More Members, More Impact
Change within ourselves is the first step toward the impact we seek to make in the world.
I remember my first encounter with Rotary. I saw a Rotarian on television. I was a teenager with my thoughts elsewhere, when suddenly my full attention was on this man. I did not know it then, but that moment would change my life.
That is the thing about impact. We often imagine it as something we create out there, in a community we visit or in a project we fund. But that impact is brought about through the change within
us as well.……..
Increasing our impact is the first priority of Rotary’s Action Plan, and it asks us not only to do good but to do good that lasts and can be measured. It means choosing sustainable, needs-based projects
over comfortable ones and asking honestly whether a project will still be serving people five years from now without us in the room.
When I say we must Create Lasting Impact, I do not mean impact that fades once the ribbon is cut or the well is dug. I mean the kind of impact that changes the person doing the work as surely as it changes the person benefiting from it. Rotary changes all of us. It changed a teenager watching a television broadcast. It has changed millions of Rotarians and Rotaractors since 1905. And it will keep changing people, long after this Rotary year, if we do the work now to make sure it can.
That work starts with membership. Impact scales with people. Every hand we add is another hand that can dig a well, teach a child to read, deliver a vaccine, or simply show up for a neighbor in need. As we approach our 125th anniversary in 2030, our goal is to reach 1.25 million Rotarians and 125,000 Rotaractors worldwide. That is not a number for a banner. It is a measure of how much more good we can do together, and how many more lives, including our own, Rotary still has the chance to change.
I have often challenged you to do better than your best. Growing our membership is where that challenge lives most urgently. Invite the colleague who keeps asking what Rotary is about. Welcome back the member who drifted away. Partner with the Rotaract club down the street. Every one of those conversations is a small act with lasting consequences.
We have 125 years behind us and a great deal of work still ahead. Let us build the kind of Rotary that keeps changing people the way it changed me, one member, one project, one act of service at a time. Together, let us Create Lasting Impact.
Yinka
President, Rotary International