“扶輪的未來”開放論壇“Future of Rotary” Open Forum

Wang, Chenyu’s speech for Rotary’s Future

Grand Hotel, 12F. Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

2005年5月7日星期六Saturday, 7 May 2005  / 1430-1530

─上一頁UP─

ENTER TO LEARN

GO FORTH TO SERVE

進來學習

出去服務

　

主席Presider : 田中作次Sakuji Tanaka, RI Director 國際扶輪理事 

主講人Keynote Speaker : 千玄室Genshitsu Sen, RI Past Director國際扶輪前理事  

引言人Panelist (5 min. each) :

  1. Toshio Itabashi, RI Past Director

  2. Kwang-Tae Kim, RI Director-Elect

  3. Noraseth Pathmanand, RI Director-Elect

  4. Paul C.K. Lee, PDG, D.3300

  5. Chen-Yu Wang, Rotary World Peace Fellow, D.3510, Taiwan

  6. Scott Stephen Thomas, Ambassadorial Scholar, D.5840, USA 

Rotary’s Future

Wang, Chenyu

2005/5/7

When talking about Rotary’s future, we can not forget its history. Back to 1905, Rotary’s founder, Mr. Harris, Paul, formed the world’s first club in Chicago, Illinois. From his simple intention to recapture a friendly sprit in a professional club, to today Rotary’s network around the world, we have witnessed the growth of Rotary Clubs globally and Rotarians’ efforts to build a better world by serving the communities. Rotary’s principal, “Service About Self,” is putting into actual projects and programs in every small township, cities, across boarder, and all over the world. Through servings, Rotarians are helping people in poor and hunger, children who need education, via exchange groups, Rotary is promoting understandings among people in the world. 

I, myself, am also a receiver from Rotary’s kind support of Rotary World Peace Scholarship in 2002. I went to the Rotary Center for International Studies of peace and conflict resolutions in Japan, International Christian University in Tokyo for my master degree. This two-year program has brought me very precious experiences to broaden my eyesight and deepen my knowledge. Through my daily life with Japanese people, and several Rotary events, I become aware of the core value of Japanese culture. Also, in many occasions, I interact with students, scholars, and professors from Korea, Bangladesh, China, Uzbekistan, Switzerland, Finland, Malaysia, Thailand, America and so on. These all contributes to my deeper understanding toward different culture and people. I, myself, although not a Rotarian, am actually practicing what Rotary believes everyday. Therefore, as a student in peace studies, together with my personal characters, many conflicts do not constitute conflicts to me, because I put ideology and politics aside, simply look at the people themselves, respect them, just like myself.

I have been to several international conferences, for example, UNU’s Global Seminar in Seoul and Tokyo, meeting students from Korea, Japan and China; we, the young generations, all think we need to look at the future, and there is no issue for us to sit down to talk about problems in the past.

I wrote my master thesis about Taiwan people’s ethnic complex, by weighting their Japanese consciousness and Chinese consciousness. I have been trying to approach the root of cross-strait conflicts in today’s Taiwan and China, by “knowing ourselves better.” In the end, I realize that people’s identities formation is from their personal experiences in time. In Taiwan, there are so many people living in different time horizon with different cultural, political influences from outsiders; if by manipulating identity issues intentionally, a sharp national identity could be easily formed. But, national identity is not everything, but only part of people’s identity recognition. We still have cultural identities in a wider sense. Moreover, in today’s globalization era, the national boundaries are diminishing with internet access, multinational business network, and fast and convenient transportation. Same idea applied to the Northeast Asia, I think there are too many unnecessary conflicts resulted from misunderstanding and history.

Today, we are talking about Rotary’s future. I think Rotary’s future is with us, the people— the young generations. We should look forward in the future, instead of looking back in the past. We learn lessons from history. We should transfer those bitter experiences, unpleasant memories, and manipulated politics into a humanitarian act, peaceful solution, and love toward people.

We’ve seen many rotary clubs in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, serving the communities locally and internationally, however, in China, there are still limited clubs. As far as I am aware, there are only two provision clubs in Beijing and Shanghai. I hope, in the future, we, especially for Taiwan’s Rotary, can conduct more humanitarian assistance to the poor in China, and try to find a peaceful way, more than politicians capacity and doing, to promote mutual understanding in the grass root level. I believe, this bottom-up method, shall be the most effective way to promote peace, because it makes people understand the others’ goodwill from the bottom of their hearts, and it connects people’s hearts.

If there is any project Rotary is going to start with, I would love to be the pioneer and volunteer to participate in it.

Thank you very much!!