Rotary Activities

Autunno Benefietconcert 2024

2025-08-27T11:43:00.006+02:00

(Place image here)

Op vrijdag 1 november 2024 vindt in de kerk van de Evangelische Broedergemeente te Zeist het Autunno Benefietconcert plaats, georganiseerd door Rotary Op Seyst. Het concert wordt uitgevoerd door het Autunno Ensemble. Dit ensemble staat onder leiding van de gerenommeerde dirigent Arjan Tien, met als soliste op hobo Pauline Oostenrijk.

Source:

https://www.denieuwsbode.nl/lokaal/muziek/1074901/autunno-benefietconcert-2024

Volunteers are at the heart of the Rotary Youth Exchange program

2025-05-24T08:46:00.006+02:00

Volunteers are at the heart of the Rotary Youth Exchange program

By Arnold R. Grahl

George French, a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Minnesota last year, is greeted by Ivone Pinheiro de Souza Silva and Ednei da Silva, his host parents in Guarulhos, Brazil, near São Paulo.Image credit: Maira Erlich

As a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Sweden in the 1970s, Olof Frisk chose to study in Colorado because he wanted to ski. But it was meeting the other exchange students in the district that carved his life’s path.

At that moment, he knew he wanted to become a Rotarian. He went on to join a Rotary club and serve as club president, chair of his district’s Youth Exchange committee, and then chair of the multidistrict Youth Exchange committee overseeing the program throughout Sweden. Today, as governor of District 2340, Frisk remains involved in the program and believes volunteering to help Youth Exchange grow is an investment in Rotary’s future.

“If you haven’t been involved in a Youth Exchange and seen the interaction of the kids, you don’t realize how important this program is,” says Frisk. “Students from all over the world become leaders and are friendly with each other. This is the original thought behind peacebuilding.”

Inspired to get involved? Unlike other exchange programs, Rotary Youth Exchange runs entirely on volunteers, so extra hands are always in demand. Roles exist at both the club and district levels.

Hosting

By far the greatest need is for host families. If your district already has a program, approach your club’s committee chair. Like all Rotary and non-Rotary volunteers working with young people, host families need to complete an application, criminal background check, reference check, and in-person interview.

“It’s the best place to start. It gives you a great perspective if you are going to be coordinating the program at any other level,” says Sabrina Barreto, a counselor for Youth Exchange students in District 4500 (Brazil) who went on both short- and long-term exchanges.

Barreto’s mother, Emanuelle, a member of the Rotary Club of Natal-Potiguar, chairs the district’s Youth Exchange committee and has hosted more than 40 students, starting when Sabrina was a year old. Emanuelle Barreto says another way to get involved is to volunteer as a counselor.

Counselors

Clubs assign a counselor who serves as a liaison for the student, club, host family, and community at large. The counselor is the student’s primary Rotary contact, easing the transition into the country and the community through regular, direct interactions throughout the exchange.

A Rotary counselor can’t hold a role of authority over the student’s exchange (for example, the person can’t be a member of a student’s host family, school principal, club president, or district or club Youth Exchange officer). And counselors must be able to respond to any problems or concerns that may arise, including anything from students’ simple questions about navigating their new town to rare instances of abuse or harassment.

“It’s very important for the counselor to build a connection with the student,” says Emanuelle Barreto. “We are not just talking about taking them for coffee or a sandwich or to a movie. You’ve got to get to know them and spend time with them. Sometimes that means being together just doing nothing.”

George French and Regina Alesi participate in a Rotary meeting last year during their exchanges in Brazil.

Image credit: Maira Erlich

Serving on a committee

If you already have some experience, consider serving on your club or district Youth Exchange committee. A club committee plans, implements, and supports all activities involved in sending and hosting long- and short-term exchange students. As a member of a club committee, you will attend district Youth Exchange meetings, establish expectations for how students will participate in club meetings and activities, obtain feedback from students, and notify the district’s Youth Exchange chair of any issues or concerns.

On the district level, committee members work with the district governor and the district’s youth protection officer to supervise the entire district’s program. A youth protection officer is responsible for fostering safe environments across all youth programs. For this role, you’ll need professional experience handling abuse and harassment issues, as well as a familiarity with RI policies and relevant local and national laws.

Some districts band together to form a multidistrict Youth Exchange committee to streamline administrative duties over a larger region. Each multidistrict group operates differently, but many arrange training for volunteers and orientation for students, process applications and visa paperwork, negotiate group rates for travel and insurance, and promote the program in their region.

Supporting cast

If none of the above roles fits your time and talents, consider helping spread the word about the program. “There are so many things to be done,” says Sabrina Barreto. “There are relationships to build with clubs, families, and other districts. You don’t necessarily need to be involved with teenagers. There is a role for everyone.”

No matter the role, the work is fulfilling.

“I’ve had no better feeling than to see the kids that I have trained on the other side of the world accomplishing great things,” she says. “Just speaking about it gives me goose bumps. It makes me so proud of them.”

This story originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/volunteers-are-heart-rotary-youth-exchange-program

solar energy expands access to health care

2025-05-24T08:42:00.002+02:00

Solar energy expands access to health care

By Etelka Lehoczky

In 2021, the Rotary Club of Accra-Spintex installed a new solar power system at the Alokpatsa Community-Based Health Planning and Services compound in eastern Ghana. For years, many babies had been born there by the light of candles and cellphone flashlights because of unreliable power.

A lot of babies are born at the Alokpatsa Community-Based Health Planning and Services compound, a health center in eastern Ghana. And for years, a lot of those babies were born in the dark.

“We didn’t have any power. What we had were lamps and candles,” says Nelson Addy, a former facility team leader at the center in the Oti region. “When the woman delivering had a tear and we wanted to suture, we found it very difficult. We had to strain our eyes with our phone [flashlights] to do the suturing.”

That changed when the Rotary Club of Accra-Spintex, of the Greater Accra region of Ghana, installed a new solar power system at the center. The project included a complete rewiring and, crucially, plenty of lights

Courtesy of Nortse Amarteifio

“In the surgical ward, we made sure there would be no need for them to use [phone] lights,” says Nortse Amarteifio, the president of the Accra-Spintex club, whose solar company donated labor and some materials for the $21,000 installation. “We also put in solar streetlights all around the compound and on the street in front of the hospital.”

One of the first mothers to give birth after the installation was so delighted with the upgrades, Addy says, she used “Solar” as the name for one of her children. “It felt like it was all planned by nature for the child to see the first light installed in Alokpatsa,” he says.

