The difference of being a Rotary member VS. being a Rotarian…
Here are some excerpts from the article by Geoffrey Johnson on Binish Desai. Desai is a true Rotarian. Are you? Over the past year we have been exploring ways to build our club membership. Ideas were suggested and discussed from ‘we need more women’ to ‘let’s offer different hours,’ ‘change dues’ to ‘younger people need to join’ and most have been vetted in some manner.
During a “visioning session” about increasing membership my thoughts were that we needed to look for “Rotarians” people who are engaged through a more collective attitude for serving globally and locally regardless of gender, or generation. Then I found Binish and his ‘grand ambition’ which was exactly what I was thinking! What follows are some take-aways – but I hope you will follow the link and read about him and his mission further.
“Rotary has been running in my veins ever since I was born,” Binish says. His grandfather was an honorary Rotarian, and since 1994 his father has been a member of the Rotary Club of Valsad, the same club Desai joined in 2015. As ever, he had grand ambitions. “It’s easy to become a Rotary member, but it’s very difficult to become a Rotarian,” he says. “I wanted to be a Rotarian.”
It was his Rotary Youth Exchange “twist of fate” that propelled Binish to change not only his world, but ours.
“Finding confidence in Rotary Youth Exchange: At 15, Desai was a self-described introvert, and his self-esteem was low. With people laughing at his ideas, he had begun to doubt himself. But fate had another twist in store for the young inventor.
“In 2009 I got selected as a Rotary Youth Exchange student,” he says. “That’s why I owe a lot of who I am today to Rotary.”
“Desai had applied for a short-term exchange, but things headed in a different direction when he went in for his interview. He told the Rotarians about his plans to build the world’s least expensive house, and he finally found the receptive audience he had been seeking. The Rotarians encouraged him to apply for a longer exchange, and he spent his junior year at Waukegan High School in Illinois, about 40 miles north of downtown Chicago.”
One night, over a dinner of fried chicken, the floodgates opened. In an instant, the introvert had vanished, and he began telling his host parents, Patrick Jimerson and Theodora “Teddy” Anderson, about his bricks and his plans for the world’s least expensive house. After listening attentively, Jimerson asked if Desai had a patent for his bricks. (He did not.) He also suggested that Desai might want to pursue this as a career.”
“By the end of his exchange year, Desai says, he had transformed into a different person. “I was friends with everyone, and everywhere I went, I would talk to people. I made new friends because I started sharing my inner thoughts about how I viewed the world.” With Jimerson’s help, Desai secured a patent for the formula behind his bricks. And when he returned home to India, he knew the exact direction he wanted his life to take.”
“Jimerson died in 2016, but Desai returns to Waukegan each December to visit with Anderson, just as he promised Jimerson he would. “Rotary Youth Exchange changes you forever,” he says. “Once an exchange student, always an exchange student. Now I have a family all around the world.”
“Desai began by proposing a sanitation project to the club’s president: installing two public toilets made with his bricks in a rural village near Valsad. His role model was none other than Rotary’s founder. As Desai recounts with some delight, “Paul Harris’ first service project was also a community toilet,” part of a “comfort station” movement in Chicago in 1907. The toilets in the village were the first of several that Desai would install with his club, but his experience there had a greater impact on his thinking than he expected.”
Be the difference. Be a ROTARIAN!
READ more about Dr. Binish Desai’s story and how he is empowering women with his projects.
Excerpts are from Rotary.org include quotes from the article by Geoffrey Johnson and photography by Chaitali Mitra. and Rotary International archives.
