08/27/2026
Here's the challenge: this week, identify someone who exemplifies Service Above Self ā in ways small or large ā and recognize them either by giving them a Roswell Rotary Service Above Self coin or just letting them know you appreciate them. Look for the person who makes our 250 year old United States, and Roswell in particular, a better place to live one small act of service at a time. It doesn't have to be dramatic. It usually isn't. Service Above Self most often looks like something nobody was going to notice unless you were paying attention.
Not sure where to look? Here are people worth watching for:
1. The teacher who stays late, or finds a whole new way to explain something, just so one student finally gets it.
2. The spouse or partner who has dinner on the table, warm, on the night you had no business making it home in time.
3. The neighbor who quietly mows the lawn of the widow next door, every single week, without being asked.
4. The friend who tells you the hard truth you needed, gently, because they care more about you than about being liked.
5. The stranger who lets you merge, waves you through, and doesn't lay on the horn.
6. The person who offers you a new perspective right when you were sure there was only one way to see something.
7. The mentor who makes time for a phone call they didn't have to make.
8. The person who does a favor for someone who will never know it was done.
9. The volunteer who shows up to the same shift, the same soup kitchen, the same reading program, year after year, with no audience and no recognition.
10. The first responder who checks in on a family long after the emergency is over.
11. The citizen who picks up litter that isn't theirs, in a park that isn't theirs, because it's everyone's.
Once you've spotted your person, let them know you see them and it matters. Give them a Roswell Rotary Service Above Self Challenge Coin. Take a selfie if it makes sense. Send the story to Alicia Hughes.
And here's a little secret about this challenge. There's an old trick where a speaker tells a room to look for every red thing they can find ā really pushes people to notice it ā and then asks someone to name something brown. Almost nobody can. Our brains find what we're conditioned to look for, and they quietly miss everything else.
Consider this weekās a little conditioning. I'm asking you to go looking for good ā for service, for quiet acts of care, for the good that's happening all around us in Roswell whether or not anyone claps for it. My guess is that once you start looking, you'll be amazed at how much of it you start seeing ā in your office, your street, your family, your carpool line. It's not that the good wasn't there before. It's that we weren't looking for it yet. ~President Leslie Bassett
Rotary District 6900
