DG ED'S KEYNOTE ADDRESS AT D3830 DISTRICT ASSEMBLY 2010

Good morning everyone and welcome to the District 3830 2010 District Assembly or DISTAS. I am particularly grateful to all the participants for coming over in full force, which is a very strong statement about how committed and how seriously we take to zeal our being Rotarians and of embracing the spirit of Rotary Service.

We have with us today representatives from 80 of the 84 clubs in our District. The other 4 clubs, being those from Palawan, will be joining us in a separate meeting in Puerto Princessa next month. But as it is, I am very happy by your response – and I am very thankful for all your continued support to the programs of our Organization. Mabuhay ang Rotary! Mabuhay ang District 3830!

The Importance of a District Assembly

As you all know, the District Assembly is held once a year as an avenue for us, your incoming District Leaders, to help you, our incoming club officers, prepare for the responsibilities and the challenging task of leading your respective clubs in the coming Rotary Year.

The success of Rotary depends on how cohesively effective the club leadership teams are, and as a result, how well coordinated, enthusiastic, and committed their respective club members are.

It is our role at the District level to motivate the Club Leadership Teams led by our Global Presidents, and ensure that they all have the necessary tools, adequate support, guidance, and inspiration to help them succeed. The DISTAS is only the first, but a crucial step in this process, and we, your District Leaders, will be there for you throughout the year because we believe that it is in every Rotarian, and upon the collective contribution of all the members, that the ultimate success of our District and of Rotary as an organization can be realized. It is in our collective effort that we will be able to continue making a big difference for our organization and, more importantly, for the people and the communities we serve.

In the next few hours, you will be going through training sessions relevant to your responsibilities at the Club level. I do hope that you will actively participate in all the activities as these were designed to help you prepare for the tasks ahead.

The Road Ahead

The road ahead is indeed very challenging as we take on the mantle of leadership responsibilities in our respective stations. This is in no small measure the result of the excellent job that DG Sid and his dynamic team of district and club leaders have accomplished this year. They have, as the cliché goes, raised the bar.

It is my sincerest desire, and I believe we are all one in saying that we will continue what DG Sid and his team have done, and perhaps to raise the bar even higher during our Rotary year; that is, for us to build a much stronger District 3830, a District comprised of much stronger Clubs able to face up to the challenge that our RIPE Ray Klinginsmith has set out before us when he unveiled the Rotary Theme for the coming Rotary Year; that is, to take our Organization to a much higher level by doing what we Rotarians passionately do best - Building Communities, Bridging Continents.

Expectations are running high, but as Mr. Jack Kinder would say, and I quote “High achievement takes place in the framework of high expectations.”

In his speech at a plenary meeting during the International Assembly in San Diego, California last January, RIPE Ray encouraged us to focus our best efforts on areas that are most critical to the communities we serve – disease prevention, particularly the eradication of polio; basic education and literacy; adequate maternal and child health programs to reduce infant mortality; water and sanitation; and economic development – areas which I am confident we are familiar with as we have had several successful projects along these lines. But the challenge is how to do much better and how much more can we serve our communities.

Bigger, Better, Bolder

Very recently, Rotary International adopted a new battle cry towards achieving the three priorities stipulated under the RI’s new Strategic Plan - To Support and Strengthen Clubs; To Focus and Increase Humanitarian Service; and, To enhance Public Image and Awareness.

The battle cry – Bigger, Better, and Bolder - encapsulates the new direction, the new attitude that RI would like its Clubs and Districts to adopt in the coming Rotary Years.

According to RI, a bigger and a better Club is not merely scoring gains on its membership or taking on more projects at a time.  Clubs need to have a diverse membership base that should be reflective of the demographics of the local business communities they operate from to ensure that they have the right amount of talent, ideas and resources to keep them going strong as a Rotary Club. They need to have strong recruitment and retention programs in place as well.

To be a better Club, meanwhile, is to have a strong Club planning and Club leadership processes in place, which embody Rotary’s core values of service, fellowship, diversity, integrity and leadership.