Solar solutions

Solar energy previously had powered the Alokpatsa health center, but that system was no longer working. Clinic staff members were excited for the return of a solar system. The Alokpatsa installation is one of numerous Rotary projects using solar power to improve access to health care around the world. In the past dozen years, Rotary clubs have installed solar power systems in health centers in Nepal, Haiti, Pakistan, Mexico, Armenia, India, and many African countries — and there’s much more to do. An estimated 1 billion people in lower-income countries are served by health facilities that lack reliable electricity or have no electricity at all, according to a 2023 report by the World Health Organization. In sub-Saharan Africa, only half of hospitals have reliable electricity. Extreme weather, often connected to climate change, is exacerbating the problem, increasing energy costs and damaging power grids.

“Off-grid health facilities need to have access to clean, reliable energy solutions,” says Luciana Mermet, who works for the United Nations Development Programme as the manager of the Global Fund Partnership and Health Systems Team, HIV and Health Group. “And we’re not talking only about solutions in rural areas. Urban areas can also have unreliable power grids. If you don’t have affordable and sustained energy access, you will have situations where you’re delivering [babies] in candlelight or where you’re unable to refrigerate the health commodities you need to provide care.”

Rotary members in Uganda, including (from left) Joseph Ssuuna, Joseph Ssengooba, and Charlotte Atukunda, led a solar project at a rural health center.

Courtesy of Annie NinyesigaWomen giving birth in rural areas are among the most affected by such inadequacies, according to the WHO report. It was this problem that galvanized Annie Ninyesiga, president of the Rotary Club of Bwebajja, Uganda, to get a solar system installed at a rural health center in her country. Her club secured a Rotary Foundation global grant in partnership with the Rotary Club of Aarau, Switzerland, to pay for the $76,000 maternal and child health project, which also provided medical equipment, an ambulance, and training for health workers, village health team members, and traditional birth attendants.

“This center serves a very big population in hard-to-reach areas,” Ninyesiga says. “We thought it was important that the people have access to, at least, the basic maternal and child health support.” She adds that solar is superior to the area’s hydroelectric power grid. “The hydroelectric power is not reliable. It’s on and off,” she says. “Sometimes it can’t even charge a mobile phone. Sometimes it provides light but can’t run any equipment.”

Not only do solar panels keep lights shining and equipment functioning, they reduce electrical bills and cut down on the need for generators fueled by expensive — and climate-unfriendly — gasoline. Health facilities then have more funds for patient care. By installing a solar power system at Hospital Bienfaisance in Pignon, Haiti, a Rotary project significantly lowered the hospital’s $4,000 monthly gasoline costs.

Even in areas where there are few or no health centers, solar power can bring health care to people in a very literal way. A few solar panels can enable a doctor to convert a van or trailer into a mobile clinic to serve remote areas.

Revolutionizing vaccine storage

Solar power is also revolutionizing vaccine storage. Many vaccines must be stored at temperatures of 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 8 degrees Celsius). The oral polio vaccine can be stored at this temperature for six months. In areas with limited or no electricity, or frequent power outages, vaccine refrigerators are often powered by kerosene. They can work only if there’s fuel available, so there may be periods when no vaccines can be stored. Also, this type of refrigerator often provides uneven cooling, spoiling the vaccines inside.

“Sometimes the fridge might not be functioning perfectly — the control is erratic,” says Souleymane Kone, team lead for WHO’s Essential Programme on Immunization. “During the night the temperature might drop down to -1 Celsius [30 Fahrenheit] sometimes, and in the daytime it will go up, exposing the vaccine to excessive heat.”

In 2015 Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, one of Rotary’s partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, found that up to 90 percent of health facilities in some countries were equipped with old, obsolete, or broken refrigerators. Since then, Gavi, UNICEF (another GPEI partner), and other NGOs have focused on transitioning to solar direct drive refrigerators. First introduced in 2010, these refrigerators are powered directly by the sun without using batteries. The solar energy freezes water or another freezable substance to make an “ice bank” inside the unit that maintains the right temperature after the sun goes down. Costing around $4,000, a fridge can keep vaccines cold for three days or more without the sun shining.

“It is critical for us, especially when looking at increasing the coverage of routine immunizations, that we have a sufficient cold chain storage capacity at all different levels, including the remote areas, including places where there are frequent power fluctuations,” says Anahitta Shirzad, a health specialist with UNICEF’s Immunization Supply Chain program.

“The solar direct drive refrigerators come in very, very handy,” Shirzad says. “They have supported [our goal of] reaching the unreached. We’re looking at the last mile.”

Solar direct drive technology works best with motors such as those used in fans or pumps, while many installations that power whole buildings use solar batteries to store excess energy. At Alokpatsa, the Rotary club solar installation makes it possible to operate a water pump, a sterilizer, and a refrigerator that stores vaccines for two other facilities in the area. It also powers a humbler, but still welcome, piece of equipment: an iron.

“When the lights came, I was able to iron my uniform,” Addy says. “Everyone in the community would now see me as a professional. I felt so happy. I don’t even know how to express this happiness.”

This story originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit ;-

https://www.rotary.org/en/solar-energy-expands-access-health-care

channels the ‘power of peace’

2025-05-24T08:34:00.002+02:00

Lebanon club channels the ‘power of peace’

By Dhruti Shah

Members of the Rotary Club of Beirut Pax Potentia, including (from left) Elissa Tabet, Jeanne d’Arc Davoulbeuyukian, Noor Akoum, and Anhal Kozhaya, are steeped in the principles of Positive Peace.

Image credit: Florient Zwein

Like many young professionals in Lebanon, Anhal Kozhaya was ready to take his place among the latest generation to flee the country’s troubles — not war this time but an economic crisis that has driven widespread poverty, social unrest, and a collapse of public services. Then, he had second thoughts.

“Rotary is, honestly speaking, what kept me here in Lebanon,” says the 22-year-old, who works as an administrative officer at the British Embassy in Beirut. “Rotary is what kept me motivated and inspired and always wanting more for my country. If that wasn’t the case, I would have left this country a long time ago and wouldn’t have thought twice about coming back.”

Kozhaya is president of the Rotary Club of Beirut Pax Potentia, or “the power of peace” in Latin. The year-old club, which focuses on peacebuilding, has its origins in a project funded by a Rotary Foundation global grant. Another notable attribute: Its 17 members have an average age of 23, a young demographic that’s leaving Lebanon in high numbers.

