GOVERNOR DURVAL OLIVIERI’S ROTARY MESSAGE FOR 2011-23012 ROTARIANS OF SALVADOR PITUBA CLUB
June 2011
Dear Friends in Rotary,
Our message will begin with the Rotary motto of our International President Kalyan Banerjee’s for 2011-2012.
He asks us to REACH WITHIN TO EMBRACE HUMANITY. He asks us to look into ourselves and our lives in order to search for our strengths and values and, after correcting our weak points, share everything in order to engage humanity in a fair and sustainable growth path.
And he adds: we shall strengthen our family, continue building communities and building bridges between them, as if a big hug, seeking the common good.
Being a Rotarian has been for me at all times a challenge and a motivation for improvement. Right now, as I am asked to be the District Governor, it becomes an even greater challenge – a matter of responsibility and accountability for a task which neither myself nor any friend can a priori define well to me. Only by asking help will I have a chance to accomplish such a task. So, I come here to ask for help and the best way to do that is offering my own service to you, in the simplest mode.
Humanity and its innovative potential can grow in sustainable concepts only by having a shared positive vision and by pursuing innovation through organized and enterprising networking. Innovation does not always imply in new knowledge, but yet in using better present knowledge wherever there is someone needing it and setting orderly governance in positive interconnections ties, between the civil society, the public sector and industry. We need to prepare the orderly and creative atmosphere able to attract enterprising leaders, otherwise our society will fall. Rotarians can help serving society in planning and acting in that sense as well as in motivating entrepreneurs to think and act with responsible care strategies – fair to society and sustainable in longer terms for share holders.
I am part of the lucky generation after the two World Wars. However we do witness in daily news wars amongst brothers, poverty, social exclusion, poor sanitation and public health policies, environmental degradation and violence as chronic problems. That is a basic need for Rotarian actions to continue much in the simple mode established by our founders. At the beginning of the twentieth century, lawyer Paul Percy Harris, precisely in an environment full of hopelessness and fear in agricultural and industrial center of the most intense United States - Chicago, Illinois, had the brilliant and simple idea by being simple in attitude also of adding his ideal to the strengths and values of other diversified professionals, who also believed in building peace with fellowship, professional ethics: and they did found our Rotary. Rotary was then, for all newcomers, a reference group and a way to live happily, with a decent work. Our founders were young professionals with an average age of thirty years old, when they started thinking about Rotary. It was their vision of continuous adjustment to times and cultures and generations to come that enabled our not for profit charity institution of volunteer social works to be alive and in full vitality, with widespread public service recognition, on global scale and steady growth, one hundred and six years later.
Certainly the original principles and values are still validated. As they were based on Fellowship, Serving, Integrity, Diversity and Leadership these values have been formally considered by Rotary International as Strategic Values. They are associated with an ethical code –The Four-Way Test - and are materialized by a flexible goal oriented organization and delegation to each Rotarian as the major OWNER of his own destiny and role in our worldwide entity. And he will be ACCOUNTABLE for his actions as a Rotarian with GLOBAL duties. In Rotary there is not a general, nor a corporal, nor a soldier. We are all generals when generals are needed – leaders. Likewise, we are all organized and disciplined soldiers, when soldiers are needed. Rotarians led by motivated and innovative leaders of the recent past brought us to this day. In spite Rotary was very young in the first half of the XXth Century, our entity had a major role in establishing ground rules for those who worked towards peace. With our hard principles and beliefs we have helped our members and their communities overcome very severe world political and economic crisis.
And, please, notice my friends that all this happens in the form of a donation by each one of us: our individual and shared volunteer work of over a million two hundred thousand (1,200,000) members. As we are a not for profit enterprise, since Rotarians do not seek profit our balance sheets do not reflect the social and economic numbers related to our actions. Accountants will do their books with the values of dues and donations in currency and on the red side the expenses and investments made, but not a number is given to the important values and services produced by such a great workforce. A superficial assessment of what such services are worth will reach many a billion of dollars or Euros. Some Rotarians calculated that figure to be more than ten billion dollars of direct work and about one hundred billion dollars of social economic services by communities. In other words, to this point, Rotarians do not usually account for and disclose such values effectively concerning the impacts of their work. Some of us even think - what is offered with the right hand should not be charged with the other.
