Dear Rotary Leaders
India accounts for 1 in 4 or world’s deaths
The caption you are seeing is the headline in National Newspapers today. With over 3000 fatalities and 3.8 lakh infections on a single day, the situation is worrisome.
So, what is being done by Rotarians to reduce this? I must highlight the work of Rotary Club of Ujjain, RI District 3040 which has established a 100-bed quarantine center in Prashanti Garden which belongs to Rtn. Avanish Gupta. Many Rotarians have helped in this wonderful project which was dedicated to the community by the Education Minister of Madhya Pradesh on 23rd of April.
This is yet another instance of Rotary Serving Humanity. What is service? It is the action of voluntarily giving yourself to awaken humanity. If you attempt to define service, you confine it. However, a simple definition would be that service is the path that provides breakthrough for anyone who ardently desires more in every sphere of human endeavour. Every particle in your body is communicating with the entire cosmos. Service is about experiencing that.
Service is measured by the usefulness of your action. Service gives you the joy and fulfillment of offering something that touches and transforms lives. When urgent humanitarian relief programmes have to be put in place, individuals cannot take up that challenge. We need a structured organisation that can spring into action whenever and wherever humanity needs help.
Make no mistake. Society continues to pick up speed like a racing car on a track. The speed of human movement from pre-modern times to now has increased by a factor of 100. The speed of communication has skyrocketed by a factor of 10 million in this decade. Hence, when you decide to serve humanity, you need the speed and the proficiency to deliver what the community needs.
Rotary Serving Humanity means that every Rotarian has empathy. What India needs now is a new kind of army – the army of the ‘Kind.’ Today, more than ever, society here depends on the total network of relations between good people, kind people and people who cannot afford to see others suffer.
We, in Rotary, are that kind of people. Let us strengthen our army of volunteers and meet the challenge posed by this pandemic. The greatness and glory of Rotary and its service is not just talking about its past, but in the kind of future that we have to create now. Let us make it happen.