Exeter Rotary welcomes DG Lawrence Furbish

An excerpt from District Governor Furbish's speech:

I want to start by saying how happy I am to be here today, and I mean that sincerely, in more ways than one. Shortly after I went through the District Governor interview process and found out that I had been selected, I was doing chores for my own Sanford-Springvale Rotary Club. I had gone to clean out our storage room and since our club is over 90 years old, we have accumulated a lot of stuff. As I was picking through a container I came across a paperback book entitled The Rotary Club Murder Mystery. I thought, isn’t that cute. I love murder mysteries. But then I started to look.more closely. I read it’s Rotary Day in Borderville and attendance is way up as it is the day of the district governor’s official visit. What happens next, the DG is murdered -shot in his motel room. I’m not superstitious, but I didn’t like this at all. So, no motel rooms for me and each time I finish a visit, I will breathe a sigh of relief.

RI President Gary C. K. Huang’s theme this year is "Light Up Rotary." When I first heard it and saw the fireworks and Chinese lantern, I thought, well that’s cool. I like it. We can have fun with that theme. But then I started to think about what it really means. You have probably heard President Gary talk about his favorite philosopher Confucius who said "it is better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness." At the RI Convention In Sydney President Gary described it this way: "There are so many problems in the world, so many people who need help. Many people say, 'There's nothing I can do.' So they sit there doing nothing. Meanwhile everything stays dark," "The Rotary way is the Confucius way. The Rotary way is to light a candle. I light one, you light one, 1.2 million Rotarians light one. Together, we light up the world," Looking at it that way, lighting a candle has two components: one, the act of kindness and assistance that dispels the world’s darkness, and two, the light it shines so that others might see. Isn’t that a prefect metaphor for what we as Rotarians are about: first helping people and then making sure that the world knows what we are doing?

Now I know that some people will have trouble with the second part of that concept. Many of us were brought up to be modest, to eschew self-promotion or egotism. "Don’t toot your own horn." But that’s not really what I’m talking about. How many times have you heard that Rotary is one of the world’s best kept secrets. Rotary International conducted some opinion polls and it found that a majority of people have never heard of Rotary, a few have heard of it but don’t know much about it or its activities, and only a small percentage really understand what Rotary is and what Rotarians do. I think that’s a problem, not because I want lots of people coming up to thank us or tell us how great we are, but because I want people to say to themselves, "I want to do that too." One of my dreams is that some day so many people will know about the wonderful work we do and how much fun we have doing it, they will be lining up at the door wanting to join our clubs.

So what do we do to make President Gary’s Theme a reality? Well, how many of you know that Rotary International has a Strategic Plan? It’s a pretty simple plan with only three components: strengthen clubs, increase humanitarian service, and enhance public awareness. I know that when some people hear "strategic plan" they want to cover their ears, but I think it’s pretty clear that this plan dovetails perfectly with President Gary’s theme, and I’d like to talk briefly about each component.

The club is the basis of Rotary. In fact, one of the trick questions used at RLI or PETS is, "What are the members of Rotary International?" and the answer isn’t individual Rotarians, it is clubs. The primary mission of the 534 Rotary districts that exist around the globe is to support and strengthen clubs. I consider that to be my most important responsibility, and all of the current presidents have heard me say that more than once.

So how do we do that? Unquestionably the most important issue facing clubs in North America is membership. It’s no secret that although we are gaining members, we are losing them faster than they are coming in. How do clubs grow? I wish there were a magic formula, but until my dream comes true and we have people lined up wanting to get in, you just have to go out and ask. I was invited to a Sanford-Springvale RC meeting by a colleague at our local Historical Society. I came, enjoyed the program, had fun with the club members, and was hooked on the idea of giving back to the community. I have to digress and tell you that after I joined, I ran into an old high school friend who said to me "hey, what’s this I hear about your joining Rotary. Why didn’t you join Kiwanis?" (When I was in high school I had been the president of our Key Club, the Kiwanis version of Interact). I told him no one ever invited me to a Kiwanis meeting.

