I’ve heard Rotarians say the pressure to bring in new members is diluting the strength of our membership, and we are focussing more on quantity and not quality. But Rotary is by invitation. Who amongst you is a poor-quality person? Right here in Hyderabad are good quality, very competent, highly skilled, highly resourceful people, who have every qualification to be Rotarians. But they do not have a pass yet. If you don’t bring them in, in 15 years, this room will be empty, and when an RI President plans his programme, Hyderabad will not be on the list,” said RI President Yinka Babalola.
Participating in the RI District 3150 membership seminar titled Creating Lasting Impact hosted by RC Hyderabad East and co-hosted by RCs Hyderabad Centennial and Aashray Warangal, he then sought a show of hands of people in the room who had become better persons because of Rotary, which had transformed them completely and changed their lives, their business, their family. While most hands were up, he said he could still see some hands not going up. “That’s fine; it’s possible that Rotary has not transformed you yet and we have a little more work to do.”
On membership growth, he said that Rotary VP M Muruganandam and RI director K P Nagesh had told him that India was committed to a net gain of 10,000. Initially, he was impressed, as it was 40 per cent of the total target. “But having visited 10 cities in India, I’ve concluded that 10,000 is not strong enough. A new member is an asset, a new resource and a future leader for Rotary. Why should an organisation that is transformative and changing people’s lives for good, have difficulty finding more members?”
Right here in Hyderabad are good quality, very competent, highly skilled, highly resourceful people, who have every qualification to be Rotarians. But they do not have a pass yet.
— Yinka Babalola, RI President
This meant something was missing and there’s a disconnect somewhere. And that was “as Rotarians, we do not tell our stories of transformation. Rotary’s vision statement says together we see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change across the globe, in our communities, and in ourselves.”
Eradicating polio was creating lasting impact. Rotary Peace Centers, including the latest one in Pune’s Symbiosis University, or the Makerere University, Kampala, did the same. In these Peace Centers “every single fellow participant is required to carry out a social change initiative in the community that improves or promotes peace. So in two years, 80 social change initiatives from these centres to create lasting change will take place because of you.”
While Rotarians were creating lasting change in Rotary’s focus areas, when he asked them how to create lasting change “in ourselves, the room goes quiet. Because each time we talk about Rotary, we talk about how we impact others. We don’t think about how Rotary impacts us. So think about it.”
The RI President said everybody desires lasting change in his or her life, whether it’s a 30-year-old lawyer, 50-year-old engineer, or a 70-year-old retired business tycoon. “And when they come, you deliver the Rotary promise, welcome them, show them they can belong here and their thoughts will matter.” Such members would get diversity and integrity as also the opportunity to use their vocation and talent to improve their communities and their own leadership skills. They’d be promised an environment of friendship, fellowship and fun.
Urging Rotarians to tell their own special stories, Babalola related his own experience in California where he had gone while working for Shell in 2004. He suddenly developed a toothache, and called a Rotarian friend saying he needed to see a dentist. “He came to my hotel with his wife and she said it would take 5–6 days even to get an appointment. But the husband called a Rotary friend, a dentist who asked us to see him in an hour. As he attended on me, my heart was beating as I had no insurance in the US, wondering how many thousand dollars it would cost. But I was in pain and had no choice. He finished, and I was relieved. But as the pain subsided, the dollar fear increased.”
When he asked the dentist about his fee, he told him that the American Rotarian had been talking about what Babalola was doing for Rotary in his country. “The treatment is free,” he said! This was the value Rotary brought.
Each time we talk about Rotary, we talk about how we impact others. We don’t think about how Rotary impacts us. So think about it.
Another story he related was when, as a 27-year-old Rotaractor he wanted to join Rotary, he walked into a Rotary club meeting. The club president looked up and asked: ‘What do you want this time?’ When he said he had come to join Rotary, he said: What audacity! What’s wrong with this young man? Don’t you know Rotary is only by invitation? “I could have walked away, and joined Lions or something else. But somehow, I found the courage to respond: I never knew that a child requires an invitation to visit the home of the parents. At that moment, a Rotarian got up and said: ‘Yinka, I will be your sponsor for this club.’ And that’s how I became a Rotarian.”
Even though, from a Rotaractor he had risen to the rank of an RI President, “for me, this is not a reward; it is payback time for Rotary to recoup its investment in me over the years,” said Babalola, raising the query: “My fellow Rotarians, who are you mentoring? What are you doing with your Rotaractors who are the future leaders of this organisation.”
He then quoted the Nigerian inspector general of police who had said at a Rotary conference that “every young person mentored by a Rotarian was one less person who’d need to be arrested in the future.”
He congratulated RID 3150 for, as DG Uday Pilani announced, the first district in the world to give 100 per cent EREY (Every Rotarian Every Year) contribution of $153,705, with 4,172 Rotarians in the district contributing ₹3,500 each to TRF.
On the two RI directors’ mission of getting the Rotaract number in India from 50,000 to 100,000 before May 2027, Babalola said: “When this happens, send me an invitation. Even if I’m on my way to Argentina, I will meet you somewhere in India. It’s a promise!”
