Rotaract – Partner in Service

From: The World of Rotary
Published by Rotary International, 1975

From the chapter "Rotary and the next generation"

There is nothing quite like Rotaract. Born of Rotary and now a partner with Rotary, Rotaract has as its essence a certain idealism that only the young can know.

I first heard of Rotaract in 1969, when my employer, a Rotarian, invited me to an interest meeting called to form the Rotaract Club of Brisbane. At that time the only other Rotaract club in Australia and one of the few in the world was Brisbane West, chartered the year before. As I write this, there are some 35,000 young men and women aged 18-28 in some sixty countries who proudly wear the red and gold Rotaract badge. And I have spent five tremendous years in service with my fellow Rotaractors.

Most Rotaract clubs are made up of twenty to thirty young people-often with conflicting political, moral and religious views-actively working on their selected projects in community, international and vocational service towards one goal: a new world in which every person will be free of the chains of poverty, ill health, unhappiness, loneliness, and prejudice. Inevitably there are differences in opinion on how to reach this goal. But I can assure you – and the hundreds of successful projects and activities on every continent will bear me out – that Rotaract is a success.

Our first major community service project in Brisbane was the provision of a mobile kindergarten for use in some of the poorer areas of the city. The great pride we took in that success rapidly abated, however, with the realisation that there is so much more that needs to be done in many areas.

Establishment of a library in Papua New Guinea, the gift of an auto-engine for instruction in a city vocational school, food and clothing given to African famine victims, help for pensioners unable to maintain their own houses – such are the good things that have come about because of Rotaract and its interest.

Fund raising was often a game, great fun, rather than the painful exercise that many older groups seem to think it. Balls, cabarets, fairs, and roadside stalls, bike-a-thons, squash-a-thons, raft-a-thons, anything-a-thons – you name it and Rotaract has done it.

Many Rotaract projects involve time or talent or hard work rather than money. Thus the Rotaract club of Brisbane North each month hosts a group of some sixty old age citizens on an excursion to the beach, a picnic in the park, or a concert; the program has been of tremendous value and enjoyment to both groups.

Over and over again I have seen the Rotaract badge become a passport to lasting friendship with young people of many nationalities. In 1971, I went to Saigon to present to a young orphan an educational assistance gift from the twenty-two Australian and Papua New Guinea Rotaract Clubs of District 260. On the way I visited clubs in many southeast Asian nations, and found that the internationality of Rotary has truly found its way into Rotaract.

Organizational techniques that will last a lifetime are absorbed by Rotaractors at their weekly and fortnightly meetings. With the help of Rotarian counsellors, they learn about club finance, public speaking, even catering. Guest speakers plant in their minds the seeds of new ideas and new perspectives from which will come the projects of the future.

John Gardner, a former USA cabinet member, has said:

"The young people of this generation are perhaps more alert to the problems of the larger society than any preceding generation has been. But as they move into their careers it is all too likely that their concern will diminish. For all their activism, they show every indication of following the time-honoured trend: a few years of indignant concern for social betterment, characterized by a demand for immediate solutions to all the world’s problems, and then trailing off into the apathy and disinterest of the young executive or professional."

I for one do not think that those in the ranks of Rotaract will share such a fate. While each Rotaract member has joined for somewhat different reasons – some to meet new friends, to attain a fuller social life, to overcome loneliness and a feeling of alienation – all participate in work for the benefit of others. Rotaract enables young people to do more than complain and criticize – it gives them the green light to take action for the things that they want to see happen in the world.

Robert F Whiddon

Robert F Whiddon, of Canberra, is Secretary to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Australian parliament, and is a former district Rotaract representative in Australia.

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