165. Inspire, Collaborate, and Create a Lasting Impact

Welcome everybody, this is the Rotary E-Club of Silicon Valley and every week we bring you the stories of people from all over the world who are making the world better. They do this locally, globally and digitally and they do it as part of Rotary International, 1.2 million people in 36,000 clubs around the world. Ours is the only one of those 36,000 you can get to by going to Rotary.Cool. We're rather proud of that. And we are also rather proud to have our district governor with us today, Nita Kadami. District Governor Nita is one of those people who asks great questions of the world around her, has a heart for seeing how that improvement can happen and bringing people along for the ride. And I am so excited that you're here. I'm going to hand it over to Maxi. It's talking a little bit about today's visit and about the year that we've got. And Maxi, Mike is yours. Thank you, Rashhton. I always enjoy that presentation with your energy. Welcome everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Thank you to all of our members from all over the world for joining us today. Thank you to the Rotarian visitors and, of course, thank you, Governor Gita for being here today. And before I go ahead and introduce this amazing speaker, I want to take a moment to share just a bit about our club. So we are the Rotary E Club of Silicon Valley, and we're an online and asynchronous club. And you might be wondering what does that mean, right? So basically, we don't meet every week in person or over Zoom. And instead, we do this recording of amazing speakers from different parts of the world at different times every week. And then we share those recordings as a weekly program in our website. That weekly program is public and it's open for others to watch. You can watch it at any time throughout the week. And we also have a really cool podcast forum, which means that you can listen to it while driving or maybe while exercising, walking your dog or running in beautiful California. Or wherever you are. This model gives us a ton of flexibility and it has proven to be very attractive to Rotarians all over the world. We have 43 members from over 10 different countries. And we are very proud of the quality of the content that we produce. Some numbers over the 10-year tenure of our club. We've recorded more than 600 programs, and listen to this. We have had more than 70,000 viewers in our YouTube channel. That's really great. People often ask, "Okay, but what about fellowship? What about service?" Well, we do both on our own way. We have online socials where we get together, over Zoom. Some of them have a theme like our ugly sweater competition. I believe we have one of our winners from last year here. And we'll see if he can maintain that unchallenged. We also meet in person in the Bay Area every two or three months. In fact, today we're meeting later today for lunch. We visit each other while traveling and attending international events. And we also have coffee with a Rotarian, which is a program in which every month you get a sign a random person, a random Rotarian from our club, and you get to meet them over Zoom or over a real coffee if you happen to live close by. And about service, first of all, I think sharing great ideas and inspiring ideas every week is great service to Rotary and to people in general. But we also have the more traditional definition of service. We sponsor an intra-club. We participate in RILA. We participate in the speech contest. We also contribute to one or two global grants every year. And that's only possible thanks to the generous contributions of our members. We have many major donors, Polaris Fellows, Polaris Society, and people that just contribute every year to the Rotary Foundation. The most recent global grant was the purchase of an optical coherence tomographer, which is now serving 10,000 patients a year in Rosario, Argentina. So we do great work. We also have a mini grants program where our members can apply for $1,000 grants for local projects, and those are often done in partnership with local Rotary Clubs or local organizations. And we also do two fundraisers, one in the first half of the year, which usually we pick a different organization. This year we're going to actually fundraise for our own club. And then on the second half we fundraise for the RILA for Life, this project from the American Cancer Society. This club leveraged technology everywhere and allows us to make it as efficient as possible. We're always trying new things. And while we can't pretend that we have feared everything out, we are really, really excited about this model and we'll keep making it grow. So I hope that short description illustrates at a high level what we are and what we do. And with that, now I want to introduce our greatest speaker, this your governor, Gita Kadambi. So Gita is the charter president of the Rotary Club of Fremont Bridge. She's also the founder and CEO of a patent law firm that specializes in intellectual property. One cool thing, she's also a former NASA scientist, I have a lot of questions about that. She has done a lot of amazing work for Rotary. She has some great ideas and I think she also has what it takes to get them done. So I'm really excited for her year. But besides all of these, and this is more a personal note, I think the most important part for me is that she has always been very supportive, always willing to help, always report responding to my text, my emails, and always available in the district events for a quick conversation. And I think as a president, that's really invaluable. So thank you, Gita, for all you do. Thank you for being here with us today. Welcome again to the Rotary Club of Silicon Valley. I hope you enjoy it and with that the stage is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you President Maxi, you've already spoken half my speech. So it's going to be a short one for me. Good morning from Silicon Valley, California. My name is Gita Kadambi and the district governor for the Rotary Year 2627 at district 5170. It is a pleasure to talk to a asynchronous plough. And when I say this word, people look up the dictionary. So you may want to define it on your website. And since Russian was asking me about the title, I think it's going to be in inspire, collaborate