Dare to be Great eClub

Our Projects:

As noted earlier, Rotary is an organization of Business and Civic Leaders dedicated to the ideal of Service Above Self.
As a global e-club, the Rotary Dare to be Great E-Club expands that ideal to:

“Being of the greatest Service to the greatest number of people with the greatest need in our community called Earth.”

Past Rotary International President, Sir Clem Renouf, described Rotary as an organization that “provides extraordinary opportunities for ordinary people to do more with their lives than they ever dreamed possible.”

It is our goal to contribute significantly to bettering the world, the whole world, for as many people as possible while creating those extraordinary opportunities for Rotarians and others to do more with their lives than they ever dreamed possible. 

Focus on youth:

A few years ago a club in our District (Fanwood, Scotch Plains Rotary Club) in our District (then Rotary district 7510) initiated a program of encouraging young people to “Dare to be Great.” That led to 70 students of a local primary school raising enough money to dramatically and perhaps save the lives of 250 of the world’s poorest hungry children by paying for them to be able to have food and attend school for an entire year. That inspired a group of secondary students to call for youth around the world to come together to take coordinated action to massively impact the situation of poor children around the globe. Rotary youth and other young people from countries around the world responded that they would like to be part of that initiative. 

A short time later, young people from some 40 countries got together online to discuss what the goal of their movement should be. They had already learned the think big so their deliberations included ideas such as ending child hunger, ending child poverty, ending child illiteracy, etc. (in all cases, worldwide). In the end they concluded that solving any one of those problems would leave too many other problems unresolved. They were looking for what they could do that would have the greatest positive impact on the world. Someone then reminded them of the story that giving a person a fish feeds them for a day but teaching them to fish feeds them for a lifetime. That thinking led them to their final goal: to grow an entire generation of master, global problem-solvers with the passion, determination, skills and, above all, the confidence, to take on all the world’s major problems, including those not yet known.

Inspiration for a global E-Club:

The actions and aspirations of those young people, became the inspiration for a reconstituted E-Club to focus on:

“Creating extraordinary opportunities for people, especially young people, to do more with their lives
than they ever dreamed possible by promoting and supporting efforts to grow an entire generation of
master, global problem-solvers with the passion, determination, skills and, above all, the confidence,
to take on all the world’s major problems, including those not yet known.”