Rotary
International Kalyan Banerjee's November 2011 Message
My dear brothers and
sisters in Rotary,
In 1885, the London
Times ran a series of editorials honoring the 100th birthday of
Sir Moses Montefiore, the British financier and philanthropist knighted
by Queen Victoria. The editorials commented on his honesty, his
generosity, and his willingness to come to the aid of anyone in
need. One story was particularly telling.
Someone once asked Sir
Moses, one of the wealthiest men of his era, how much he was worth.
In the face of such an ill-mannered inquiry, he merely paused for
a moment's reflection before naming a figure – one that fell
far short of his questioner's expectations. Naturally, it was met
with an objection; surely he must be worth 10 times as much! Sir
Moses merely smiled. "Young man," he replied, "you
didn't ask me how much I own. You asked me how much I am worth.
So I calculated how much I have given to charity this year, and
that is the number I gave you. You see, in life we are worth only
what we are willing to share with others."
When we calculate our
own worth, do we think about it in terms of what we have, or how
we use it? When we say that all human beings are of equal worth,
do our actions follow our words?
I believe that being
a Rotarian means looking at all of our resources differently. What
is the most good that we could choose to do with what we have? What
are the choices that will ultimately leave us the richest?
In Rotary, we are all
aware of the great needs in so many parts of our world. And we all
know how much we can do to help through our Rotary Foundation. We
can change lives, we can restore hope, we can build futures –
if we choose to.
In life, everything
is a choice. We can choose to close our eyes to the needs of others,
to keep what we have for ourselves, to declare the problems of others
to be theirs alone. Or we can choose to look past distance, past
color, past language and dress and culture, and see that people
everywhere are just like us – and then refuse to walk away!
Kalyan Banerjee
Reach Within to Embrace
Humanity
President, Rotary International, 2011-12
TRF Chairman Bill Boyd's November
2011 Message
Now's the time to learn
about what the Foundation does
November is Rotary Foundation
Month, and I hope you'll focus on the Foundation with your club
speakers and programs. How can our newer Rotarians understand the
Foundation if we do not tell them what it is and what it does?
We are often not good
communicators in Rotary, which is strange as we are business and
community leaders. Maybe it is information overload or too much
sport on television, but Rotary information is not a high priority
for many Rotarians. For example, how would you answer these questions:
Is there an Ambassadorial
Scholar in our district?
What is this Future
Vision Plan, and what does it mean for our club?
What do we need to know
about polio eradication, other than that it makes us feel good?
What is the difference
between Group Study Exchange and vocational training teams?
I hear the words Every
Rotarian, Every Year. What is that about?
How can The Rotary Foundation
support our club's desire to help people outside our community?
What are Rotarians doing
on issues such as HIV/AIDS and water and sanitation?
Nobody in my club reads
the Foundation annual report. Where does the money go?
What is our relationship
with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
The list of questions
could go on, but the real question is, "What is our club doing
to learn more about our Rotary Foundation?" If the answer is
"not enough," now might be a very good time to start.
Bill Boyd
Foundation Trustee Chair
The Trustees of The
Rotary Foundation of Rotary International met from 19-23 September
2011 in Evanston, Illinois, USA. The following are highlights of
actions taken.
Administration
The Trustees elected
Trustee Dong Kurn Lee to serve as chairman-elect and Trustee Stephen
R. Brown as vice-chairman during 2012-13.
Fund Development
The Trustees agreed
to offer donors the ability to designate Annual Programs Fund contributions
to any of the six areas of focus, effective October 2011. Such contributions
will qualify for the same donor recognition as gifts such as Every
Rotarian, Every Year; Rotary Foundation Sustaining Member; Paul
Harris Fellow; Major Donor and Arch C. Klumph Society, and will
be included in club and district goal and per capita calculations.
Programs / The Trustees:
* Recognizing that Rotarians
wish to immediately come to the aid of communities impacted by disasters,
agreed to accept restricted contributions and District Designated
Fund donations for special accounts that will be forwarded to a
committee of Rotarians to carry out disaster recovery and relief
projects identified locally. Donors will have the ability to make
online contributions for more than one disaster fund at any given
time.
* Approved a strategic
partnership with UNESCO-IHE and agreed that Future Vision pilot
clubs may use packaged global grants with UNESCO-IHE beginning 1
July 2012.
* Approved PolioPlus
Grants for Afghanistan, Angola, Chad, DR Congo, India, Kenya, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Sudan, Uganda, West Africa, and WHO/CORE.
* Increased the 2011-12
PolioPlus Program Awards budget from US$63,510,625 to US$95,440,625.
* Looked with favor
on the tentative draft program for the 2012 and 2013 Rotary alumni
events in Bangkok, Thailand and Lisbon, Portugal.
* Agreed to discontinue
sending any new Rotary Peace Fellows to the Rotary Peace Centers
program at Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
effective immediately. A search for a new Rotary Peace Center university
is underway.
* Agreed to allow Rotary
clubs and districts not participating in the Future Vision pilot
to utilize Matching Grants to fund low cost shelter projects, and
to pilot this initiative throughout 2011-12 and 2012-13.
* Concurred with the
RI Board on a new partnership model and guidelines for working with
other organizations.
