New Generations – What does this mean?
The Rotary Bunch - Keeping it all in the family
By Alice C. Chen (The Rotarian) September 2007
At the left: Judith Lorigan and grandaughter Carly wear their Paul Harris Fellow medallions.
The old Rotary slogan “Every Rotarian an Example to Youth” is as relevant today as it was more than a half-century ago. Rotarians can help young people reach their full potential. We can instill our motto of Service Above Self at a young age – and let it continue to guide Rotary through the next century.
Judith Lorigan, a past assistant district governor, has been recruiting new Rotary club members for years without even knowing it. “I’ve spent a lot of life as a Rotarian,” says Lorigan, of the Rotary Club of Bethel Park, Pa., USA. She adds that her family is always asking her, “What’s going on?” The answer usually leads to some of her three children or seven grandchildren getting involved in service. That includes Lorigan’s 14-year-old granddaughter Carly Zalenski, who has organized drives to send supplies and toys to Vietnam and helped raise $50,000 to build a school.
At the left: Youth Exchange student Vanessa Ursini gets ready to leave Machu Picchu. With her is a local boy who provides entertainment for passengers, racing their buses down the mountain on foot and stopping to pose at each hairpin turn. Vanessa helped deliver $3,500 worth of supplies in Peru.
“It’s incredible that Carly’s been able to do this, to stay with it,” says Lorigan, a 65-year-old retired bank manager who has been a Rotarian since 1988. “When she started this, I thought, This is going to be difficult.”
Lorigan’s family, along with others who can list Rotary affiliations through the years, serves as a reminder during New Generations Month that when seeking out potential club members, we shouldn’t forget those who are right under our noses: our own children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other relatives.
It only makes sense. After watching – and perhaps helping – their Rotarian family members dish out spaghetti in soup kitchens, give dictionaries to third graders, and raise money to drill wells in Africa, these potential recruits have come to personally understand the importance of volunteering and its ability to put smiles on the faces of both givers and receivers.
So just how can you get younger family members involved? It’s quite simple, really.
“Invite them to the things you do,” Lorigan says. Introduce them to Interact, Rotary’s service program for people ages 14-18, and Rotaract, for those ages 18-30.
“My family always supported any function my Rotary club had,” she adds. “They’d always come, be a part of it, donate, and buy raffle tickets.”
It also helps to bring back photos. After distributing the items Carly helped provide to children in Vietnam, “I came back with pictures of the supplies and toys given to the kids,” Lorigan recalls. “It was an incredible experience. They were thrilled. They had reconditioned Barbies. These little girls in Vietnam were smiling from ear to ear. Some had never had a toy.”
Because of her influence, Lorigan’s son-in-law Fred Zalenski decided to join the Rotary Club of Canton, Ohio, about two hours away from Lorigan’s home.
The Rotary service bug spread to his daughter, Carly, who was in third grade when she initiated a project at her school to collect items for children to send overseas. She amassed 10 suitcases of materials, which her grandmother and other Rotarians took to Vietnam in 2002 for a school they’d helped build.
But Carly, who became a Paul Harris Fellow in April, didn’t stop there. In 2006, she launched an effort to raise $50,000 to cover half the cost of constructing another school in Vietnam. (The other half was to come from the Vietnam Children’s Fund, whose cochair is Ohio-born Terry Anderson, a journalist who was held hostage in Beirut, Lebanon, from 1985 to 1991.) Carly began speaking to Rotary clubs about the project, and by June had rounded up enough money to meet her goal. To help raise funds, Anderson, who has met with Carly, spoke at a March benefit dinner in Canton.
“It’s exciting,” says Carly, who wants to become a Rotarian some day. “It’s been such a surreal experience. Everything’s been happening so fast.”
Carly is starting high school this fall and plans to join an Interact club. She hopes to eventually become a Rotary Youth Exchange student, Rotaractor, and Group Study Exchange participant.
Source: http://www.rotary.org/newsroom/features/0709_tr_rotary_bunch.html
