Seven
THE WONDERFUL WORLD
OF ROTARY
(cont'd - 3)
Dato' Chin's tenure of office as District Governor coincided with the decision to split Rotary District 330 into two parts, roughly between Mainland and South-East Asia. District 330 itself had its origins in the 1930s when (in 1931) the Malay Peninsula and Siam (Thailand) were designated as forming part of provisional District 'B'; four years later (i.e. 1935), French Indo-China was added, and immediately afterwards all three territories became a regular district of Rotary International as District 80. Sarawak, British North Borneo and Brunei became part of District 80 in 1936. District 80 formally ceased to exist in 1944 as a consequence of the Pacific war and the Japanese occupation of the territories concerned but was reinstated in 1946. In 1948/49 there was a general renumbering of Rotary districts and District 80 became District 46. At this stage Singapore was admitted in its own right to the District. A second renumbering took place in 1957, with the District changing from 46 to 330.
The decision to split the District between what in effect were its Thai and English/Malay speaking areas had been under consideration for a number of years. The possibility was first raised at the Penang conference in 1969 in the context of cutting down district expenditure by splitting it into two. The proposal was made by Pudu but when put to the vote defeated. At that time there were 52 clubs in the District. The question was raised again at the District conferences held in 1971, 1972 and 1974, against the background of the proliferation of new clubs which by 1974 totalled 78. On each occasion, however, the vote was against the split. Between 1975 and 1979 the total number of clubs in the District rose from 78 to 86, but general opinion was still opposed to the split, and it was decided that the status quo should remain until there were at least 90 clubs in the District. However, by 1979 the moment of truth was approaching and at the annual District conference held in that year it was decided that a resolution for splitting the District should be put before the next annual meeting the following year. Accordingly the issue was debated at length at the Kuala Lumpur Conference of 1979 which witnessed the installation of Dato' James Peter Chin as the new District Governor, with most voices sadly recognizing the reality that the District had grown too big for one Governor to handle. The consensus of opinion was that the Thai clubs were more in favour of the split than the other clubs, but there were cogent arguments for the 'redistricting' in any case, one of the most valid being that more districts in the region would give greater clout for the South-East Asian region as a whole with Rotary International.
The decision as to whether to split the District or not was deferred to the following year so that each club in the District would have the time to consider the matter fully. When the District Conference reassembled in Kuala Lumpur the following year (1980), the resolution was formally put and passed, and the actual division took place in 1984. But the split is by no means absolute. The device of holding joint district conferences for the two new districts every other year was adopted, although the Thai side now wish to make the intervals between these conferences a little longer.
Apart from the matched clubs and their exchanges of visits and the annual District gatherings, international service has been institutionalized in a number of other ways, in all of which PJ Rotary has never failed to be involved. There is the World Community Service, which has been a mainstay in the PJ Club's Schools Nutrition Programme, and the Rotary World Understanding Month, which provides the occasion for making presentations of other cultures, having 'international nights' and inviting foreign speakers - usually diplomats to talk about their own countries. There are also various programmes for assisting meritorious students to further their studies, amongst which the Rotary International Foundation Scholarships are the most prestigious. Almost every year the PJ Club has put up its own recommendations for such scholarships and has had the satisfaction of seeing a handful of them - against great competition - being selected. On a more general level the Group Study Exchange Programme has given the opportunity to young men and women from District 330, including nominees of the PJ Club to go on exchange study visits to the USA and the United Kingdom, as well as receiving a medley of guests from these and other countries in return.
However, in the last analysis everything depends on funding, and the art of raising funds has been raised to a very high level by Rotary International and by individual Rotary Clubs. The keystone to marking a club's financial commitment is, as no Rotarian is ever allowed to forget, the contributions made to Rotary International's Charity Foundation. Only Rotarians will understand the complexities of the Fund and the place of their contributions to it; suffice it to say that by 1968 the PJ Club had achieved the status of being a 100 per cent contributor, meaning that every member had contributed US$10 per head. Over the next decades this has risen by leaps and bounds - 3,600 per cent in 1975, which was the top in the District (in terms of amount per head of member contribution) for that year, to 7,500 per cent in 1982, which was 'one of the highest in the District'. By April 30, 1992 the contributions of the Club to the Foundation had reached US$56,349.18. The chief means of achieving these astronomical scores is by forever recruiting, in one way or the other, Paul Harris Fellows, which means a contribution of US$1,000 for each new Fellow. By 1992 the Club had (including the departed) 41 Paul Harris Fellows, amongst whom the Sultan of Selangor and his Consort grace the numbers, and 28 Paul Harris Sustaining Members have made partial contributions towards the Paul Harris Fellowship.
