This Rotary information is about Fellowship First.

Last time we spoke about Enjoy Rotary – and I said Do good, Feel good, Have fun in Rotary!

And at the end of the meeting PP. Anucha came up to me and said rather cheekily – so make it Fun! I thought to myself – I am not Italian – I am not Paolo Piazzardi – our former Rotarian now back in his home country!

So now you know, if today’s information doesn’t go right, PP. Anucha is the fall guy!!

With that, I want to tell you a short story that reminds me of the movie “True Lies” – an old movie from many years ago – with Arnold Schwarzenegger – lot’s of action and lots of fun! True Lies! I wonder if such a thing could exist in Rotary!

Now we all know that women stayed away from Rotary for many, many years – in fact for decades! And as any good detective will tell you there could be several hypothesis based on evidence available.

Here is one hypothesis of what happened a long, long time ago. A woman was walking her young son in the Chicago Zoo. It was a lovely sunny day in summer, and after walking a while they reached the lions enclosure. There as coincidence would have it, they found two lions bang in the act of making love. The young boy fascinated by what he was seeing innocently asked his mother – Mummy does daddy make love to you like the Lions? The mother looked at her son and replied: I don’t know son your father’s a Rotarian!!

Today’s Rotary Information is about Fellowship First. In this the last meeting of every month we give added emphasis to Fellowship. I may add here that the idea of Fellowship is what got Rotary started. When founder Paul Harris initiated the birth of Rotary with 3 other friends, it was with the purpose of good old fashioned Fellowship in mind. The ideal of Service came soon after and is what makes Rotary what it is today – the oldest and finest Service Organization of it’s kind. The organization of Rotary International is an association of service clubs. The effectiveness of that club is in her membership. Members get to know each other, make friendships, enjoy fellowship and want to meet each other again. If that did not happen first, the ideal of Rotary Service will not go very far. Fellowship and Service will go hand in hand in a voluntary service organization like Rotary.

You may also wonder the amount of time and money that Rotarians spend personally in visiting Rotary Clubs and Rotary events across the globe and often these visits are motivated in pure friendship exchanges. Such as what we often do with our sister clubs for instance trips to – Manila, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Kyoto and more with the next ones coming up in Yangon and KL. This Fellowship is a quintessential aspect of Rotary that also make us unique and different amongst organizations. Indeed Rotary Fellowship does ‘Connect the World’ in doing good.

Thank you for your patience. PP. Ateeb