Lebanon, once known as the Switzerland of the Middle East for its status as a regional banking center, has experienced waves of emigration over the past half-century. Those migrations started with the 1975-90 civil war and have accelerated during an economic crisis beginning in 2019 that has fueled triple-digit inflation, shut down the banking sector, and pushed millions into poverty.

Rotary clubs in Lebanon have stepped in to provide critical services, and the new club is furthering those efforts through a peacebuilding framework. Its young members are steeped in the principles of Positive Peace, an approach that seeks to foster the institutions, attitudes, and conditions that can allow peace to flourish.

The club’s first public event was an international conference on youths as agents of peace that helped generate ideas for projects. The club, chartered in June 2023, typically meets weekly either online or in a coworking space in Beirut. Its members are so committed that even those who’ve had to move overseas to Italy, Malta, and Belgium to study continue to log on when they can.

In the background of the economic crisis, Lebanon also remains deeply divided along sectarian lines more than three decades after its devastating civil war. Today, 18 recognized religious sects compete for power in a fractious political system, with near-constant interference by neighboring countries.

Lebanon’s challenges need to be examined in relation to Positive Peace, Kozhaya says. “You cannot talk about the environment without addressing peace,” he explains. “You cannot talk about women’s rights, tolerance, human rights, and community economic development without bringing in a peacebuilding perspective.”

For one project, club members have visited the Maryam and Martha Community, an organization helping women and girls who have experienced gender-based violence. They raised funds for the organization and collected donations, including food, basic hygiene products, and clothing.

In February, they hosted a workshop on the relationship between peacebuilding and theater. Among its other aims, the club is planning another peace conference, a fashion show with an emphasis on inclusion and diversity, and a scholarship fund focused on peacebuilding. Members also want to mentor high school students.

Make your club a peacebuilding powerhouse

Want to explore ways your club can get involved in peacebuilding? The Rotary Action Group for Peace offers Rotary members ideas, resources, and support to advance peace. Here is a sample:

Plant a peace pole and hold a dedication ceremony to engage your members and community on peacebuilding and Positive Peace.
Take the Rotary Positive Peace Academy free online course.
Search the action group’s curated list of peace programs that Rotary members can use in their communities for everyone from pre-K students to adults.
Join the Peacebuilder Club program by committing to engage in dialogues and projects that promote Positive Peace.
Support the work of Rotary Peace Fellowship alumni in your area.
Volunteer with Rotary Youth Exchange and inspire young leaders to serve as catalysts for peace and social justice.
Mentorship from older Rotarians is what brought the club into being. Mona Jarudi, a member of Rotary Club of Beirut Cosmopolitan, and fellow Rotarian George Beyrouti applied for a global grant that delivered peacebuilding training to young people within their Rotary district in 2021. They worked with NewGen Peacebuilders, an education and training skills program led by Rotary Peace Fellow Patricia Shafer.
“Lebanon is a multisectorial, highly politicized country, and the youth need a way to express their opinions that are different than those of their parents or different than their surroundings,” Jarudi says. “The students themselves chose the topics they wanted to work on. And despite everything, including internet problems, electricity problems, fuel shortages, you name it, those students never missed a beat.”
Jarudi encouraged some of those NewGen alumni, including Kozhaya, to create a Rotary club. As interest grew, the students and young professionals would spend time on the weekends at Jarudi’s apartment overlooking Beirut to prepare their club for its charter.
Bayan Fakih, 21, another of those founding members, is studying for her master’s in international politics in Belgium but makes sure to join the club’s online events. She is surprised by how much the club has opened up her perspectives related to peace and what can be achieved at the community level. “We’re not policy-makers. We’re trying to promote the idea of peace from a tangible perspective to people around us, to our communities, and even to the world,” she says.
For member Elise Korban, 31, the club is a place where she can mix her artistic interests with her peacebuilding passions. She works at a human rights nonprofit organization and has a background in visual arts, architecture, and social science.
Korban, who has had difficult discussions with her father about his experiences in the civil war, believes it’s important for artists to help foster a collective memory about Lebanon’s history. “Our history books stop after World War II,” she says. “The civil war is not in the books because there are different points of view. So as artists we are responsible to give a collective memory to these events.”
A shared vision of the future is important too. “I believe Rotarians are the torchbearers and they bring light to communities where they are present,” Kozhaya says. “Beirut has been the subject of much violence and yet it is a phoenix that has risen from the ashes so many times. Our work with Rotary offers a message to everyone in Lebanon that we have a duty to work within a framework of peace.”
This story originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/lebanon-club-channels-power-peace

Watershed moment gives rise to a revitalized riverfront

2025-05-24T08:31:00.002+02:00

The Rotary Club of Milwaukee transformed its city’s riverfront with a contribution from a local landowner — a strategy that could work in other communities

By Diana Schoberg Photography by Jeff Marini

The Rotary Club of Milwaukee worked to revitalize its city’s riverfront that had once been the heart of the city but had turned into an unkempt wilderness.

They are scenes from another time, and seemingly another place. Beneath the hot summer sun, hours after they’d spent their morning mastering the breast stroke and the crawl, kids enjoy a carefree afternoon cavorting in a reservoir formed by the dam downstream. On other occasions, weekend mariners ply those same waters in canoes and rowboats, or more serious athletes, representatives of the rowing clubs that line the river’s steep bluffs, compete in vigorous regattas. Daring merrymakers ascend the bluffs, pile into a large wooden craft, and swoosh down a waterslide, landing in the river with a gigantic splash. Flip the calendar ahead six months and cheering throngs, numbering as many as 20,000 people, marvel at the acrobatic antics of ski jumpers as they race at 80 miles per hour down those same bluffs. And where avid anglers in balmier months fished for pike and bass, skaters of all ages, bundled up against the winter cold, glide across the icebound river.

These may seem like faded snapshots from America’s pastoral past. As noted in Eddee Daniel’s The Milwaukee River Greenway, they are actually glimpses of the Milwaukee River at the turn of the 20th century as it coursed through what was then the 14th-largest city in the United States. The river had been the heart of Milwaukee from the times when Indigenous people traveled there to harvest wild rice, hunt waterfowl, and catch fish. Settlers of European descent dammed the river in 1835 to provide water to the mills and factories that sprang up along its banks, and in winter “Brew City” breweries harvested ice from the river reservoir to cool the beer that patrons quaffed in summer at the beer gardens along the river’s shores. The celebrated landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed Riverside Park, one of the many parks along the river, in the 1890s; it was home to, among other things, a pavilion and a curling rink. About a mile upstream was an amusement park that The Milwaukee Journal called a “brilliantly lighted wonder city.”

