Serve to Change Lives with One Love
July 1, 2021
Dear Rotarians,
I wish you all a Happy New Rotary Year! We are all settling into our new and continuing club and district roles after a seamless transition process. I want to thank the outgoing teams led by Immediate Past District Governor Patrick Obath and his wife Terry Obath for their admirable leadership throughout the previous year and for showing us that we can be unlimited no matter the circumstances.
I would also like to thank our District Governor Elect (DGE) Azeb Asrat for her immeasurable support and congratulate our recently elected District Governor Nominee (DGN) Leonard Ithau on his well-deserved appointment to the District leadership. My heartfelt appreciation additionally goes out to the Past District Governors, who have offered remarkable assistance to the TROIKA team of the DG, DGE and DGN, providing invaluable support along the way.
This year, we are tasked to be change makers by growing more and doing more. And there is no better way to do that than to come together and spread the love in our communities by increasing our membership through our Each One, Bring One initiative. I urge you all to grow Rotary by introducing one friend to Rotary this year and double our participation. We also need to work closely with our youth by growing our Interactors membership and providing mentorship to our Rotaractors for seamless transition to Rotary. For when we come together with One Love, we are able to achieve more transformational service to society.
We all join Rotary for different reasons but ultimately, It is in the heart of every Rotarian to Serve To Change Lives; and we are keen to make a bigger impact through additional and bigger projects in our seven areas of focus. One of these areas is the environment where we aim to enhance the capacity of communities to support natural resource management and conservation by planting one million trees. As we continue with our club projects, let us also include a contribution to our environment conservation by collaborating to plant and grow trees in our communities. We also intend to distribute one million books under our basic education and literacy programme and empower 10,000 women through our economic empowerment focus area.
Despite the difficulties brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, Rotarians have remained resilient and committed to reduce the suffering of those less fortunate. As our Rotary International President Shekhar Mehta so aptly puts it, “The bigger the challenge, the more passionate the Rotarian.” As we go into the new Rotary year, we are cognizant of the need to focus on our collective health. To this end, we are launching a cancer awareness campaign with emphasis on cervical and prostate cancers as a means to help fight disease. Under our child and maternal health care focus and with your help, we will facilitate 250 children to access heart surgeries through our gift of life project. Additionally, your donations to The Rotary Foundation support extraordinary projects to make an impact in communities both in our district and around the globe and I encourage you to increase your giving this year.
Over the last few weeks, I have hosted virtual fireside chats with all of you where many of you shared your experiences and ideas on growing our impact and enhancing the Rotary experience. We at the district have heard you and will work toward implementing our annual mandate by incorporating your ideas for full participation. Through our newly formed Governance and Ethics committee, we will work closely to support clubs to ensure integrity and stewardship compliance.
As leaders in the change making process, we strive to have a digital transformation to make service more efficient for all our members. We will work together with each one of you through your clubs to ensure that you have accessible and timely information at the click of a button and informative, world-class training for our members. A lot of you are doing amazing work in your clubs and we want to hear from you. I encourage you this year to take advantage of this digital space to share your Rotary One Love stories with the district and beyond.
As we serve, it is important to also have some fun and create networking opportunities for Rotarians to socialize. In line with this, I would like to welcome to you all to our 2022 district conference that will be held on 12-15th May 2022 at Neptune Resort in Diani, Kenya to celebrate the love and great memories of the Rotary year 2021/2022. Under the banner of ONE LOVE, we will share our successes of the Rotary Year, engage with change leaders from various parts of our society, showcase the impact of our projects in our communities, resolve some of the challenges we still face as a family, spend time with old friends and make new ones as we enjoy the hospitality that Diani offers. Registration for the conference is open on www.dca2022.rotary9212.org.
Let us make use of the resources available to us and enhance partnerships throughout this 2021/22 Rotary year to increase our impact. Let us come together to grow Rotary with One Love and do more to Serve and Change Lives.
One Love,
Alex Nyaga
District Governor
Rotary District 9212
