Make Dreams Real
Dong Kurn Lee
RI President-elect
The moment when I learned of my nomination to be president of Rotary
International was one of the most exciting and joyful moments of my
life. I think this is true for every RI president and for everyone
who is elected to a Rotary office for the first time. There is a
feeling of great happiness,great honor, and great anticipation. There
is also an understanding that your life will never be the same again.
In the long term, I know I will be forever changed by the experiences
I will have as president. And in the short term, I know that the
responsibilities that I face, now and in the year ahead, will be
unlike any I have faced before.
This is also true for all of you, as new district governors. There is
so much that each of us can do as Rotarians. All of us have been in
Rotary long enough to know and understand Rotary's power. Alone, we
might be able to help individuals here and there, to make small
changes, to help in small ways. Together, our abilities are stronger.
Together, we really can make a lasting difference on a global scale.
Together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.
But when we truly understand the power that we have through Rotary,
we must also understand that with this kind of potential comes
tremendous responsibility. In each of our clubs, every year, we
Rotarians decide how best to use the resources that we have: our
time, our skills, and our funds. These decisions are not always easy
or obvious. They are not simple questions of right or wrong. They are
complicated questions of who needs our help the most and whom we can
help the best. We want to use our resources efficiently, to maximize
the good that we can do. Often, we are drawn toward needs that our
hearts will not allow us to ignore. We aim always to strike a balance, to find the projects that will give the maximum benefit for
our Rotary investment. We know that if we make our decisions well -
if we do our research and understand the needs and are wise and
careful with our resources - we will do the most good with everything
that we have.
That is our responsibility as Rotary leaders: to do the most good we
can and to inspire other Rotarians to do the same. In the end, the
responsibility for successful service projects lies with each individual club. But it is the job of the district governors and
senior leaders to guide, to motivate, and to encourage our clubs to
focus their efforts wisely. And it is my responsibility as president-elect to choose the year's theme and service emphases,
which help to channel and define the work of the year ahead.
Like the project decisions of individual clubs, a president-elect's
choice of emphases is a very serious matter. It is one that I spent
many months considering. I thought carefully about the emphases
of past presidents and looked at some of the many projects that these
emphases had inspired. Water, literacy, health and hunger - these are
the categories of Rotary service that have endured now for several
years and with good reason. These are the areas in which local Rotary
clubs, working individually and in cooperation with other clubs, can
do the most good. They are areas in which we now have many years'
experience and expertise. They are areas of wise Rotary investment.
They are areas that let us do the most good with everything that we
have. I knew with my mind that these were the emphases we should
continue.
And yet, my heart was pulled in another direction. Because, in the
midst of my research on possible emphases, I came across a number.
That number was 30,000 - the number of children under the age of five
who die every day from preventable causes. At first, I thought that
it had to be a mistake. Perhaps there was an extra zero in that
number, if not two. Perhaps the number was per month or per year. It
was impossible, unthinkable, in the 21st century, that 30,000 of our
most precious children could die, needlessly, every day. But there
was no mistake. I asked, how can it be possible?
The answers were as heartbreaking as the number. Children die
needlessly of pneumonia, measles, and malaria - for the lack of basic
medicines, vaccines, and mosquito nets. They die of diarrheal illnesses - for the lack of a packet of rehydration salts that costs
10 cents. They die in the thousands, every day, because they have
only dirty water to wash in and to drink. They are killed by illnesses that become deadly in combination with poor sanitation and
malnutrition. They die because their families are trapped in a cycle
of extreme poverty, a cycle that is not interrupted because there is
no access to education. They die because their needs are not met in
the areas of water, health and hunger, and literacy.
Once I understood this, and I understood the issues behind that
terrible number, I knew what I needed to do. In 2008-09, Rotary will
keep the service emphases we have had in so many of our past years,
the emphases that are solidly grounded in our knowledge and experience: water, health and hunger, and literacy. But this year,
I will ask you to focus your efforts in each of these areas on children, and on reducing the terrible rate of child mortality in our
world. In 2008-09, I will ask you all to Make Dreams Real for the
world's children. This will be our theme, and my challenge to all of
you.
We will Make Dreams Real by giving children hope and a chance at a
future. We will Make Dreams Real by bringing clean water to their
communities, and by this I mean not only providing safe water to
drink but creating the sanitation projects that keep children healthy. We will be as proud of building public toilets as we are of
supplying drinking water, because by improving sanitation, we prevent
water from becoming contaminated, and we avoid so many needless
deaths. We will Make Dreams Real by giving children the chance at health
through improving their environments and their access to care. So
much can be done to keep children healthy, with so little: mosquito
nets, rehydration salts, vitamins, and vaccines. And so much can be
done with just a little bit more: a trained birth attendant, a simple
clinic, a school feeding program, a visiting nurse. These are simple
and direct ways to save children's lives.
And in 2008-09, we will Make Dreams Real by making sure that more
children have a chance to go to school, because it will only be
through education that the deadly cycle of poverty can be broken.
Although it is true that child mortality is highest in developing
countries, there is not a single Rotary district where local club
projects cannot save lives. Every day, in every part of the world,
children die for the lack of a seatbelt or a smoke detector. Children
die because they have nowhere safe to play. Children die because
their parents cannot afford health care. Children die not because
nobody can help them but because too often, nobody does. But you and
I, here in this room, are Rotarians, and helping is what we do best.
And so it is our job to open our eyes to these needs, in our own
communities and in communities far away. Our job is to work together,
one club with another, to do what is needed. Our job is to Make
Dreams Real. We will turn those dreams of a safe and happy childhood -
a childhood that becomes a long and healthy life - into a reality,
because all of the world's children are our children.
And our job is a simple one. It is saving lives with our hearts and
our minds and our souls. And if, in 2008-09, every one of us does
this job well, at the end of our year we will all have achieved
something wonderful.
Source: San Diego 2008 International Assembly Speech-book
