Club Operating Policies for Rotary Year 2024/2025

My name is Seiichi Ryoki, and I will be the new president of the Osaka East Rotary Club.

I joined in January 2008, and this will be my 16th year as a member.

I am especially grateful to the members of this club who are 10 or 20 years older than me for giving me advice and guidance on how to live, think, enjoy, and take over the business when I reach the same age. They have truly given me the direction I should take in life.

Also, the younger members have shown me the world view of the digital age, and as someone who grew up in the analog era, I have learned a lot from them, and I am grateful for that.

Having spent my days feeling nothing but gratitude, it is an honor for me to be appointed president of this club.

Having accepted the position, I intend to fulfill my duties to the best of my ability, so I would appreciate your support and cooperation.

Motto: "Creating a more attractive club"

My motto for this year is "Creating a more attractive club."

Of course, our club is already attractive enough.
What's most wonderful is that each and every member of our club is full of charm, not only as a professional but also as a senior (and junior) in life, and each member's charm is unique and one of a kind.

It has been 16 years since I joined our club as a dental care manager and clinician. I have learned so much through interacting with members of various generations from different industries. The lessons I have learned from people I would never have met if I had stayed confined to the world of dentistry have helped me grow as a manager, a clinician, and as a person. I feel that our club is a training ground for life.

To make the club even more attractive, I would like to focus on "diversity."
Diversity is a keyword that is common to the core values of Rotary Club (friendship, integrity, diversity, service, and leadership) and to the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) that we have been strongly promoting in recent years. Although our club has a diverse membership, I believe that we need to increase diversity even more.
It's not just that we want to increase the number of new members from the younger generation who are involved in new businesses. We also want to dig deeper into the hidden charms of our colleagues who have been working together for many years.

For example, when I joined the club, the rule was to wear a tie to attend regular meetings, but with the arrival of the Cool Biz era, we now wear no tie and light clothing for several summer months. I'm sure I'm not the only one who felt that just by removing the tie, we could see the different charms of each participant and the atmosphere of the place became more flexible.

Diversity is the core of Rotary Club. Now that the movement to increase diversity is progressing in all aspects of society, we need to go one step further. This is the mission of Rotarians, and I am convinced that this will increase the appeal of our club, reduce the rate of withdrawals, increase attendance at regular meetings and committees, and attract new and diverse members.

Looking at the world, although we are recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, various challenges remain. At the same time, new technologies such as AI are poised to greatly change society. Keeping in mind that we are entering a new era where conventional wisdom no longer applies, we aim to make our club's regular meetings and committee activities more attractive, going beyond "progress" to "evolve."
We look forward to the cooperation and guidance of all our members.