Rotary Club of Bintulu Central

RCBC President's Message for 12th Pan Borneo Interclub meet : 7-9th May, 99, Bintulu.

Warmest welcome to 12th Pan Borneo meet, which is jointly organized by the Rotary Club of Bintulu and Rotary Club of Bintulu Central. It is indeed my great honour to speak a few words to you, the distinguished guests, delegates and fellow Rotarians, not only from Pan Borneo, but from afar.

Pan Borneo meet provides opportunities and avenue for fellow Rotarains from different places to gather and interact. It is also a meeting of minds - collective minds with a shared purpose "to serve above self". Theoretically, such unifying purpose, with so many of us, should generate an enormous creative force that can help shape this world, this society or the very community we live in, into a better place.

However, when we honestly look around, we witness wars, suffering of mankind, economic crisis, environment damages on a global scale. And closer home, we see social problems, delinquencies, youth who lose direction in life, high rate of road accidents, pockets of forgotten few in the midst of apparent affluence, difficulties faced by the business community, child abuse, breakdown of family bond, health problems etc. Etc.

As Rotarians, with high ideal of "service above self", we can only feel humble in a few little projects we do, hopefully to alleviate a bit of problems faced by some in our community.

At the same time, we may like to review our effort and strategies and seriously question ourselves whether we have utilized our full potentials and capacity, not so much to do more, but to be really effective to help transform our community, society and this world into something close to our Rotary dreams. As our Rotary foundation is built upon members from all works of live, vocations and professions, i.e. Our unique membership classification, have we leveraged on our diversified knowledge and experience into a collective force and intelligence?

While I post these questions, also to myself as the President of Rotary Club of Bintulu Central, to reflect upon, I see this Pan Borneo meet as another great opportunity to explore, to discover our collective hidden talents that can be put into effective action.

I, then, look forwards to your arrival, participation, contribution, knowledge and wisdom. And I wish you and your familles all the best and happy gathering.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Wong

President of Rotary Club of Bintulu Central, 1998/99

On forum title "Future of Borneo Rotarians, Issues and Challenges Ahead", President Andrew Wong of Rotary club of Bintulu Central made the following observations, ideas exchange and initiative:

• [A]: The Challenging future of Borneo Rotarians depends on the positive influence and impact they can create on the society. This calls for inner strength of the Rotary and quality attributes of Rotarians. The latter sits on the foundation of its fellowship, and knowledge diversity due to its unique classification system. It is important then to further enhance these inner strength and quality attributes. We should emphasize more on :
  • * Leadership knowledge and skills
  • * Managerial knowledge and skills
  • * Professional knowledge and skills
  • * Coaching, Facilitation and Motivation knowledge and skills
  • * Creativity thinking knowledge and skills
• [B]: Example on Creativity Thinking knowledge and skills
  • What new ideas can we explore on "spending $80,000 on this 12th Pan Borneo Meet and spending $24,000 on Rumah Jepi joint community project"?
  • A meaningful Rumah Jepi project benefiting many long house children costing $24,000, can $80,000 expenditure on Pan Borneo meet be made more meaningful and benefiting the society? What new ideas can be derived for future undertaking?
  • $24,000 with much effort, dedication, commitment delivering a product : a simple yet humble building that potentially houses educational treasure at Rumah Jepi, what is the product of 12th Pan Borneo Meet? What infrastructure is established to enable more creation of knowledge and Wisdom from Pan Borneo Rotarians? The usual mode of interaction, exchange of ideas, sharing of experience largely depends on conferences, or meeting like Pan Borneo meet, which have limitation. E.g. Renewed fellowship and enthusiasm can dissipate very fast after the convention, waiting to be rekindled at next conference in a year or two at expenses like $80,000!
• [C] New idea and experimentation to continue with this high enthusiasm from 12th Pan Borneo meet, to generate more ideas, exchange of experiences etc. And fellowship

  Creation of a Virtual Pan Borneo meet where we need not be constrained by locality and time, and at high frequency meet (not once a year, once a month, but could be once a day or hour). This is by the use of Internet mailing list discussion forum. For this, I will e-mail to you to take part in this experimentation and look forward to your participation and your invitation to other Rotarians to join in.