President's Message - August 2016

When you visit our Rotary International website at www.rotary.org/en you see our simple mission statement “We are neighbors, community leaders, and global citizens uniting for the common good.  With you, we can accomplish even more.”  The first sentence conveys the essence of what Rotary is and our relationship to it.  The second sentence is a call to action to inspire us to be engaged Rotarians.  It also calls to non-Rotarians who might be inspired to humanitarian service through Rotary if given the opportunity.

 

August is Membership Month in Rotary.  The life-blood of our club and Rotary International is our members.  It’s important our club make an asserted ongoing effort to attract and recruit new quality members to our Rotary family while also focusing on retention, engagement, and education of our current members.  As Director of Membership, Luz Maria has done an outstanding job creating and implementing a new Action Plan for this year, attracting additional members to the committee, and managing the team with the goal of accomplishing these four primary goals.  That said, I would like to remind you that every member in our club has the important responsibility to identify and recruit new members to our club on an ongoing basis.  Although a number of members have resigned from our club in the last few years, I’m very confident our collective focus and asserted effort on new member recruitment will result in increasing our membership numbers to historic levels.

 

As established Rotarians, each of us has a unique opportunity to effect positive change in our club, local community, and abroad.  Ask yourself the question “How can I become more engaged in Rotary this year?”  Supporting our Dictionary Project for example, you may choose to visit the classroom of underprivileged 3^rd graders and see their eyes light up with joy when you hand them their first dictionary – it may be the first book they call their own!  You may choose to engage by serving on our Fundraising Committee and making contributions to projects such as our “Dream Vacation” fundraiser or other fundraising activities with the goal of raising money to support our Sunrise Foundation and The Rotary Foundation.  Successful fundraising enables us to fund important club and Rotary International service projects you can be proud of.  There are many opportunities to become engaged in Rotary.  As your time permits, I ask you to make a commitment this year, big or small, to service in some capacity.  By doing so, I believe you will find “One Profits Most Who Serves Best.”

 

Serving with the best,

Chris