Rotary International Vice President M Muruganandam said the community service that Rotarians were able to do with TRF funds was nothing short of amazing and covered all of Rotary’s focus areas from education, disease prevention, empowering local economies, protecting mothers and children, and providing clean water to promoting peace.
He disclosed that he had started giving to TRF right from the age of 15, and “till date, directly or indirectly, I have contributed or spent towards Rotary a minimum of ₹20 crore to a maximum of ₹40 crore in different projects, as an individual and through my company’s CSR initiatives.”
He disclosed that his organisation, the Excel group, was in the process of building a cancer care hospital spending ₹120 crore. The service provided would be on an 80:20 ratio, with the majority of the patients being the poor and underprivileged people. He gave credit for this hospital coming up to TRF.
Rotary in India was truly vibrant; “we are No 1 in membership, and No 2 in TRF contribution. And even in TRF contribution RID 3141 has emerged world No 1, and RID 3203, which includes the tier 2 city of Tirupur, has ranked world No 2. In the last five years, in TRF-giving we have grown from $20 million to $28, $35, $38 and $45 million last year.”
The way our zones were proceeding, they would eventually touch $100 million, he added.
Muruganandam said that right from the age of 16, when he was a Rotaractor, he had been observing national immunisation days, which were so important to India’s children.
Urging Rotarians to give to TRF, he said that not only was their money going towards cent per cent eradication of polio, it was doing so much of good in the world. In TRF, there was total accountability and strict stewardship for their money, so that every single dollar was accounted for.
Next year, or 5 or 10 years later, they would be able to take pride when “a child can walk and run freely, a girl receives an education, a village receives clean drinking water, a local community is empowered and an environment is cared for.”
RI director K P Nagesh said that Rotarians in India had been doing projects for years with their own money, or what he called ISR… Individual Social Responsibility. But now with CSR entering the field, “big money” was available to do bigger and more sustainable projects. At present an estimated ₹48,000 crore were available each year through CSR. “But if the government decides tomorrow to increase the CSR spend from 2 to 3 per cent of the company’s net profit, imagine the amount. And Rotarians are really well-equipped to do big service projects. Just as LIC had once come out with the slogan, ‘We know India better!’ We Rotarians know the community and its needs better.”
Nagesh said Rotarians were trying to access more CSR funds, and Covid had taught a lot of people to give more for the less privileged.
He was happy to note that TRF-giving has improved a lot in India, which is clocking many more AKS members. This year the target was a whopping 75 members. This number will be celebrated at a big event in Mumbai by the year-end when the trustee chair visits India.
He also announced that this year’s TRF-giving target is $60 million!
TRF trustee A S Venkatesh said at a gathering like the one before him, he did not need to say why “we should contribute to the Foundation, because that is like preaching to the converted. You are already aware of what our Foundation is and what it can do.”
But what he did want to emphasise was the value that “TRF brings to the cause of charity and improving lives of the people in the communities around us through the invaluable man hours of the Rotarian volunteers.” That is a very significant portion; as DG Uday Pilani said his service cannot be bought as it was not affordable.
Every single project done by TRF included valuable man hours spent by Rotarians which could not be evaluated in dollar terms as they brought in exceptional talent and technical expertise of Rotarians from various fields and professions.
Armed with CSR funds, Rotarians could transform communities, Venkatesh added, because the maximum amount given went into the service project. Giving an example, he said that he had looked at the Red Cross balance sheet and found that 34 per cent of the funds given to the organisation for a project went to admin work. Whereas in Rotary, the figure was in single digits, which means what actually gets delivered to the beneficiaries is huge.
Another major difference was that while “most other NGOs which carry out charitable activities do them through paid employees, here Rotarians do the job because they believe in doing it. That makes all the difference.”
RID 3150 DG Uday Pilani said he was a third generation Rotarian, and his daughter was the fourth. They were in Rotary because “of the immense value it added to their lives and helped them become responsible citizens and better human beings. I keep saying it doesn’t matter how many zeros you have in your bank account. What matters most is how many lives you are touching.”
He said RID 3150 was doing four impactful projects. In one, an MoU had been signed with the Telangana government to restore over 2,000 acres of degraded urban land. In another project, the Rotarians were upgrading the neonatal facilities at 14 government hospitals across Hyderabad, “so that no expectant mother who goes to any hospital will find anything lacking.”
In yet another project, across Telangana and Andhra, 8,000 bicycles are being given to girls in classes 8–10 in government secondary schools, so that “with confidence, they can go to their schools, attend their classes regularly, and build a future for themselves.”
The district’s Rotarians were also actively looking forward to partner with both industry and the government to deliver services to the community, Pilani added.
While AKS member Leema Martin, a member of RC Coimbatore Aakruthi, RID 3206, announced a donation of ₹3 crore, Dandolu P Reddy and Jhansi Premanand, both members of RC Jubilee Hills donated $25,000 each to TRF.
Pictures: Rasheeda Bhagat
Next issue: Babalola’s cap fetches $31,000!