But even as children played and couples courted, trouble lurked beneath the water’s surface — or sometimes right on top of it. Filled with sewage runoff, the river had become Milwaukee’s de facto toilet. The situation was so bad that, in 1888, the city began “flushing” the river daily with water from Lake Michigan, using what was said to be the world’s largest pump. Even as the city invested in its nationally recognized sewer system, heavy rainfall frequently caused overflows, sending wastewater into the river. At the same time, as the shoreline factories thrived, the loads of toxic industrial waste destined for the river increased exponentially.

Inevitably, that idyllic waterfront playground disappeared, replaced by an unkempt wilderness. Drug trafficking and other crime became the new pastimes for visitors to neglected Riverside Park. “When we were kids, we’d go there,” recalls Matt Haas, a member of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee. “It was this scary place to go on your bikes. All the trails were abandoned, and the ornate old streetlights didn’t work anymore. We thought it was haunted.”

But just as the wonderland vanished, so too did the blighted wasteland. Visit Riverside Park today and you will encounter a place magically transformed, all thanks to some dedicated Rotary members, their committed and farsighted partners, and an ingenious focus on conservation, land trusts, and generous eco-minded citizens — a miracle formula that, with a few site-specific tweaks, can be applied anywhere.

This massive stone archway was designed by Mario Costantini, a member of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee.

A river revitalization

It’s a sunny morning in May and, serenaded by the sound of chirping birds, members of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee swarm the riverside Coyote Hill. Beneath a cornflower blue sky, kids playfully bang trowels against rocks as their parents pull augers and gloves and drills from crates situated along a winding path that passes beneath a massive stone archway.

Caitlin Reinartz, the urban forester at Milwaukee’s Urban Ecology Center, wears a straw hat and leans on a shovel as she reviews the day’s tasks. Rotary members are here to plant more than 1,000 prairie grass seedlings, varieties like little and big bluestem, prairie dropseed, and switchgrass. Reinartz demonstrates the proper planting technique with a Virginia wildrye seedling. “This year it won’t grow much more than knee height,” she says in her booming voice. “Next year, after it overcomes its transplant shock, this baby is going to be 9 feet tall.”

The crowd oohs.

Reinartz explains the benefits of prairie grasses — how they provide habitat for birds and bees, sequester carbon, and remove pollutants from the air. “We are really making a good change here today, one that’s going to last a lot longer than we will. This is going to be around for maybe 110 years,” she jokes, a nod to the club’s 110th anniversary. The crowd oohs again and gets to work.

The land where Rotary members are planting was once the site of the National Brake and Electric Co., which, after its incorporation in 1906, rapidly grew to employ 1,400 people in its machine shop, foundries, and other facilities. During World War I, the company produced heavy equipment for the war effort, but the boom was short-lived: The site closed during the Depression due to financial issues. By 1939, like other locations along the river, the factory had been abandoned.

“Over the years, Milwaukee Rotary has planted thousands and thousands of trees,” says urban forester Caitlin Reinartz.

After a lapse of more than 30 years, things took a turn for the better with the 1972 passage of the Clean Water Act, which put the brakes on industrial pollution. In the 1980s and ’90s, the governor of Wisconsin created a task force to come up with a plan for the river, Milwaukee built new sewage tunnels to catch wastewater overflow during storms, and the dam came down. Concerned neighbors founded the Urban Ecology Center to decrease crime and bring life back to the Olmsted-designed Riverside Park.

In 1994, the Rotary Club of Milwaukee joined with the local Kiwanis club to create the River Revitalization Foundation, an urban land trust with a mission to protect and revitalize the river’s environmental corridor. The group also worked to make the land that had reemerged with the draining of the dam’s reservoir accessible to the public, and it lobbied to safeguard riparian habitats. To ensure that people could thoroughly enjoy this newfound nature, it helped implement zoning laws that restricted building heights in the “viewshed.”

The result is the 6-mile-long Milwaukee River Greenway, which, at 878 acres, is larger than New York City’s Central Park (another Olmsted-designed beauty). Today, from parts of the greenway, it can feel like you’re in a remote wilderness rather than in a river basin that’s home to 1.3 million people.

“In a lot of ways, it is an accident we have this,” says Matt Haas, who holds one of the Rotary seats on the River Revitalization Foundation’s board. “This whole river was a big toxic industrial waste dump. The fact that the dam came out and exposed all that land that had previously been under water, in combination with a bunch of these warehouse and manufacturing owners taking buildings down, basically freed up a bunch of green space that previously didn’t exist.”

Milwaukee Rotarian Karen Hung shows off the prairie grasses she is preparing to plant.

Energetic Rotary members plant grass seedlings on Coyote Hill, which rose on the site of a former foundry.

That was just one piece of the Milwaukee club’s transformation of the city’s environmental landscape. In 2007, as the club was casting around for a project to mark its centennial in 2013, the Urban Ecology Center brought forward a proposal to expand Riverside Park. It was another opportune moment: Pieter Godfrey, an architect interested in historic preservation and materials reclamation, owned property immediately south of the park — the former National Brake and Electric Co. site — and he had been in conversation with the Urban Ecology Center about donating 4 acres of that land.

Rotarians pledged to raise $400,000, the seed money for what ended up being an $8 million endeavor that resulted in a 40-acre arboretum encompassing Riverside Park. Godfrey died in 2011, but his family donated the $2 million parcel. Members of Rotary seeking additional funding for the project testified before the Wisconsin Legislature and helped land a $1.3 million grant from the state Department of Natural Resources. The federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative provided nearly $1 million, and many other public and private donations helped subsidize the now-flourishing urban paradise.

“It’s amazing we have this so close to the city,” says Mary McCormick, executive director of the Rotary Club of Milwaukee, as she looks out over the river and reflects on Rotary members’ role in the creation of the greenway and the arboretum. “We were the glue that held this together for five years. We were committed to getting this done.”

