DISTRICT 6250 INFORMATION
Meet 2009 - 2010 Rotary International President
RI President John Kenny
The President of Rotary International for 2009-2010 is the honorable John Kenny of Scotland. John, and his wife June, are two of the nicest people that you could ever hope to meet. They are at once humble and proud and find it easy to laugh, even at themselves. It should be easy for all of us to make the commitment to do the great work of Rotary with John Kenny as our leader.
On the front edge of things it would seem that he has set out goals that are not much different from his predecessors and, in terms of achieving the Presidential Citation, not that difficult. He is asking the following:
We must focus our attention on membership retention and development and increase our net club membership by one new fully qualified candidate.
We extend Rotary by chartering one new Rotary Club in each district.
We continue to devote our energies to protecting our children as 20,000 children
die each day in the world, because of accidents, malnutrition, poor sanitation
and disease.That we continue our support for the PolioPlus program and Rotary’s commitment
to meet the challenge of the Gates Foundation to raise $200 million in support for
the effort.
It is when we consider the theme that President Kenny has set our for 2009-2010 “The Future of Rotary is in Your Hands” that things become more daunting. The theme speaks to a certain sense of uneasiness within the organization and a recurring conversation that is being held within Rotary, what is our future and does this great organization even have a future?
While there is membership growth in the Pacific Rim, throughout the Asian countries and in Africa and membership numbers remain steady in Europe, membership numbers for North America are on the decline. Have we lost the vision? Have we lost the commitment to try to make the world a safer, kinder more peaceful place by dignifying our fellow human beings by improving health, educational opportunities and the means to escape from poverty? Has “service above self” given way to “I’ll serve myself first?”
The Rotary Foundation functions as the life blood that supports our international service projects, humanitarian projects, scholarships and cultural exchanges. What is our future when fully half of our members do not support the foundation?
Everything in Rotary begins with you, and with me, individual members, committed to service, driven by the desire to try to make a difference, in our clubs, in our communities and in the greater world. With this understanding it becomes clear that “The Future of Rotary is in Your Hands and in My Hands.”