Rotary director delivers heartfelt message
Jennifer Jones has a lot of heart.
How appropriate – and serendipitous, too – that the Rotary International vice president’s message of friendship and goodwill was delivered to the Rotary Club of Washington on Valentine’s Day.
Jones – one of just 10 women to achieve the level of Rotary International director – wrapped up a whirlwind two-day visit Tuesday to Southwestern Pennsylvania. As a guest of Rotary District 7330 led by District Governor Pam Moore, Jones also visited clubs in California, Norwin and Greensburg before returning to her native Windsor, Ontario.
Jones shared her views on the state of Rotary, pointing to the service organization’s role in the virtual eradication of polio; a shift in mindset to attract younger members; and the opportunities and connectivity that membership provides.
“We’re at a historic time in our organization,” Jones told Rotarians gathered at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Meadow Lands. “We’re on the cusp of eradicating a dreaded disease, the disease of polio.
“It’s been a pretty long journey. Thirty years ago, there were 350,000 cases a year of polio. Today, as of this year, Jan. 1, we have only had one case reported. We are, indeed, in the home stretch of keeping our promise to the children of the world, and we are going to do it. It’s still going to take a lot more time, effort and money, but we are going to cross that finish line.”
Enduring connections that members make over a lifetime have enabled the organization to take the community of Rotary and scale globally, she said.
“There are 1.2 million of us around the world. … We have the opportunity to go global with whatever we do, and looking at polio is a really great example of that.”
With 2017 being the 30th anniversary of women’s acceptance into the organization, Jones shared the story of Sylvia Whitlock, the first female Rotary president who also happened to be with Jones a year ago at a training session. After Whitlock, now 82, told the Rotarians assembled there how her club in Duarte, Calif., broke the rules and allowed women to join 10 years prior to the Supreme Court decision, she was approached by a man who confided that he was in that same courtroom when the ruling was handed down.
“I share that with you because Rotary provides us with the opportunity to understand that the world is a small place, that the power of connection permeates everything that we do,” Jones said. “There are so many times when it’s almost like the stars align. … that we have so many different opportunities that come to light.”
Jones, who is also president and CEO of Media Street Productions Inc., a television production company in Windsor, presented key findings of research conducted by Rotary over the past several years that included the need to attract younger members.
“We are leaders by the way we think, not necessarily by our title. That’s a pretty big shift in thinking in how we have gone historically in the past. But I think it is a major shift because the group is really serious about bringing younger members into our organization. They’re not in the senior positions in their organizations in this point in time, but are they leaders? Absolutely.”
She later noted that growing membership is “something we have to keep our eye on,” adding that last year, Rotary attracted a record 150,000 new members, but also lost a similar number.
“People are leaving because we are not engaging them necessarily in the right way. We need to be presenting ourselves as the vibrant club that we are. … Understand the value proposition of membership. We make better leaders. You come into Rotary as a leader, and we make you better leaders. That’s something for younger people who are looking for mentoring, cross-networking, intergenerational mentoring. We need to speak about it more.”
And with membership come opportunities.
During a Rotary conference in Jordan last year, Jones met a doctor who performs surgery on children with heart defects. He invited her to observe his surgical team in the operating room, “not something that we all typically get to do.”
She traveled to the hospital, gowned up and went into the operating room, where the surgery was underway.
“I looked down, and there’s this tiny, tiny, little heart, and I’m watching as he is sewing with precision this little patch on part of this heart,” she said. “And he says, ‘Let me introduce to you 6-month-old Thelma.’ I’m mesmerized by what he’s doing. Every once in a while, he would say to the anesthetist, ‘Warm it up a little.’ Then he’d go back to doing (sewing) it, and say, ‘Warm it up a little.’ Then, finally, he said, ‘All right. Warm it up.’ And at that moment, all of a sudden, this heart starts beating. I hadn’t realized that as I was standing there watching it that it wasn’t beating.
“It’s a privilege that our organization provides us with those kinds of opportunities,” she continued. “Then I had the opportunity to go out into the hallway and talk to her parents and say, ‘I just watched her heart beating, and she’s going to be good. And she’s going to grow, and she’s going to play, and she’s going to be an amazing little girl.’
“This Syrian refugee child caught a break. Let’s hope she catches others.”
And that message came straight from the heart.