As she strolls along the riverside trails, McCormick stops periodically to chat with a birder, point out a canoe launch, and listen to a fly fisherman who’s been having some luck with smallmouth bass. Among the goldenrod and rudbeckia flowers rise the thousands of trees planted over the years by Rotarians: white birch and silver maples, American sycamore and white walnut, to name only a few. A huge, downed tree and strategically placed branches cry out to be climbed. The U.S. Forest Service, another partner in the project, has designated the arboretum as a national children’s forest, one of only 22 in the country, and one of only three in a major urban area.

Some of the newly planted and well-nurtured grasses will one day reach a height of 9 feet.

“You have to be an advocate for something,” McCormick says. “We advocate for having vaccinations, we advocate for clean water, and we advocate for taking care of the land. We have done that, and we should do that as Rotarians. We need to protect the resources we have, and in some cases bring them back.” And there are ingenious methods of doing exactly that, which Rotary and Rotaract clubs around the country may want to duplicate.

The value of land grants

As a former executive director of a land trust in northern Michigan, Kirt Manecke talked with landowners who were interested in preserving their property. “I’d ask them, ‘What is your reason for doing this?’ And they said, ‘Well, I just love our land,’” he recalls. Or, he continues, they didn’t want their kids to “slice and dice” their property for development when they died. The biggest problem Manecke, a member of the Rotary Club of Northville, Michigan, ran into was that people had no idea what options are available when it comes to land preservation.

Get involved

Rotary clubs and districts can financially support the preservation of land through Rotary Foundation global grants. Find out more about the Foundation’s focus on protecting the environment at rotary.org/environment.

Don’t re-create the wheel. Reach out to members of a local land trust to learn how to work with them. Rotary members can sit on land trust boards, and Rotary volunteers can participate in service days to care for lands. Land trust board members can make good speakers at club meetings to educate Rotary members on options for their own or family members’ lands.

Laws around land ownership vary by country. Find a U.S.-based land trust at landtrustalliance.org/land-trusts, and resources for other countries are available through the International Land Conservation Network at landconservationnetwork.org.

More than half of all real-estate wealth in the U.S. — about $23.3 trillion — is held by people ages 60 and older, according to the Federal Reserve. “That is a lot of value,” says Andrew Bowman, president and CEO of the Land Trust Alliance, a national land conservation organization that represents nearly 1,000 land trusts in the United States. “There could be a number of people in those generations that want to preserve their land or keep their land in the state it is now, whether that’s for scenic beauty, a working farm, or a wildlife habitat. There’s a lot of different reasons people might preserve land, and these generations might do something to make sure their land stays that way.”

That’s where land trusts come in — and where Rotary clubs could too. These trusts, nonprofit organizations that partner with private landowners to permanently conserve their land, held more than 61 million acres in the United States at the end of 2020. That’s more land than is found in all of the country’s federally regulated national parks.

Land trusts might run on a national or international level, such as with the Nature Conservancy, or as community institutions, like Milwaukee’s River Revitalization Foundation. “It’s a natural synergy,” says Bowman, who was a Rotary Scholar at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom in 1989-90. “Chances are there is an organization ready-made for Rotary members to work with.”

Rotary Foundation global grants weren’t available for the Milwaukee arboretum. But with the adoption of the environment as one of Rotary’s areas of focus, land preservation projects are now eligible for Foundation funding. “It checks all the boxes for Rotary,” Manecke says. “It’s important for kids. It’s important for the mind. It’s important for clean drinking water.” And, adds Bowman, it’s a “natural climate solution. Whatever your motivation is, there are all these side benefits.”

Protecting the ecosystems

Paige Radke scrapes her shovel across the soil, pulls a little bluestem seedling out of its pot, and plants it in Coyote Hill. A past president of the Rotaract Club of Milwaukee and now a member of the Milwaukee Rotary club, Radke was drawn to Rotary because she enjoys volunteering, and her passion is the environment. When a seat on the River Revitalization Foundation board opened up, club executive director McCormick asked her to take it.

With her passion for the environment, Milwaukee club member Paige Radke welcomes the opportunity to preserve and enhance an urban green space.

“We feel good about what we’re doing,” says Radke, taking in views from the hill. “This could have been built into condos with riverfront views. It’s important to the ecosystem, and it’s maintaining that ability for the public to access the green spaces in urban environments.”

Construction on the arboretum began in 2010 and included capping off the contaminated soil of the former factory to create the hill Rotary members are planting this day. The arboretum, which opened in 2013, is owned by Milwaukee County and managed by the Urban Ecology Center. Rotary members continued to be involved, and today, in part because of their efforts and the work of more than 2,000 volunteers, the arboretum is home to tens of thousands of new plants, including trees, shrubs, grasses, and wildflowers, and a dozen distinct ecosystems. That includes a re-created oak savanna, once common to the area.

After finishing up their planting project on Coyote Hill, about 60 people gather around Reinartz. “People deserve to live in a city that is beautiful, that is green, that is healthy, that is safe,” says the urban forester. “That was missing before Rotary planted this piece of land. With friends like you, I think the future of this spot is really bright and beautiful.”

A monarch butterfly floats behind Reinartz, and the prairie grasses wave in the breeze, as if to whisper, This is our place — and this is our time.

This story originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/watershed-moment-gives-rise-revitalized-riverfront

Exhibit documents the scope of polio eradication efforts worldwide

2025-05-24T08:23:00.005+02:00

Exhibit documents the scope of polio eradication efforts worldwide

By Etelka Lehoczky

Jean-Marc Giboux

Image credit: Monika Lozinska

The exhibit “Chasing Polio,” on display at the Chicago Center for Photojournalism in Chicago, USA, through 29 May, captures an extraordinary 18-year journey. Photographer Jean-Marc Giboux traveled to 17 countries to document the effects of polio and the wide-ranging fight to eradicate it. He spoke with Rotary International, a sponsor of the exhibit, about his favorite photos, his most challenging ordeals, and how a Rotary member helped him at a crucial moment.

Q: How did you become interested in photographing polio eradication efforts?

A: In 1997, I was looking for a good story about our entry into the 21st century. I saw a story in the Chicago Tribune about Rotary and polio eradication, so I called Rotary and said, “I’d like to do a story. How can we do this?” We talked for a long time, and ultimately The Rotary Foundation gave me a grant to document this work. The next year, the photos were published in Life magazine, and a week later the World Health Organization asked me if I wanted to go to Sierra Leone for them. I had no idea I was getting into this for 18 years. It just happened.

Q: Are there particular countries where it’s easier or harder to photograph people?