Stewardship
Noting a decrease in
world reporting for humanitarian and Future Vision grants in the
July 2011 analysis, the Trustees encouraged districts to improve
their reporting percentages for future analyses.
Regional training seminars
for The Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers will held
at the 2012 (Bangkok) International Convention and before the 2013
(Lisbon) Convention.
The Trustees authorized
approval of grants where Rotaplast International serves as a cooperating
organization, based on the agreement that grant funds are used in
a manner that is consistent with The Rotary Foundation Code of Policies
and the terms and conditions of TRF grants.
Finance
The Trustees received
the 2010-11 audited financial statements and report on The Rotary
Foundation. The results will be published in the Foundation's annual
report.
Highlights of actions
taken by the Rotary International Board of directors At It's September,
2011 meeting.
The second meeting of
the 2011–12 RI Board of Directors was held on 26–30
September 2011, in Evanston, Illinois, USA. At this meeting the
Board reviewed 17 committee reports and recorded 120 decisions.
CLUB AND DISTRICT MATTERS
The Board reviewed redistricting
proposals from Europe and the Middle East and agreed to the following,
effective 1 July, 2013:
• District 1840
is split into new District 1841 (Austria) and new District 1842
(Germany).
• District 2040
is split into new District 2041 and District 2042, both in Italy.
• District 2450
is split into new District 2451 (Egypt) and District 2452 (Armenia,
Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, and
the United Arab Emirates).
The Board endorsed a
membership goal of 1.3 million Rotarians to be reached by 30 June
2015. To help reach this goal, regional teams of Rotary leaders
will develop three-year regional development and retention plans.
In an effort to increase
the number of young professionals in RI membership, and to better
transition Foundation alumni into Rotarians, the Board encouraged
Rotary clubs to allow Foundation alumni to attend their sponsor
club's meeting for six months without invitation following their
term of service. The Board also adopted specific guidelines—called
New Generations are the Future of Rotary—for club use to more
effectively attract and engage young professionals.
The Board added Rotary
public image coordinators to the Governors-elect Training Seminar
training team and further added the topic of public image to the
training curriculum.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
In support of the RI
Strategic Plan goal of increasing humanitarian service by working
with other organizations, both the RI Board and Foundation Trustees
approved a new joint partnership model and guidelines. Further to
this goal, the Board
• renewed its
Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) for an additional three years;
• concurred with
the Trustees' decision to finalize a strategic partnership with
UNESCO-IHE;
• authorized an
agreement with Shelterbox as a project partner;
• renewed its
service partnership with the Dollywood Foundation.
The Board agreed to
establish annual and bi-annual RI Board performance goals in alignment
with the RI Strategic Plan, and requested the general secretary
to develop a mechanism to ensure annual strategic alignment between
the RI president, president-elect, president-nominee, and the Board,
for annual review at the Board's first meeting.
The Board agreed that
a "one Rotary" alumni approach is consistent with the
RI Strategic Plan. A joint RI/TRF alumni function would recognize
all Rotary program participants and allow a uniform gathering of
information about alumni, while still differentiating the groups
by program and status.
PROGRAMS, COMMUNICATIONS,
AND AWARDS
As of 10 August 2011,
US$188,194,000 has been raised toward Rotary's US$200 Million Challenge.
The Board discontinued
RI recognition of multidistrict service activities and projects.
Policy guidelines for groups involved in these types of activities
and projects will remain; only now they will no longer have formal
RI recognition.
Noting that Rotary club
membership now includes community leaders, retired persons, and
others not currently in businesses or professions, the Board amended
RI's Declaration of Rotarians in Businesses and Professions to now
be a "Rotary Code of Conduct." To relate the Object of
Rotary to corporate social responsibility practices, the Board adopted
the following statement:
From its origins, Rotary
has built a philosophy based upon integrity in businesses and professions.
Rotary clubs and individual Rotarians are committed to Vocational
Service and high ethical standards in all of their interactions.
These are summed up in the Object of Rotary, our core values (Service,
Fellowship, Diversity, Integrity, Leadership), The Four-Way Test,
and the Rotary Code of Conduct, carried out through our worldwide
network of Rotary clubs and Rotarians.
For Rotary International,
as a corporate entity, its social responsibility philosophy can
be summed up by our commitment to transparency in governance, stewardship
of financial resources and the environment, and fair labor practices.
To ensure that districts
can begin public outreach initiatives at the beginning of the 2012–13
Rotary year, the Board advanced its deadline for the 2012–13
Public Relations grant applications to 4 March 2012.
Depending on local circumstances,
the Board provided for Rotaract clubs to conduct meetings online.
The Board recognized
the Rotarian Jazz Fellowship, which aims to build new and lasting
relationship between Rotarians around the world interested in jazz
music.
INTERNATIONAL MEETINGS
The Board accepted the
proposal from Districts 1960 and 1970 (Portugal) to host the RI
convention in Lisbon, Portugal on 23–26 June 2013, and tentatively
selected Toronto, Ontario, Canada as the site for the 2018 RI convention.
FINANCES
The Board accepted the audited statements and report on RI's financial
results for 2010–11. The results will be published in the
annual report.
Bill Boyd
Foundation Trustee Chair, 2011-12
Source: Rotary International
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