District Governor Steve Lewis, 2010-2011 - Governor's Message

What will your Rotary Club look like on June 30th 2011?

Personally, I believe your club will be Bigger, Better and Bolder than it is today! I'm confident that our upcoming year of service together will be the best that you and your club have ever seen as we combine our efforts in the spirit of Service Above Self.

For more than 25 years, past RI President Cliff Dochterman has suggested to many of our past and present club presidents that, ". . . your club must insist on better weekly meetings. Meetings must be fun and enjoyable if you want your members to be there every week. Good programs are the best insurance for retaining high club membership, maintaining regular attendance and eliminating the 'early' leaver problem." As we all know, our weekly meetings are the only part of Rotary most members ever see.

I've asked each club president to begin implementing a plan to improve the quality of their weekly meetings and to begin recruiting for new and interesting programs to capture the attention of not only your current membership but prospective new members. Your weekly club meetings will once again come alive, become fun, interesting, relevant to your community and worthy of your members investment of time.

On June 30th 2011, you'll have discovered that your club's weekly meeting attendance will have increased to 80%, or higher and your club will have gained a net of two new members and achieved close to an 80% retention rate.

Additionally, your club will have met or exceeded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Polio Plus challenge of raising $2,000 or more this year as a result of your club's continued community awareness campaign to End Polio Now. Today, we enter the final inch of fulfilling our international promise to eliminate the devastating and crippling disease of polio from the face of the earth. We're almost there. During the publication of this message, there have been less than 40 cases of polio reported worldwide!

On June 30th 2011, you'll be amazed that your club recorded its highest level of contributions to OUR Rotary Foundation than ever before. Due in large part to the success of some of those new weekly 'Foundation' specific programs your club presented, they really promoted better awareness as to some of the educational and humanitarian projects their Rotary Foundation supports. Humanitarian projects such as bringing sight to those blinded by cataracts, supplying wheelchairs for those who cannot use their legs, providing clean water to those previously made sick from contaminated water, or helping families who've lost everything in a disaster. Educational projects might include sponsoring an Ambassadorial Scholarship or Group Study Exchange to better prepare a future community leader or opening up new worlds by simply helping people learn to read.

Your club will have taken the lead in your community as the first service organization to sponsor and promote one of our district's new ethics initiative programs to better educate young people as to the importance and lasting value of living Rotary's 'Four Way Test'. Who better than a Rotarian to mentor our youth as to the benefits of living a life rich in personal integrity, mutual trust and respect?

Looking back at your club's year of service, you'll realize how many club members will forever be remembered in the life of a young Rotary Youth Exchange student hosted by your club and how you too will be touched by the joy and excitement from that student's experience of living in your own community. Maybe it'll be that 'life changing experience' a young RYLA student shares with your club after returning from a week long leadership camp. Or simply remembering the smiles on those young elementary school children's faces the day you took time to read a book to them.

Members of your club will look back at a successful year of new and much needed service projects undertaken in your local community as well as maybe that first international project. Your club will have taken advantage of a matching District Simplified Grant or even a Rotary Foundation matching grant to create a more sustainable, significant and highly visible project for which your members and your community can take much pride in. Your club's Public Relations chair will have taken full advantage of your club's successes in your local media which assisted your club in recruiting a few new members.

So now you have a glimpse into the future of what your clubs can look like on June 30th 2011. You have the vision, tools, desire and energy to make it happen. Put your signature on your Rotary Club becoming Bigger, Better and Bolder in 2010-2011. Evaluate your club's traditions, what works, what doesn't? If there's a better way to run your club and achieve its service goals and objectives, then I say, go for it! Maybe it's time your club begins to establish some new traditions.

And finally, let us not forget that you and I have a responsibility to maintain Rotary International as the world's premier service organization and move it to an even higher level. As Rotary International President Ray Klinginsmith has so eloquently declared; "For us to succeed this year, all we need to do is to focus our best efforts on encouraging our clubs and the district to do what Rotarians are passionate about, and what Rotarians are the best in the world at doing, which is Building Communities - Bridging Continents."

Steve Lewis
District Governor, 2010-2011
Rotary District 5190