A: I’ve been going to India for 25 years, so I’m very comfortable in India. I can find my way around, and Indian people are pretty good about being photographed. I went there probably 10 times. Afghanistan and Pakistan were more difficult. In Afghanistan, you need a translator, and it can be difficult from a security standpoint.

Q: Is it hard to photograph polio eradication work in general?

A: The experience of photographing polio vaccination was usually very positive. You arrive in places where there is poverty, there is war, and you’re coming in with a group of people who are simply there to help. I got a pretty good reception everywhere.

Q: What are your favorite photos in the exhibition?

A: There’s one picture from Sierra Leone of a group of kids sitting together in a home for disabled children. I love that picture. You know, they are just school kids.

Insulated ice boxes set out to dry at a health center. One main challenge in any immunization campaign is maintaining a cold chain, which means keeping vaccines at the right temperature from when they’re produced until they’re used. Delhi, India, 2004.

Courtesy of Jean-Marc Giboux

There’s another picture, of this guy walking with a cooler [in Afghanistan]. I would spend my day following the immunization workers going door to door. That was in 2002, when I was able to do this without a police escort. After that it became dangerous.

Q: Were there times when your alliance with Rotary helped you get the photos you wanted?

A: On my very first morning in Kano, in northern Nigeria, I went out to take pictures. I didn’t take a single picture before I got arrested for having a camera. Two big guys just got me. Then I saw a policeman in uniform. I ran to him and asked, “Are these people legit?” and he said, “Yes, they are immigration [police]” or something. So I went with them in their car.

Nurses and health workers gather at the Fara Block Community Health Center in India to celebrate the first anniversary of the country being certified polio-free. Mathura, India, 2015.

Children pray before classes begin at Akshya Pratisthan. The private institution provides rehabilitation in an environment where children with disabilities (caused primarily by polio) and children without disabilities live and learn together. New Delhi, India, 2004.

In 2004, India’s last polio ward, in St. Stephen's Hospital in Delhi, provides reconstructive surgery for people who have been paralyzed by polio. Delhi, India, 2004.

Food is distributed in the Maslakh refugee camp. Herat province, Afghanistan, 2002.

A Pashtun father with his child during Afghanistan’s National Immunization Days. Government health workers went door to door in the villages of the Zinda Jan district to administer polio vaccine. Herat province, Afghanistan, 2002.

A government health worker goes door to door in the villages of the Zinda Jan district during the National Immunization Days in Afghanistan. Herat province, Afghanistan, 2002.

Children affected by polio find refuge from Sierra Leone’s civil war at the Freetown Cheshire Home. Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1998.

A mother takes her child to a polio vaccination center in the midst of civil war in Sierra Leone. A government soldier guards the road that leads out of town, toward the conflict’s front line. Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1998.

Children affected by polio in line in the schoolyard at the Amar Jyoti Research & Rehabilitation Centre. At the school, children with and without disabilities learn together. Delhi, India, 1998.

A child affected by polio plays at a facility managed by the charitable organization Cheshire Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1997.

They took my passport, and for two days I was not able to get out of the hotel. But a Rotarian, the local president of the Rotary club in Kano, kind of negotiated for me. He never told me what he did, but he got my passport back.

Q: Did you anticipate challenges like that when you began taking polio pictures?

A: I had no idea what I was getting into. The first place I went was Ethiopia, and I wanted to go into the south to see some tribal areas. It was the rainy season, and we got stuck in the mud in the middle of the night. I was able to photograph the vaccinations, but it took me around three days to get back. That was the reality. In the same way I made my way there, the polio vaccine had to get there. It was quite interesting to see the difficulty. Putting two drops of vaccine in the mouth of a kid is not that difficult. Making it happen is the difficult part.

Learn more about Rotary’s polio eradication efforts.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/photographer-reflects-18-years-chasing-polio

Rotary clubs engage with refugees by training teachers, organizing medical care, and offering other assistance

2025-05-24T08:15:00.003+02:00

Rotary clubs engage with refugees by training teachers, organizing medical care, and offering other assistance

By Etelka Lehoczky

Volunteers on a trip organized by the Rotary E-Club of Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, provide medical care to Vietnamese refugees in Cambodia.

Credit: © Rotary InternationalWhen people think of refugees, they may imagine a group that is utterly without means and dependent on others. But that’s a misleading assumption, says Quentin Wodon, chair of the Rotary Action Group for Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Migration.

“There are studies suggesting that refugees actually contribute more to the economy than the value of the services provided to them,” says Wodon, a member of the Rotary Club of Washington Global, Washington, D.C., USA. “Refugees often have amazing skills. They’re often very driven. And they can be assets for a country as opposed to liabilities.”

World Refugee Day on 20 June puts a spotlight on this misunderstood group, many of whom have fled war, persecution, or violence. More than 117 million people around the world were forcibly displaced at the end of 2023, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.

That includes refugees who fled their home nations, people who were displaced within their countries, people who weren’t recognized as citizens of any nation, and others. The countries with the most refugees protected or assisted by UNHCR are Syria, Ukraine, and Afghanistan.

The Rotary action group coordinates projects worldwide, such as promoting social entrepreneurship in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda, delivering meals and other necessities to Venezuelan refugees in Colombia, and sponsoring webinars about refugees in the United States who have become successful entrepreneurs.

Wodon says Rotary members can help refugees by applying for global grants to fund projects and engaging the power of Rotary at the local level. “Rotary clubs can mobilize the community,” he says, suggesting that clubs first learn which organizations are active in their area. “You can be involved either in the provision of education or skills, or in helping people find jobs. There are so many things that you can do, and the personal connection you can have is very important.”

Rotary clubs around the globe have implemented a wide variety of projects involving refugees. Some examples:

A training program for teachers in Malaysia

Some schools for refugees in Malaysia don’t have the funding to train teachers. The Rotary Club of Bukit Kiara Sunrise, Malaysia, collaborated with Veritas University College to offer a training program to teachers in refugee schools. The four-month, online program included practical sessions and modules about learning and cognition, curriculum development, and measurement and evaluation. Teachers who completed the program received proficiency certificates. The club also conducts a leadership training camp for refugee students and organized a concert to benefit Afghan refugees. About 189,000 refugees and asylum-seekers are in Malaysia, most from Myanmar.

