
success in all areas of life, including Rotary, and we’re
getting better at it every year.
Strategic planning for Rotary clubs works. I have
helped many clubs find that pathway by working with them to build
what I call a blueprint, a multiyear plan that answers the fundamental
question: “What is our vision for our club?” The best
plans I have seen are those that are focused, when a club concentrates
its resources on the best opportunities it has. Your Rotary club
cannot be all things to its members and to the community it serves;
it has limited human, financial, and time resources. A successful
plan factors in assets and limitations to chart the desired pathway
for your members.
Begin building a multiyear strategic plan by brainstorming
with your club, asking, “What are our initiatives and priorities
for the next two to three years?” Document your answers using
action-oriented language that is specific, concrete, and measurable
about the goals you want to achieve.
Next, narrow down your initiatives to a core set of
three to five priorities. Your club will then develop specific objectives
for each initiative, outlining who will be involved, key milestones
of achievement, how progress will be tracked, and a timeline for
completion. Keep your plan short and simple.
Then go out and do it. Review the progress you make
toward accomplishing the initiatives, and revise as needed at least
once a year. Rotary has a solid template to assist clubs in their
planning, which you can find at my.rotary.org/en/document/strategic-planning-guide.
We want to enrich and enliven our clubs with new discussions
and ideas. But how do we attract the diverse professionals, from
different backgrounds, ages, and experiences, who are all driven
by as strong a sense of integrity as we are?
Through strategic planning, we explore this question
to define the very nature of our club and the value it offers to
its members and to the community. Each club is different, and each
club’s value will be unique. During the planning process,
clubs may also find that some of the activities they used to do
are no longer relevant or attractive.
Once your club makes a strategic plan, it’s
time to take action and carry out the necessary changes. When we
do that — as we engage members in vibrant and active clubs
that not only have fun but also serve their communities with projects
that have real and lasting impact — our clubs grow stronger.
And when we discover what makes our own clubs unique and build upon
those core values in all our efforts, Rotary Opens Opportunities
to enrich the lives of everyone.
HOLGER KNAACK
President 2020-21
Trustee Chair's Message - Jan.
2021
K.R. Ravindran
Rotary Club of Colombo
Western Province, Sri Lanka
Trustee chair's message
Having grown up amid lush green forests in the mountainous
landscape of Sri Lanka, I always recall the words
of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore: “Trees
are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the
listening heaven.”
How sad that so often we humans insist
on interrupting this conversation.
Just like every other living thing,
we are a part of nature. But we are also the only
species that bears the responsibility of protecting
the environment for future generations. The coronavirus
pandemic has shed light as nothing has before on the
relationship between environmental degradation and
threats to public health.
A few years ago, the government-owned
electricity company in my country planned to build
a second coal power plant, in eastern Sri Lanka. It
would suck 93 million liters of water per hour from
a bay where fragile ecosystems meet the deep sea,
the site of one of the largest spawning grounds for
sperm whales in the world. After processing, those
93 million liters per hour would be dumped into the
ocean, now loaded with toxic chemicals that put that
marine life at great risk.
Learning from the lessons of the damage
caused by the first plant, a coalition formed, made
up of many public advocates, including Rotarians.
They ran a campaign that alerted the media, the public,
and the local community to the potential dangers,
in addition to taking legal action. The government
eventually abandoned its coal plant idea after the
resulting public outcry.
We can truly move mountains when we
come together.
When some of us moved to add the environment
as Rotary’s newest cause, we did so because
of the urgency of the problem. In 1990-91, RI President
Paulo V.C. Costa set forth a vision, and today we
will take this work to the next level. We live in
a time of great stress on our environment, of rapidly
rising sea levels, massive storms, disappearing rain
forests and wildlife, and destructive forest fires.
Climate change touches us all, rich and poor.
We will face the challenge strategically,
as with the other areas of focus. In fact, the six
other areas of focus depend on this one. For what
good is it to fight disease if our polluted environment
causes us to become sick again?
The Rotary Foundation will be central
to this work. More than $18 million has gone toward
environment-related global grants in the past five
years. Building upon this work to protect the environment,
we will give yet another Rotary gift to future generations.
And you can be a part of it today.
http://www.endpolio.org/donate.
K.R. Ravindran
Trustee Chair 2020-21
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