PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE

November 2015:

One sunny morning at the end of June 1991, a van drove through the busy, rush-hour streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Winding through traffic to a northern suburb, the van arrived at the Forward Command Headquarters of the Defense Ministry. Security guards stopped it for inspection. When they did, the two suicide bombers driving the van detonated their cargo: thousands of kilograms of plastic explosives.

The roof of the building was blown off completely. Debris was strewn for blocks. In total, 21 people were killed and 175 people injured, among them many pupils of the girls' school next door. More than a kilometer away, the blast shattered every window in my home. My wife raced toward the sound of the explosion – toward our daughter's school.

Our daughter was then nine years old. That morning, she had forgotten her pencil case at home. At the moment of the blast, she was coming out of a stationer's shop, admiring her new pencils. Suddenly her ears were ringing, the air was filled with sand, and everywhere around her people were screaming, bleeding, and running. Someone pulled her into the garden of the badly damaged school, where she waited until my wife arrived to bring her back to our home – its floors still covered with broken glass.

Sri Lanka today is peaceful and thriving, visited by some two million tourists every year. Our war now is only a memory, and we as a nation look forward to a promising future. Yet so many other nations cannot say the same. Today, more of the world's countries are involved in conflict than not; a record 59.5 million people worldwide live displaced by wars and violence.

In Rotary we believe, in spite of all that, in the possibility of peace – not out of idealism, but out of experience. We have seen that even the most intractable conflicts can be resolved when people have more to lose by fighting than by working together. We have seen what can happen when we approach peace-building in ways that are truly radical, such as the work of our Rotary Peace Fellows. Through our Rotary Foundation, peace fellows become experts in preventing and resolving conflict. Our goal is that they will find new ways not only to end wars but to stop them before they begin.

Among the hundreds of peace fellows who have graduated from the program, two from Sri Lanka, one from each side of the conflict, studied together. In the first weeks of the course, both argued passionately for the rightness of their side. Yet week by week, they grew to understand each other's perspective; today, they are good friends. When I met them and heard their story, they gave me hope. If 25 years of pain and bitterness could be overcome by Rotary, then what, indeed, is beyond us?

We cannot fight violence with violence. But when we fight it with education, with understanding, and with peace, we can truly Be a Gift to the World.

Rotary Global Awards

RI President-elect K.R. Ravindran introduced a member benefits program at the 9 June closing session of the 2015 Rotary International Convention, saying that many more hands are needed to continue Rotary’s work around the world.

The program, Rotary Global Rewards, aims to boost membership and enhance member satisfaction.

“This innovative new program will allow Rotary members to connect with hundreds of businesses and service providers from around the world -- and that number is growing,” said Ravindran. “These establishments will offer Rotarians discounts and concessions on the everyday business that you do. And, in many cases, not only will you benefit, but our Foundation will as well, by receiving a contribution with each transaction.”

The program will include discounts on car rentals, hotels, dining, and entertainment. Discounts on more products and services from companies worldwide are expected to be added throughout the year.

“It will be another way to benefit from being a Rotarian and being part of the Rotary network,” said Ravindran, whose presidential theme for 2015-16 is Be a Gift to the World. “I urge all of you to become a part of that scheme.”

n  For more information:

https://www.rotary.org/en/member-center/rotary-global-rewards

Presidential Theme

RI - Presidential Theme: 2015-16

Our time on this earth is finite, and it’s always shorter than we think. How do we want to spend it? Will we give of ourselves to others, so that the world will be richer because we passed through it? Or will we spend our days, as the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote, in stringing and unstringing our instruments, while the song we came to sing remains unsung?

The glory of Rotary is that it helps us find a way to sing that song. It guides us on a path to living richer, more meaningful lives, by encouraging us to focus our attention on the things that matter — and helping each of us find our own way to be a gift to the world. If we ask ourselves what characteristics we value most in our friends, most of us would answer similarly: integrity, trustworthiness, caring, compatibility.

Our friends are not necessarily the people who are most like us but the ones who complement us, who bring out the best in us. That, to me, is precisely what we can find in Rotary. Rotary is a way to bring out the best part of ourselves, and let it guide our lives. Too often, we spend our days in pursuit of the goals that should matter least. We focus our attention on our own achievements and our own gain; we devote endless energy to the accumulation of material things. Yet at the end of our lives, no one will remember us for the cars we drove, the clothes we wore, the titles we carried, or the offices we sat in. We will not be admired for the efforts we poured into making our own lives richer or our own status higher.

In the end, our worth will be measured not by how much we acquired, but by how much we gave away. Will we avert our eyes from suffering, or will we alleviate it? Will we speak words of compassion, or will we act on them? Will we be content only to take from the world — or will we give to it?

In the 2015-16 Rotary year, our theme will be Be a Gift to the World. Every one of us has something to give — whoever we are, whatever our place in life. We can give our talent, our knowledge, our abilities, and our effort; we can give our dedication and our devotion. Through Rotary, we can take these gifts and make a genuine difference in the lives of others and in our world. It is said that we are born with our fists clenched, but we die with our hands open, and that our talents are the gift that God gave us. What we make of our talents is our gift back to God. Equally we come into this world grasping at everything, but when we leave it, we leave all material things behind as well.

Through Rotary, we can leave behind something real and lasting. Our time is now. It will never come again. Be a Gift to the World.

K.R. “Ravi” Ravindran

President, Rotary International, 2015-16