A Medical trip to Cambodia

The Rotary E-Club of Greater Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, collaborated with the local Vietnamese community to bring medical care to Vietnamese refugees in Cambodia. More than 30 volunteers from Australia, Cambodia, and Vietnam traveled to rural Cambodia to treat people in the province of Kampong Chhnang and the village of Kampong Luong. They provided care to 1,300 families and vaccinated 92 girls against human papillomavirus (HPV). Of the 180,000 Vietnamese people who live in Cambodia, many are stateless and thus face significant barriers to obtaining health care.

Members of the Rotary Club of Kraków Wyspianski, Poland, work with the nonprofit Challenging Hope at Intervention House, a shelter that assists people displaced by the conflict in Ukraine. 22 April 2022. Krakow, Poland.

Credit: © Rotary International

A shelter that helps Ukrainian refugees

Members of the Rotary Club of Kraków Wyspianski, Poland, worked with the nonprofit Challenging Hope at Intervention House, a shelter that assists people displaced by the conflict in Ukraine. The members contributed financial support and maintained contact with the residents. The shelter provided services including psychological and legal assistance and child care. About 100 people were housed in the facility, including families with children and dogs. In the two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, around 960,000 Ukrainian refugees have gone to Poland.

A medical convoy for Sundanese refugees in Egypt

The Rotary Club of Cairo Platinum, Egypt, organized a medical convoy in the Faisal area to bring health care to 170 Sudanese refugees. Medical staff distributed medicines and tested people’s hearing, balance, heart health, and blood sugar levels. The convoy also provided education in early detection of uterine cancer and breast cancer. About 450,000 refugees have fled to Egypt from Sudan, where a civil war began in April.

Learn more about the Rotary Action Group for Refugees, Forced Displacement, and Migration.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/world-refugee-day-highlights-misunderstood-group

Rotary clubs launch initiatives for community well-being

2025-05-24T08:09:00.001+02:00

Rotary clubs launch initiatives for community well-being

By Dora Calkins, Seoha Lee, Reiko Tokiyama, and Kim Widlicki

As part of their three-year mental wellness campaign, members of the Rotary Club of Suntec City, Singapore, lead a music therapy session for seniors at the FRCS Eldercare and Caregivers Centre in Bukit Batok West.

Youth Mental Health in Hilden, Germany

Facing rising mental health challenges among teenagers, the Rotary Club of Hilden-Haan, Hilden, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, launched the Empowerment of the Youth project. This initiative teaches self-management, emotional intelligence, and resilience through workshops at the Realschule Hochdahl. The workshops reduce feelings of isolation while equipping youth to handle life’s challenges.

Friendship Dinners in Boise, Idaho, USA

The Rotary Club of Boise, Idaho, USA, introduced Better Friendship Dinners to combat loneliness. Members host diverse culinary events ranging from sushi rolling to barbecues. Todd Fischer, who initiated the project, envisioned the gatherings as a means of strengthening ties with the community while showcasing how Rotary members take action for lasting change. This story originally appeared in Rotary’s Service in Action Blog.

Support for Hikikomori in Tokyo, Japan

The Rotary Club of Tokyo Edogawa, Tokyo, Japan, holds a hydroponics clinic for individuals suffering from Hikikomori, or severe social withdrawal. The clinic teaches participants to cultivate and cook vegetables while creating safe social interactions that help them reintegrate into society. Club members are committed to expanding the project, funded by district grants, to help those experiencing extended periods of isolation.

Bridging Generations in Chichester, England

The Bridging Generations initiative by the Rotary Club of Chichester Priory, Chichester, West Sussex, England, connects college students with elderly community members every two weeks for coffee and conversation. Meals are prepared by catering students. The club funds transportation for the seniors to the Chichester College-facilitated event. It enhances the students’ interpersonal skills and provides the elderly with valuable social interactions, strengthening ties across generations. This story originally appeared in Rotary’s Great Britain and Ireland Magazine.

Promoting Well-Being in Lima, Peru

The Rotary Club of Miraflores in Lima, Peru, addressed pandemic-induced loneliness by establishing a Happiness Committee. The club hosted online activities that included singing and dancing to lift people’s spirits. The club’s You Matter to Me program, developed with the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations, included a suicide prevention fair and empowerment talks. In collaboration with Soroptimist International, the club organized Dream It, You Can Do It, a workshop aimed at empowering adolescent girls in foster care. The workshop highlighted the importance of mental health and community support. See also Rotary's Service in Action Blog.

Rotary members join forces with Soroptimist International of the Americas to coordinate an empowerment workshop for adolescents in foster care.

Fostering Inclusion in Sardinia, Italy

Rotary District 2080 hosted a three-day camp in Sardinia for individuals aged 16-30 with conditions like Down syndrome, autism, Asperger’s syndrome, and cognitive impairments. Participants engaged in sea sports, tennis, paddle ball, and basketball, experiencing social interactions and building teamwork skills. The camp, supported by the municipalities of Cagliari and Quartu Sant’Elena, aimed to combat loneliness and social anxiety. It promoted an inclusive culture through one-to-one interactions, shared activities, and community integration.

Mental Health Awareness in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

The Rotary Club of Port Harcourt Spring Gardens, Rivers State, Nigeria, initiated a campaign using billboards to spotlight mental health. The campaign was timed to coincide with World Mental Health Day. In partnership with Phree Tech Web Development Nigeria, the club set up one billboard at a central intersection. Club members distributed flyers that addressed such issues as how economic stress can affect a community’s well-being. This story originally appeared on Rotary’s Service in Action Blog.

Members of the Rotary Club of Port Harcourt Spring Gardens, Nigeria, gather to unveil a mental health awareness billboard on World Mental Health Day. October 2023.

Enhancing Understanding of Neurodiversity in Haiti

The Rotary Club of Juvénat, Port-au-Prince, Gonave-Azuei, Haiti, is holding workshops to train education professionals in understanding neuro-atypical disorders among children. The workshops teach trainees to better integrate the children, who often face stigma, into the community. They also teach how to respond appropriately to students with psychological distress. The club also hosted a televised symposium on child mental health challenges, featuring expert psychologists and psychiatrists. It put the spotlight on efforts to prevent affected children from being isolated and excluded. This story originally appeared in the March issue of Rotary Mag.

Learn more about how Rotary prioritizes mental health.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/combating-loneliness-around-globe

President Stephanie Urchick is ready to lead Rotary toward another winning season

2025-05-24T08:04:00.002+02:00

President Stephanie Urchick is ready to lead Rotary toward another winning season

By Diana Schoberg Photography by Christine Armbruster

An avid Steelers fan, Urchick met the team’s vice president, Art Rooney Jr., when he spoke to her Rotary club.