But in the present world of constant and drastic changes no enterprise, be that a corporation set for profit or a large not for profit humanistic service entity cannot refrain from publicizing its undertakings. Thus, we need to study better ways of assigning value to our work and making people know about it, since participation of society is so important to have efficient, effective and equitable actions and actions. The action versus feed-back cycles can sustain future greater actions and better services. If we are effective and the publicity we will survive and grow. If we are not, we will not meet the requirements for keeping up being good Rotarians nor will we be able to acquire new members and more so of younger generations. Some friends say that in the present world, keeping a low profile is actually having no profile...
The importance of Rotary as a group “UNITING AND THUS BUILDING PEACE”, grew to the point that, along with the Red Cross, it is the only non-state entity participating in the UN Security Council. According Mrs. Kathrin Gibbons - she was the secretary for Cabot Lodge, one of founding officers of the UN – as I was an exchange student of AFS/Rotary/Lyons in Yakima, Wash., the original draft for the UN Charter and subsequent contributions came from Rotary. She was my American grandmother as exchange student.
Rotary consists of more than one million two hundred thousand members representing almost every profession that interact with an organization composed of more than 500 Rotary districts like ours. A large figure as for membership. However, when we look at the very large and populous regions like China and Russia, we observed in our study that demands are more than double. After all these new coming societies also have their reasons to found new Rotary Clubs.
Paralelly we are getting older as Rotarians and our experience and strengths as a steady organization are lacking followers of presently incoming generations. Our founders thought about that and at their times they did attract young people. I may say I was an example of that in reality, since Rotarians invited me into Rotary when i was only twenty five years old. Reflecting, today our founders of Rotary’s age waould be one hundred and forty years. Their grandchildren would be older than eighty. Due to their efforts of attracting new generation our average age is only sixty years. I am now sixty five. Although I am still working hard, my mental models are not of a youth’s anymore. The date Rotary was founded the average age of Rotarians was thirty five years. Tha age stratus represents now less than ten percent of Rotarians. In some Clubs null.
I attended several presentations by RI identifying it as a problem. For me it is a great opportunity since the existence of such a pulling vacuum exists. If such older and experienced Rotarians open their heart and minds and put in practice better systems for joint actions we will certainly be the nest for quite better executives, professionals of all kinds in a very attractive atmosphere for their own growth as human beings. Again, thirty five years of age is precisely the average age of our children all over and if we find ways for enthusing our children, by asking them what their interest are, then and only then will we be able to reach other youngsters. Dear friends in Rotary, we should consider ourselves lucky as we are ready to incorporate the generation of our children, just the way the founders incorporated the generation of our parents and grandparents with such valuable principles and values of SERVICE BEFORE SEL in mind. But to do so, we must serve the way young people ask us to. Not our own way only. We need to invite them to live as active Rotary thinkers and doers; we need to place them in the heart and brain of our Rotary Clubs. The language must be intelligible to them and not our traditional and full of taboos.
Hence, dear friends of Rotary Salvador Pituba you have been leaders for Rotary growth inside and outside your Club. My message as the District Governor of Rotary will be a message of learning with you ways and means for practicing in reality the message of our President Kalyan Banerjee’s - to ask us that we seek within ourselves for interior peace, values, and strengths, and join them with our peers’ and to good points all our Rotary Clubs have and put them available in a widespread embrace o humanity, starting with our District 4550. Humanity really needs such things, humanity really needs us Rotarians. While we are here there are many a human being suffering from wars, many have no access to good water, sewage systems, public health systems, public education and health, many die of starvation and the environment and very few can see and respect the environment as the source of life with quality. Many have no right as of yet to a social organization or a state of rights they could belong to and thus no essential practice of participatory democracy.
We will study Rotary and we will work together our challenging humanistic projects. I will do my best to help you all on that. International exchanges will be doubled as I personally see that as one of the best friendship promoting flows. Let's get to work on relearning Rotary, with new élan. Let us make it more attractive to that in our district, will have our goal of SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND MEMBERS IN 2012 accomplished. A CHALLENGING GOAL, there is not a doubt, but one perfectly possible, if one considers that Rotary is adopting more flexible systems, and also by making more public the good results derived from our hard concepts and values. We also have two new E-Clubs in chartering procedures. They will be good to attract back those friends who like Rotary, but do not think they can be present at all meetings due to professional or geographic reasons. We also have a high latent power through founding Interacts in our public and private schools, since Interactians will talk Rotary to their parents.
For me, Rotary has always been a light to my path in search of fellowship training, public relations, interpersonal relations, continuing education and diversity, leadership and integrity in the profession. I owe much to Rotary and I consider myself a practical example for the inviting young professionals to join Rotary.
My best Rotarian greetings to all of you.
I am here to serve. And to help you in your service.
Thank you for your attention,
Durval
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