Make Dreams Real
RI President-elect Dong Kurn Lee announces the 2008-09 RI theme, Make Dreams Real. Lee said he was in disbelief when he learned that 30,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable diseases such as pneumonia, measles, and malaria.
"Once I understood the issues behind that terrible number, I knew what I needed to do," Lee said. Rotary will keep the service emphases of recent years -- water, health and hunger, and literacy -- but will focus their efforts in each of these areas on children.
"Children are killed by illnesses that become deadly in combination with poor sanitation and malnutrition," Lee said. In addition, families stricken by extreme poverty are trapped in a cycle that only leads to more unnecessary deaths. "It's a cycle that is not interrupted because there is no access to education."
Rotarians can improve children's health, Lee said, even in small ways, such as delivering mosquito nets, rehydration salts, vitamins, and vaccines. "So much more can be done with just a little more: a trained birth attendant, a simple clinic, a school feeding program, a visiting nurse," he continued. "These are simple and direct ways to save children's lives."
"Children die not because nobody can help them, but because too often, nobody does. But you and I, here in this room, are Rotarians, and helping is what we do best,\" he said, adding that \"our job is to Make Dreams Real for children. If every one of us does this, at the end of our year, we will all have achieved something wonderful."
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