Maiden speech by Juergen Ertl on his installation as The 26th President of The Rotary Club of Kuching Central

Reach within to embrace humanity

Reach within to embrace humanity  is the theme of rotary international for the next 12 month. 

What does it mean for you and me

Well if you do not read it carefully it sounds like “dig deep into your pocket , get some money out and bless some  pour people” . But that’s not what we mean

The key word here is embrace

Embrace means to take someone in the arms or to hug. To take someone into the arms has a physical and an emotional component.

Let me explain further

All of  us have  the desire for  peace , for love,  for harmony and for understanding  in our personal lives . We only can make this desire come through, if we practice these values in our personal live first.
Without changing ourselves we cannot expect any change in our family, our club, our community, our country and the whole world.

So embrace humanity has to start with ourselves to give love , peace, harmony and understanding to others first.

This is practiced quiet successfully by our club since many years .our clubs strenght is the fellowship and friendship within the club. We respect each other.  We help each other and we have fun together.  Our families are part of our club life.

When we invite new people to join, we look carefully  at their  personality and understanding of service .their ideals must match our understanding of fellowship and service  of humanity

Incoming past president frankie ong has already shown before how much our club has achieved over the last 12 month ;by winning awards and executing many successful projects.

All this is the result and outflow of our club fellowship and club life.

As the new president my first priorty will be   to steer  the  club  along  this successful avenue.

We will continue to invite and install new members. In the past our club has grown continuosly under  club membership chair of   pp kho ping.

In my year we will take on a new challenge. We will start to invite coperations as new members. This is new grounds to rotary international .only very few clubs worldwide have been selected to go into this new endavour; namely clubs with a solid foundation and good track record.

Our second priority will focus on things we do best and further enhance them.

We will continue to carry out our

• Avoidable blindness program  as our signature project
• Support of perkim hardcore poor people program –  right now we are supporting  6  single mothers with children
• Support of local organisations  like children cancer society ,   autistic society and others
• Support of living waters children home in the deep jungle of kalimantan where 450 children are housed – many of them abundant. This includes 20 adults  living   there without  access to sufficient clean water

Our 3rd priority will focus on change.

Change is necessary for progress. Without change there is no progress.

Unfortunately many people misunderstand change. Change has to build on solid and existing pilars and not on promises.
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In the past we have read and heard a lot about change and it is almost like a fashion. It started in the united states a few years ago and now swept over to northern africa. But look at the results!

For example  in the united states  we still have  many  millions of poor people,  unemployment,  and a slow growing economy or  in egypt still the army is ruling the country.

Our change will be based on our  strenght as a club. We will build on the existing pillars as our foundation and add on one more pillars to make our foundation even stronger.

We will put more emphasis on the needs of kuching area. Education for underpriviliged children will be our focus.

Why education ?

Many children fall behind at school, because their parents cannot afford to send them to kindergarten and later for tuition. Helping these children is of utmost importance so one day these children  will be  integrated in the society  and be a value to the society .
Well educated people are the greatest asset for every nation.

For  example look at singapore, south korea and taiwan in asia   or germany, switzerland, netherlands in europe. They have all one thing in common. They fall all short of natural resources, but have very well educated people. Therefore they can achieve much higher living standards in comparison to malaysia.

The gross national income per capita in 2005 was in comparison to malaysia as follows

So we decided to team up with salvation army to sponsor and mentor a  learning center for these underprivileged children ,
 initially housing 40 children of any race and religion.

And as we get more expierenced , we will expand to other areas in kuching .

Now dear guests you might ask why  we  rotarians  put in all this effort. The answer is simple.  We do it for joy. We do it to create a legacy. Rotary international is very well known for the eradication efforts of polio. And we are almost there. And this will be remembered for many, many years and generations.

With our local club actions we help the underprivileged people here in kuching to have  better:

• Living conditions
• Better health
• And better education

So the people  will remember and one day tell their children how rotary in kuching  has helped them to have a better life.

Fellow rotarians, dear guests & distinguish guests,

Together we  can experience the same joy and legacy even if we think it is difficult to reach within ourselves and change  

A few weeks ago i had the opportunity to listen to a speech of a very successful business man. His name is graham power, chairman of powergroup of companies in south africa.

He has done many projects for the   under priviliged people.

At the end of his speech he said

Aspire to inspire before you expire

With this words i want to close and leave some food for thoughts for you. Again thank you all for your support over the past years and for your kindness