Article - Another Rotary Year



As we embark on a new Rotary year, we look ahead to new responsibilities, new challenges, and new opportunities.

Rotary has flourished for so long because it offers constant values to its members: fellowship, friendship, and doing good work in the world. And Rotary has been welcomed into new communities and new countries because it is not afraid to adapt and respond, to embrace different cultures, and to hold firm to its core principles of honesty, tolerance, and unselfishness.

While the mission and motto of Rotary remain constant, we must always be open to the need for change. Part of our ongoing task as Rotarians is to stay aware of needs — in our own organization and in the communities we serve. Our membership is evolving, and we are welcoming more and more new members who, a decade ago, would never have thought to join Rotary. Our work is evolving, just as our communities’ needs and our ability to address them are.

In a world where so much is in flux and so little can be predicted with certainty, Rotary cannot afford complacency. Challenges are constant; so are opportunities. Today, we need every Rotarian more than ever, because in our diversity lies our strength.

In the coming Rotary year, I ask all of you to join me as we Lead the Way to a better Rotary and better communities. By this, I mean to ask you to be leaders in your communities — to show others that solid integrity, concern for others, and generosity of spirit are ageless values and that good business does not preclude good ethics.

As Rotarians, we are not content to let matters stay the way they have always been, whether in our clubs or in our communities. We are the ones who ask, Why not us? We are the ones with the skills and the desires to build a better future. And we are the ones who must Lead the Way.

Every Rotarian has so much to offer that I wish there were a Rotary office for everyone. But the strength of Rotary is that around the world, all of our tremendous talent flows into the clubs. In the last year, as I have met so many of you, I have become more and more confident that Rotarians are ready and able to Lead the Way — and that the best years of Rotary are yet to come.

RI President Bill Boyd
July 2006
The Rotarian