This week our President Donna Hutton gave us an inspiring update on the Rotary International Convention which she attended in June. Firstly, she said that she would like to thank our club for supporting her in attending this Convention. Donna said that the venue for this Convention was just huge, covering twenty square blocks in Hamburg. She said there were over twenty-seven thousand attendees from over thirty-six hundred clubs around the world. It was so big that just getting from one workshop or presentation to another could be a very long walk of more than thirty minutes, so she had to plan her choices carefully with this in mind. The presentations covered four main topics, leadership, the new strategic plan, the impact of volunteerism and the importance of integrity and innovation.
In the area of leadership, they emphasized that we should all make a personal vow for challenging times that entails asking ourselves, what can I do now to change the world for the better. The outcome will become your legacy, whether good or bad, but it will be something to be proud of as it was undertaken with integrity. Inspired leadership involves demonstrating kindness, friendship, recognition, fairness and truth. Rotary should be a social network for service that creates decisive action.
Rotary’s New Strategic Plan has four pillars for our clubs to strive towards. Increase our impact, Expand our reach, Enhance engagement and Increase our ability to adapt.
Donna told us the Rotary’s world-wide impact on volunteerism is huge. In one year, Rotarians performed forty-five million hours of service, equivalent to eight hundred and fifty million dollars. She said that last year our club alone gave forty-five hundred hours. The challenge is for all Rotarians to do what they love in the service of people who love what they do.
The final topic of Integrity and Innovation involves believing in ourselves and our own ideas and abilities to get things done and encourages us to avoid allowing HIPPO (the highest paid person’s opinion) to take the front seat when we put forward our ideas. When we innovate and try new things we never know where it can take us, but it is worth the journey. We need to make value based decisions, be vulnerable, humble and willing to admit mistakes. We also need to persevere and not walk away from an idea or project when things get tough. A person of integrity expects to be believed because what they speak is the truth. We need to have the courage to do what we believe is right.