Bolder Clubs, on the other hand, implies an empowered Club leadership willing, as they say, to “step out of the box” in pursuit of ideas for programs that will serve their communities much better, without infringing on  respected traditions.

It is towards this end that I would like the Clubs in District 3830 to pursue their respective programs for the coming Rotary Year. I am sure many of you have already prepared or are in the process of preparing your respective Club Plans. However, I would like you to consider this very seriously when you go about finalizing your plans.

Be flexible, be innovative. You may pursue projects that may not be closely aligned with RI’s Areas of emphases, but which have significant relevance and lasting positive impact on the communities or sectors being served.

District’s Thrusts

I have lined up my thrusts for the District for the coming Rotary year, which I outlined to our District Leadership team and our Global Presidents during the recently concluded DTTS and PETS.

As I’ve mentioned in those seminars, our focus has always been on membership gain and generous TRF contributions as well as relevant, high impact projects covering the areas of emphases of our Rotary International President. However, as I’ve said earlier, I would like us to do a little much more this coming Rotary year.

For membership, I would like each Club to double RIPE Ray’s target of one net membership gain at the end of the Rotary year with the smaller Clubs endeavoring to reach the charter strength of 20 members. In addition, I would like each club to maintain a 90% membership retention rate.

For the TRF contribution, I urge you to convince each member to contribute at least One Hundred U.S. Dollars. Perhaps, you may want to convince some of your more generous members to contribute bigger amounts.

I am also looking at our District contributing a little bit more to environmental preservation as this will be a very important legacy that we can leave to our children, our future generation. I ask that each member will plant at least two trees during our Rotary Year. We had a recent meeting with PP Gilda Lim and this coming year, the Gilda Catalina Lim Foundation will again support the environmental projects of the Clubs in our District with emphasis on tree planting.

I am also encouraging all Clubs to create their respective functional Disaster Management Team in line with our District-wide Disaster Preparedness Program, which aims to reduce the impact of disasters on our communities, such as that brought by the Typhoon Ondoy in September last year.

Lastly, I expect each Club to undertake a least one signature project on any of RIPE Ray’s Areas of Focus I’ve mentioned earlier. Then again, be innovative. If I were to borrow once again from the renowned motivational speaker, Mr. Tony Robbins, the only limit to our impact on the communities we serve is our imagination or on how best we can serve them, and our commitment or how strongly dedicated we are to serving them. Be Bolder!

Let me just add also the need for all Clubs to comply with the RI’s Club Leadership Plan. The Club leadership Plan is the recommended structure for all Rotary Clubs with the goal of providing them a strong administrative framework to be more effective in carrying out their service programs.

The Club Leadership Plan requires the creation of five standing committees covering the following areas: Club Membership; Club Public Relations; Club Service Projects; Club Administration; and The Rotary Foundation.

However, I believe that there are still some Clubs in our District that are finding it quite difficult to comply with this mandate since their By-Laws do not have provisions for such an organizational structure. Nevertheless, I would like to encourage these Clubs to find ways to adopt a similar arrangement that would, perhaps, partially comply with the requirement under the RI’s Club Leadership Plan.

I urge these Clubs’ past, present and incoming Club officers to work together to develop a customized table of organization along these lines. At any rate, your District Leaders, especially our hardworking assistant governors, will be there to help in the implementation and review of your plans throughout the year.

Overall, I would really love to see all the Clubs receiving the President’s Citation award but more so if many of you will achieve the much more coveted Presidential Citation with Distinction award, an award that was recently introduced by RI to challenge those Clubs that routinely earn the Presidential Citation.

If all Clubs will aspire to be Bigger, Better and Bolder doing what  we as Rotarians are so passionate about doing, then the tasks ahead become a lot less burdensome and the challenges become a lot less daunting.

Now is our time to make a big difference. Now is our time to leave a strong legacy behind. Now is our chance to raise the bar higher. Indeed, now is our time and I urge you all to make the most out of it Building Communities, Bridging Continents – doing what we do best and doing them even better.

Good luck to all and may God Bless Rotary.