and create a lasting impact. So as I have lived through my life, I had the opportunity to observe governments, corporations, nonprofits, and institution across the world, that there is something extraordinary about Rotary. For 121 years, Rotary has changed its leadership every single year and yet it continues to serve, grow and remain strong. If you really look at it, it's an extraordinary feat. Right here in Rotary District 5170, we see the evidence of this remarkable continuity with more than 11 clubs plus have reached across the century mark. Let's just reflect for a second how many generations, how many hours, how much of talent and how much of friendship they have given to the society. The presidents changed, district governors changed, communities changed and the world changed in all these years. Yet Rotarians continue to show up, serve, build friendships, develop leaders and find solutions of some of humanity's most difficult challenges. Generations of Rotarians have passed leadership from one person to another while preserving a enduring purpose, service about self. These three words are very powerful if you really dwell on it. Globally, perhaps there is no other great example than Rotary's commitment to the eradication of folio. We began as an ambitious Rotary effort, grew into one of the most significant global public health partnership in history, Rotary did not simply write checks. The Rotarians advocated, raised funds, built partnerships, traveled to communities, mobilized volunteers and helped immunize children. Generation after generation of Rotary leaders carried the commitment forward because the mission was greater than any one leader or any one Rotary year. That is what is called sustainable impact looks like. It reminds every Rotarian that your involvement matters, your hour of service matters, your Professional Experience Matters. Your relationships matter. Your contribution matters. When thousands of individuals act. Individual acts are united behind a common purpose. They become a global force capable of changing the history. And yet, for an organization capable of helping lead an effort of this magnitude, rotary may still be one of the world's most invisible organization. That bothers me a lot. The reason is when I go for a hike and I'm wearing a rotary t-shirt, even now, in a small town called Fremont, which is 250,000 people strong, they ask me what is rotary. We must change this, not because we seek recognition, but because greater visibility allows more people to discover the opportunity to serve. Rotary represents something increasingly important in our divided world, global citizenship with local action. We are truly global citizens. We cross professions, generations, cultures, religion, political boundaries, and national borders to work toward a common purpose. And we build tremendous fellowship and have fun while doing it. This is the rotary experience we need to share. In an increasingly divided world, that may be one of the rotary's greatest gift to humanity. And we should take this charter very seriously to make rotary more visible. Millions of lives have been touched by us. Communities have been transformed, young leaders have been developed, diseases have been confronted, clean water has been provided, children have been educated, who has been created. And very often, the world does not know who helped make it possible. Perhaps humility has always been a part of our culture. But, invisibility cannot be a strategy for future. We can be humble but visible. Let us share the joy of being a Rotarian and invite others to join us. People do not need another meeting other calendars, please. They are searching for meaningful relationships, purpose, belonging, and evidence that their contribution will matter. So, when we invite someone to rotary, let us not simply ask them to become a member. You should ask your friend a simple question. What would you like your time to accomplish? What do you care deeply about? What problem in your community or somewhere in the world would you like to help solve? That's the question you need to ask even before you introduce yourself as a Rotarian. What legacy would you like to leave? Because rotary is not asking you simply to fill a chair in a meeting, we are inviting you to have a seat at the table where ideas become action. Tell them when you contribute to your time, talent and treasure as Rotarian, what happened when you worked with friends in the club or in the world? How many families gained clean water because the well was built? How many mothers and children received health care? How many hungry children were fed? How many students gained education that may change their life forever? How many families gained skills, employment, and a path towards self-sufficiency? Don't just report dollars spent. That's a very tacky way of showing things off. Report lives changed. How many people have you touched because of your time, talent, and treasure? Money is not the only thing we give. Please remember that. If Rotarian can help take on a challenge, as a enormous polio, imagine what else this global network can accomplish when we make ourselves visible, invite others to join us, and harness our collective time, talent, and treasure. That is rotary. It is global citizenship and how this ordinary people working together create extraordinary lasting impact. Let us inspire others, collaborate, and make rotary impossible to forget, and thank you for listening. Excellent. That is perhaps the most inspiring gesture you've ever heard. That was wonderful. Thank you so much, Gita. To all of you who are listening to this podcast or watching this recording, we thank you for taking your time to enjoy what it means to be inspired. We believe that sharing these stories is a way that we can get people to tap into that time, talent, and energy that they have to do meaningful work as so beautifully described by District Governor Gita today. We hope that you will come back next week. Here from the many speakers we have, explore our archives and know that if you are interested in being part of a ridiculously cool group of people seeking to make the world better, we would love to talk to you. You can find us at rotary.cool and learn more about rotary at rotary.org. Have an amazing week and make somebody's world a little better.