Incoming Rotary International President Shekhar Mehta has urged members to become more involved in service projects, saying that caring for and serving others is the best way to live because it changes not only other people’s lives, but also our own. Mehta participated in initiatives that brought artificial limbs to children, clean water and sanitation to homes, and better health care facilities to communities.
“Rotary kindled the spark within me to look beyond myself and embrace humanity,” he said. “Service became a way of life for me and I, like many others, adopted the guiding philosophy that ‘Service is the rent I pay for the space I occupy on this earth, and I want to be a good tenant of this earth.’” His words again reinforce the need to think about how much of our Club’s service activity should be focused on the community within which we live and our much should be focused on communities where the basic need for assistance is so much greater. Perhaps due to COVID travel restrictions our focus for the next few years needs to be on areas of greatest need in Australia and there are several early-stage ideas which we will raise at Club meetings and look for volunteers to help with a feasibility assessment.