This year President Gary is emphasizing the "family" of Rotary. Think about inviting your spouse or partner to join, or your son or daughter if they are old enough. I know many couples that belong to Rotary, and my own club has two couples and two father daughter pairs as members. President Gary told a great story about a club that was dying. It had six members, five of whom who were past presidents. The members decided to invite their wives to join so they doubled their size to 12. Then the wives invited their friends and soon the club numbered 35. (He said that proved that the wives had more friends than the husbands.)

Another way to grow is to form a new club. At the last two Rotary Zone Institutes I attended the Districts that won membership growth awards did so not by increasing the membership of existing clubs but by forming new clubs. And Rotary has recently made a number of rule changes to make this easier. You can now establish satellite clubs for members that can’t make a parent club’s meeting time, or e-clubs where members get together by computer. Lately there has been a movement toward after-hours clubs that meet in the early evening after people get out of work for drinks, snacks, socializing, and developing projects. They don’t have speakers or meals to keep the cost down to make it easier for younger people just beginning their careers. In Australia, I attended a club that doesn’t meet every week. They told me that if they continued the weekly model, the club would fold. The point is that the old traditional lunch or breakfast Rotary club doesn’t work for everyone, and new or alternative models need to be tried if we are going to survive and grow. The new relaxed attendance requirements are an irritation to some of our more traditional Rotarians, but in my club we have several active and involved members who make a significant contribution to our club and our projects, who wouldn’t be members under the old rules.

And once you have a couple of new members, what do you do with them? Get them involved. I was lucky because less than six months after joining, our incoming club president, who was a long-time member, asked me to be the Community Service chair. (He later told me that several senior club members approached him to ask why he was appointing such a new and inexperienced member to take on that responsibility.) Anyway, I loved it. It made me feel trusted and a part of the club and I learned a great deal by being on the board.

PDG Carolyn Johnson has graciously agreed to chair the District Membership Committee and I know that she will be available and anxious to help clubs improve their membership situation.

This brings us directly to the second part of the strategic plan and Gary’s theme: increase humanitarian service. When I became the community services chair of my club, a great project came along. The local director of adult ed, who was a member of our club, wanted to create a playground for the kids in their day care center. We applied for and received a District Simplified Grant, I think it was the first one our club had ever applied for. It helped purchase some equipment. The project galvanized our entire club. We cut down trees, graded the site, put together the equipment, and fenced in the area. It was a great project. Every member of the club participated, including a few older members who made lunch and delivered refreshments for the workers. I firmly believe that while fund raisers are important and necessary, nothing is better for building club spirit and camaraderie than a hands-on project where members work together, whether is is building a boardwalk to extend a walking trail, reading to children in schools, restoring a town bandstand, or packaging supplies for a food pantry. To the extent thatwe can get away from being check writing clubs and become clubs that actually do something can only strengthen and improve our situation.

So far I have been talking about local community projects, but one of the special aspects of Rotary that sets it apart from most other service organizations is our international character. Rotary clubs exist in 140 countries and political jurisdictions that cover the globe. And much of the need that exists and the work we do is in the poorer and less developed parts of the world. In 2008 I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a two-week trip to India with Elias Thomas, a member of my club who organizes such trips every year. We went with two other members of my club, and about 35 other Rotarians from various countries around the world. We flew to New Delhi, and the first week did several hands-on work projects in an extremely poor Muslim village in a rural area far outside the city. Over the weekend, we participated in a National Immunization Day administering drops of polio vaccine to scores of young children. This was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. You can read about poverty in the newspapers or see it on television, but until you are there and see it up close and in person, and smell it, you can’t really appreciate the way some people have to live. You may have heard me say this before, but I really can’t say it often enough. I know an overseas mission trip takes time and money, which are not always in great supply, but go if you possibly can. You will benefit immeasurable and never again look at things in quite the same way. I have an occasional debate at home with a friend. She keeps asking me why we spend money and time helping people abroad when there are so many needs here at home. I acknowledge those needs and we Rotarians do try to dowhat we can to help, but they pale in comparison to the need in the world’s poorer regions. As Charles Dickens put it, "mankind is our business." Our District has been and continues to be very involved in International grants and projects. There are all kinds of opportunities for you to pitch in.