 RI
President-nominee’s Acceptance Remarks
Sakuji Tanaka, 2012-13 RI President
New
Orleans, Louisiana, USA
25 May 2011
It is my honor to
accept the nomination to serve as president of Rotary
International in the 2012-13 Rotary year.
Since I joined
Rotary, I have embraced every new challenge of Rotary service.
To me, challenge is a very important word. It inspires us. It
also helps us to be and to do our best. It allows us to bring
out our fullest potential.
As your president in 2012-13,
I would like to suggest that we shift our focus from challenge
to potential. Let me share the reason why I am making this
subtle but important shift of focus.
Now is the first
time in 25 years that we are within reach of the finish line of
Rotary’s top priority: polio eradication. Success in polio
eradication will offer Rotary International enormous potential
to use our strengths. These are:
1. Our network of 34,000
Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and regions
2. Our
global partnership model
3. Our fundraising ability
4. Our
public advocacy model, our stewardship model
5. Our
organizational discipline to keep a high degree of focus on the
goal
Combining our strengths enhances our ability to do
good in the world. It is our responsibility, as individuals and
as an organization, to ensure that our great potential is
achieved. By doing so, we ensure that Rotary International and
its Foundation will be more effective in providing service
activities to our communities, and to the global community, in
our second century of service.
One of the most important
factors of our global success, as I mentioned earlier, is our
network of 34,000 Rotary clubs in communities around the world.
Because of our achievements in global polio eradication, Rotary
has emerged onto the world stage as a major nongovernmental
organization. What we must never forget is that it is through
the strength of our clubs in every community that we have this
important global impact. The strength and viability of our local
clubs is the key factor that will determine the strength of
Rotary in the international community.
It is our shared
responsibility to make Rotary clubs stronger, and to focus more
sharply on our humanitarian service activities. If we do so, we
will be better recognized in our local communities and in the
international community.
In order to keep our
organization viable, we need quality members. For this, we must
make sure that every club meeting is productive and meaningful
to its members.
Every Rotary activity should be
worthwhile and fulfilling to all members. One of the best ways
to improve our clubs is to listen carefully to what club members
are saying, and to take action to address their concerns to make
the club better.
We need younger members, and we must
share the work of club leadership with them. If we wish to have
capable leaders tomorrow, we must recruit and train them today.
This is an action plan. This is not another president
talking about the need for younger members. We need to stop
talking about this. Instead, why don’t we just do it!
And, of course, the greatest challenge that faces Rotary now is
to complete our top priority of polio eradication. It is the
single most important task, the single greatest responsibility
we now have. Our decades of hard work, the confidence of our
partners, and our reputation all depend on what we do in the
months ahead. We must work harder than ever, and have no doubt
that we will reach our goal. We will eradicate polio!
People join Rotary for many reasons. But, I am sure all of us
here stay in Rotary because it makes us happy and makes our
lives richer.
No one can exist alone. We are all connected in
some way with others, and in helping one another. When disaster
struck my country, Japan, in March, people around the world,
particularly Rotarians, offered help to rebuild the communities
lost. Only with the knowledge that we are not alone can we work
together through the long healing process after such tragedy. I
would like to use this opportunity to thank all of you for your
help.
To me, Service Above Self is a way of life. It means
always looking for ways to help. It means finding satisfaction
in being useful to other people.
Many people have tried to
find out what happiness is. What makes a person truly happy?
Whenever this question is studied, the answers are the same. The
people who are most happy are never the people with the most
money. The people who are most happy are the people who are rich
in a different way. They have good friends. They enjoy their
work. They are grateful for what they have. And they help other
people.
These are the things that we find through Rotary.
Rotary connects us with our friends, makes us stronger in our
work, and gives us a chance to help others. Rotary brings us
together in Service Above Self, and shows us what true happiness
is.
I look forward to serving you in the years ahead — to
reaching for new challenges, to more fully achieving our
potential, to sharing new joys, and to discovering what, we
together, are able to achieve.
Thank you, my dear
friends. |
