Gordon D. Jumper of Jacksonville, Governor of Rotary International District 6460, urged members of the Benld Area Rotary Club to recruit new members and take on new projects during his official visit to the club on Tuesday afternoon.
“Everything begins with membership,” Jumper told the club. “New members is what makes clubs grow.” Rotary members often wish their clubs would be involved in even more local projects, he said, but they know more projects will mean more work and effort on the part of Rotary members. “The easiest way to solve that problem is to add more members,” he said. “Many hands make any job easier.”
According to Jumper, surveys show that current Rotarians are reluctant to ask their friends to join simply because they feel it is an imposition on their associates. “Why don’t you want to bring people into a club that you enjoy and to be involved in projects that enjoy?” he asked. Computer tycoon Bill Gates gave $355 million to Rotary International to combat polio, he said. Yet, when someone asked Gates why he himself was not a member, Gates replied: “No one ever asked me.” “All you have to do is ask,” he said.
Jumper also noted that retention of existing members is important to the vitality of the organization. One of the best ways to keep members, he said, is to make sure they are involved in Rotary projects and activities. When former members were asked why they left Rotary, the response was, “I never had anything to do except go to the meetings,” according to Jumper. “The best way to keep members in the club is to give them something to do,” he said.
A new Rotary initiative called New Generations consolidates a number of youth programs under one umbrella, and Jumper said Rotary International believes the new concept will help in attracting new members. “It gets young people involved in Rotary and gets them involved in community projects,” he noted. “Many of those young people are anxious to become new members.” Several local school administrators are members of the Benld Club, and Jumper said he was pleased to see the club so closely associated with the local school district. Starting this year, the club is awarding an annual scholarship to a graduating Gillespie High School Senior. The affiliation with local schools dovetails, he said, with Rotary’s emphasis on literacy and early childhood development. Rotary’s literacy program provides pictorial dictionaries to elementary school students, and encourages reading among students at all levels.
The program is funded at the district level with proceeds from a Cardinals-Cubs baseball game each summer in St. Louis. “We literally fill the ball park,” Jumper said.”And the money we raise comes back to the local clubs for literacy programs.” Jumper noted that Rotary International is near to its goal of eradicating polio worldwide. Polio has been virtually nonexistent in the United States for many years, Jumper noted, but it has remained a problem in other parts of the world. The danger, he said, is that someone unknowingly infected with polio may travel from a Third World country, putting other travelers at risk of infection.
Since Rotary began its campaign against polio, the number of new cases has dropped from 350,000 per year to fewer than 1,200 last year. For the first six months of 2011, only 200 new cases have been reported. “We are going to end polio,” Jumper said. “We made a promise to the children of the world and we are keeping that promise. You did that. You brought the world to the brink of polio eradication.”
Jumper also urged local members to be involved in the Rotary Foundation, the arm of Rotary involved in providing immunization, sanitation and clean water projects in Third World countries. During one Foundation project, he said, volunteers innoculated 47 million children in India in a single day. The Foundation also administers the Rotary Youth Exchange program and Group Study Exchange. The Group Study Exchange encourages trips by business professionals to other countries to learn about the culture, business practices and other aspects of life in the rest of the world. The cost of Foundation involvement, he said, is only $100 per year. “That’s less than the cost of a couple cups of coffee each week,” he said. “Plus, one half of what you give to the Foundation comes back to the district.”
Jumper encouraged local members to attend an upcoming District Conference in Jacksonville. He also noted that Rotary International is going to put a greater emphasis on informing the public about Rotary’s contributions to local communities and to the world. “We need to do more show and tell,” he said.”We need to tell our communities what Rotary does for them.”
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