ROTI What is it?
By Henk Aalders Rotary Club of Kumeu NZ
The ROTI pamphlet says that ; "ROTI is a daily forum of Rotary Information, discussion and fellowship . It is an opportunity to share and learn about a multitude of Rotary services and information that we offer our members, which will help to expand and enrich your Rotary experience, as well as allow you to communicate and make friends with Rotarians all over the world ...ROTI is very much a modern technology thing, which we apply to explore the avenues of service and fellowship .
The ROTI domain at http://roti.org links you to many resources that our members have set up . If you are building a website for yourself, your club or District, Rotiwiz will give you free help and assistance . The ROTI institute aims to share knowledge and experience of seasoned Rotarians from around the World through the Internet . Some of these articles are now in the process of being made available in English as well as in French, German,Spanish,Portuguese, Russian and Romanian .
IDEAS that work at http://www.edoma.com/roti/index.htm provides Rotarians with a meeting place to register and pick up ideas on a wide variety of Rotary topics .
The ROTI breadbasket is the newsletter of Rotarians on the Internet . ROTI jokes and ROTI Recipes are further services which ROTI members provide.
PROJECT CENTRAL is a ROTI meeting place for clubs to register project needs and for those willing to provide the resources for same .
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE and RUSSIA is ROTIs latest project . In this some 25 Rotians from around the world are combining to tell the story of Rotary prior to World War 2 in Central and East European countries, and Rotary's fantastic revival in those countries and in Russia since the Warsaw Rotary Club was rechartered in Nov 1989 . Currently there are well over 15,000 Rotarians in Russia and in countries of the former Soviet block . It records many Rotary stories and details and allows Rotarians from those countries to tell their own stories, many of them very moving, recording over and over again how Rotary has made a difference into their lives and that of their country . This section aims to provide Rotary information apart from the 6 main lead languages also in Armenian ,Georgian,Estonian,Latvian ,Lithuanian,Bulgarian,Romanian,Hungarian,Czeck,Slovak,Slovenian,Serbo Croat, Polish, Albanian and Greek
A FORUM FOR RUSSIAN SPEAKING ROTARIANS is another ROTI project wherein Vladimir Donskoi PHF and Past President of the Irkutsk Rotary Club supplies a series of Rotary Articles translated into Russian specifically for the Russian speaking Rotarians. Currently this project is under development in association with R I Zurich RUSSIA ON LINE is a further project currently under development . This aims to allow Russian Rotary clubs to communicate with the rest of the Rotary world bypassing the Russian EMAIL system ,which is extremely costly and currently unaffordable to Russian Rotary clubs .
Apart from the above AND the daily communications through Email, serious, lighthearted or plain banter and goodnatured "legpulling", which have built so many friendships within Rotary, ROTI is an attempt to live our daily Rotary lives through the Internet .
Rotary Clubs and Districts are looking towards ROTI to guide and assist them to provide information and communication skills . At the Singapore Rotary Conference in June 1999, ROTI provided the opportunities for countless Rotarians through installed computers at the ROTI booth site to send messages home .
One District Governor anxious to arrange a student exchange programme solely aimed at the 3 Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, administered by Finnish ,Swedish and Danish Rotary respectively, turned to ROTI with its East European connections to lay the contacts to arrange this .
Districts 9910 and 9920 both of New Zealand invited ROTI into its planning Committee to arrange an International Festival of Rotary Recreational fellowships to take place in Auckland in March 2000. The Rotary world is waking up to the immensely important role Rotarians on the Internet can play and will play in our future .
"Dear Leila, Henk, Chacko, Peter and all other fellow Rotarians,All's well that ends well... or at least leads to ending well. You can imagine how relieved we were when the bombing of Yugoslavia has been suspended, and some kind of peace settlement has been reached. This does not, of course, mean that the troubles of the peoples in Yugoslavia are over, but at least we are not threatened with immediate death. Words are too simple to express all my gratitude for the kind support that you offered to me and my family in the times of our greatest despair. Your unprejudiced simpathy has built undestructible bridges of human kindness to our hearts, who happen to be beating in this wretched country, rapidly turning into a more and more obscure spot of the planet Earth."
These words came from Marietta a young mother of 4 from Serbia and a member of the Valjevo Rotary Club in Serbia . Rotary has 10 Rotary clubs in Serbia, as well as clubs in Macedonia and Albania . In the middle of bombardments ,power cuts and screeming kids, this young mother and fellow Rotarian also had needs in her fear and despair as had the countles Kossovar victim families . ROTI members tried their very best in a difficult situation to encourage Marietta and her fellow Rotarians and pledged her our prayers and love without taking sides in a politically horrible situation ..That too is an aspect of ROTI .....
An organized Balkan fest of jazz musicians sprang directly from ROTI postings ...PDG Kent wrote a moving letter to Midrag , Mariettas clubs president as houses tumbled and employment vanished ..What does one say in those situations ?? Yet Rotians managed to do it as well as they could, so much appreciated by those who just needed a word of encouragement and hope ...That too is ROTI ..
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ROTI is above anything else a fellowship. It is fun to meet each other. Here John Buchanan from Duluth Minnesota, Hugh Reid Whanganui NZ, Robert Craiu Singapore RC, Jo Wong from Taipei and Henk Aalders from Kumeu NZ are pleased to meet each other at the ROTI booth in Singapore. |
Who needs a newspaper or tele if one is a Rotian ? The Australians kept us well up to date with anything to do with cricket .. and of course once the Kiwis were out of contention, they swung their support behind the Aussies ...The Pakis, Indians, South Africans, and the Brits ...They were all there on the Internet in a lively and sporting fashion all in good humour ..and even if your country lost ..the winners were sportingly congratulated ...That too is ROTI
It is not only Kiwis and Aussies who love to get at one another ...Swedes and Norwegians, Dutch and Belgians ...Irish and English ....Kanucks and Yanks ....A bit of fun and lighthearted and good natured nonsense That too is ROTI
We have just met at the Singapore Convention. One of us almost did not make it. He had lost his job and could not afford the airline ticket. The next day another Rotian offered a free airline ticket to and from Singapore while in response another offered to fund local fares that to is ROTI.
Last week there was an appeal from Serbia where a hospital where 15 babies are born each week did not have functioning incubators. Within 24 hours there was this kind offer from a Taipei doctor: "Give me the telephone number of the medical super intendant, ...... I will see what I can do". Fellows this is the kind of Rotary that Paul Harris in his wildest dreams could not have hoped for. That too is ROTI
And we ROTIANS are human and at times we even forget that we are Rotarians, just fleetingly mind you, and because we love this medium so much, for we make it what it is and get out of it, what we put into it, we sometimes lose our temper only to be sorry thereafter . Through our human nature we sometimes manage to create temporary foes which through the power of rotary inevitably we turn into long lost friends ....That too is ROTI
And lastly once we meet at a World Conference of Rotary, (and which were we not ROTIANS we probably would not be interested enough in to attend ) we share great joy and pleasure to meet one another as if we had known each other for years ...and after just outlaying our years savings to attend ...we plan again to meet next year of course at the next ROTI booth at the convention ...Now that is ROTI ...
So if in a fit of depression or anger, you lose your sense of appreciation of this Rotarian sponsored medium, and you have just typed what a lot of " bull shit" this ROTI forum is ...Remember that this article exists and can be accessed .
Read it twice, three times if you must .....then reconsider what you have just written and ask yourself ; How much did I put into this, for me to think so negatively about so much that is noble and worthwhile and which I once thought was the best thing I could join here on earth .....
Yours in Rotary
Henk of Kumeu NZ
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