RCM’s Brillianteering Process: partie deux

As the Club conducts its second General Assembly, the October 26 Note on brillianteering deserves reiteration. There is no doubt that at the heart of every Rotary Club is the membership. Without them, everything will come to a screeching halt. Without them, there is no Club. Truly, without planners and implementors, service projects will cease to exist. Without dreamers and visionaries, problems that are otherwise easily solvable through cooperative and civic efforts will continue to fester and pester a community.

The men of RCM, the band of brothers fueled by volunteerism and service, are what makes the Club pulsate with life and enable it to implement life-changing projects. But to be able to sustain the various service efforts of the club, all members must ensure that they are acting with one mind, pursuing the same direction, marching to the beat of a single drum, and being guided a common creed. Towards this end, there must be a regular introspection and examination of where the membership, as a collective whole, is currently at, and reassess where they are going, and address wrinkles that have arisen.

For a club to keep moving on, there must be a constant evaluation whether the members are beautifully in sync with Rotary’s service mantra. As an aggrupation of civic volunteers, the Rotary Club of Manila must constantly check and address gaps and unresolved issues that could adversely affect its luster and effectiveness as a premiere service organization.

As any other club, RCM has experienced and continues to face unique challenges. But, as has been reiterated here, this phase must be considered as simply going through the crucible of severe testing. To be sure, even after more than a century of existence, Asia’s first Rotary Club still needs to go through not only sharpening and polishing, but re-sharpening and re-polishing. This is how a priceless creation is perfected.

In fact, a billion years creation of nature, the natural diamond, still needs to undergo a cutting and polishing process to let it achieve a perfect shape, and make it sparkle and shine. In a process called brillianteering, the facets of the cut diamond are polished so that it reflects and refracts the optimal amount of light. It is the polishing of the natural diamond that determines how much fire, brilliance, and sparkle it will have.

The Rotary Club of Manila, just like a diamond, must go through the same process. Hopefully, today’s second General Assembly, through everyone’s active participation and positive contribution, will turn out to be a brave and bold step towards achieving and completing RCM’s own brillianteering process.

Raoul C. Creencia, Editor-in-Chief, balita