My fellow Rotarians and friends of Rotary.

This year the theme for Rotary clubs throughout the world is 'Serve to Change Lives'. Shekhar Mehta, the Rotary International president for 2021-22, selected this theme based on the impact on himself of his own experience in participating in service projects through Rotary. His work in Rotary changed him as a person and made him empathise more with the needs of others.

As Rotarians, we always seek to serve the community and live up to the ideals of service above self. We work in hands-on projects and raise funds for worthy causes that assist disadvantaged and deserving people. I have heard an interesting mantra for this time of quarantine, social distancing: 'A day is a week, a week is a month, and anything beyond a month is out of sight.' Sometimes it feels like time is standing still even though unexpected changes are happening every day. But the work we do, our relationship with our community and those we help, change us as individuals.

Life as a member of our Rotary club is not only about service - we also have a lot of fun with social events and get-togethers, when permitted according to the restrictions. Our club embraces diversity and has a good mix of women and men as members. We are flexible and open to change. We value the opinion and contributions of all our members and our community of friends and supporters.

This is our third week into the new Rotary year. We spent the whole of the first week honouring and celebrating the late Peter Smith. We devoted the bulletin for him and spent time remembering him at our first meeting of the year. Last week we had our first board meeting with presentations from each service director outlining the plan for the year. It was a fruitful meeting. We will be discussing more about our strategic implementation plan in detail at our club assembly soon. We also had our weekly zoom meeting with 26 participants. Two of our new members Saroni and Harpreet presented their vocational talk.

We are facing an extraordinary time; where serving one another may actually be critical to our future. During these uncertain times, we Rotarians can help others work through this stressful situation by serving others in many ways. Although most of us are facing many limitations with the current lockdown, we, Rotarians, are determined to do whatever we can and spend more time planning and strategizing our projects and programs.

Together, we will get through this challenging time. Stay healthy - and stay safe.

As always, in service above self!

 

Yours in Rotary,