It’s a frigid January night, the second in a row to dip below zero degrees Fahrenheit in Chicago.

Schools are closed, events canceled, flights grounded. Outside an arctic blast is howling, but inside Stephanie Urchick’s condo, the party is sizzling.

Urchick wears jeans and a Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt with a “Magic of Rotary” pin affixed. Draped over one of her shoulders is a “Terrible Towel,” an iconic yellow dish towel-size piece of fabric that stalwart fans of the American football team wave to rally their team. The occasional cheer or groan punctuates the party’s chatter.

This playoff game between the Steelers and the Buffalo Bills has already been rescheduled once because of the dangerous winter weather sweeping across the United States. A group of Rotarians visiting Rotary headquarters was stuck in suburban Evanston because of a flight delay, and Urchick invited them to watch the game with her. The 2024-25 Rotary International president, Urchick has just returned from a trip to the International Assembly in Orlando. She pulls out some pierogi, a type of Polish dumpling, from her freezer and sets out beverages of all kinds for her unexpected guests.

To call Urchick a sports fan might be a Hall of Fame-worthy understatement. At her home in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, about 20 minutes outside Pittsburgh, Urchick’s basement “woman cave” is floor to ceiling Pittsburgh sports: 1990s-era cereal boxes featuring baseball great Roberto Clemente and the Stanley Cup-winning Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team; photos of her with Pittsburgh sports legends including Steelers running back Rocky Bleier, along with one of Bleier’s framed jerseys; a Steelers piggy bank; Penguins hockey pucks; a signed football; a collection of tickets; a Steelers quilt. Her most recent acquisition is a bobblehead of Pirates baseball player Richie Hebner, whose photo Urchick plastered in her high school locker. In a nearby closet hang her two favorite uniforms: her Rotary T-shirts and her Pittsburgh fan gear.

The Bills score three touchdowns in a row to open the game, making the score 21-0 by the middle of the second quarter. Urchick steps away from the group gathered in front of the television and perches behind the kitchen counter, checking her phone and the food she’s heating up in the oven.

Her enjoyment of sports extends well beyond that of a typical fan. One summer, she assisted with character analyses for Canadian Football League scouts, attending NFL training camps to watch for players who might be cut and would be a good fit for that league. (She recalls Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh approaching her about her role: “I’ve never worked with a lady before!” “Well,” she replied, “I don’t bite.”) She also participated in a women’s training camp put on by the Steelers and run by former players; her experience was cut short after she snapped her Achilles tendon doing footwork drills through car tires. Didn’t matter. “It was just a fun, fun summer,” she says.

She met the vice president of the Steelers, Art Rooney Jr., when he spoke to her Rotary club. Afterward, she brought him some chocolates from Sarris Candies, a well-known confectionery founded in Canonsburg. It’s a tradition she’s continued to uphold a few times a year, the two united by their love of the game.

That kind of connection is what’s happening at the party tonight. Fellow Steelers fan René Laws, 2023-24 governor of District 7610 (Virginia), wears her #90 TJ Watt jersey for the occasion. The two met when they sat at the same table at a presidents-elect training seminar and their mutual love of the Steelers came up. “Ever since then, we would see each other at events and we would always have football and Rotary to talk about,” Laws says. The Steelers score early in the fourth quarter and pull within a touchdown of tying the game. The two laugh as they both signal a Steelers first down along with the refs.

Life couldn’t be better, unless the Steelers were actually winning, which unfortunately is not the case. Not tonight. The Bills score one more touchdown with 6:27 remaining in the game. Their fans celebrate by tossing snow in the air. The Steelers lose the game 31-17 and that’s the end of their season. But for Urchick it’s just the beginning. This year, she will get her own chance to head up a winning team: Rotary.

Club members Greg Incardona (left) and William Kern join Urchick at Acrisure Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

A few weeks later, Urchick gathers with family back in western Pennsylvania for the birthday of her eldest cousin, Michael Hatalowich. The two grew up like siblings, always at each other’s houses, and they still tease each other as if brother and sister. The kitchen counter is spread with pizza and chicken wings, pasta salad, fruit, crackers, and dips, as the news plays in the background on the television in the living room. But before they eat, the dozen or so gathered — cousins and their spouses, children, and grandchildren — sing “Happy Birthday,” first in English, and then in Slavonic, harmonizing to “Mnohaja Lita,” a traditional Carpatho-Rusyn birthday song whose title means “many years.” Urchick joins in, her voice clear and strong.

Music has been a touchstone throughout Urchick’s life. Her dad played the accordion and led a polka band, the Harmoneers, for more than 35 years. “I learned to polka before I learned to walk,” she says. Urchick was a singer with her father’s band and when she’s in town, she sings with the Orthodox church choir directed by another of her cousins. “You know how some families get together and play cards?” she asks. “My father was a musician. My grandmother, my aunts, they were all singers. So when we got together, we sang.”

Urchick grew up here in western Pennsylvania, near the border of West Virginia, a countryside of forests and farms in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Both her maternal and paternal grandparents moved here from Eastern Europe (Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine), settling down to take advantage of the jobs in the region’s coal mines and steel mills. When she arrived in the United States, her mother knew one sentence: “Give me some potatoes.”

Urchick’s culture and her family remain important to her. Spend a bit of time with her and you’re likely to hear family lore involving a misunderstanding around beets and the power of a patron saint and stories about her visits to meet distant relatives in Eastern Europe. She gathers regularly with Hatalowich and her other maternal cousins who live nearby, and she gets together with her more far-flung paternal cousins for an annual trip.

Western Pennsylvania is part of what was once known as the Steel Belt for its steel mills and coal mines, though it’s now called the Rust Belt after the decline of those industries in the 1970s and ’80s. The population of Urchick’s childhood hometown, Monessen, peaked at around 20,000 people in the 1930s but as of 2022 had declined to less than 7,000. Rows of stores along the main street stand vacant, and there’s only one full-fledged grocery store left in town. Holy Name Cemetery, the Slovak cemetery where Urchick’s paternal grandparents are buried, is more than half empty, its pristine lawns an indication of the number of graves originally anticipated. “They’ll never fill it up,” Urchick explains, “because so many people left town.”

Urchick and Incardona relax at S&D Polish Deli in Pittsburgh. Urchick’s family immigrated to the area from Eastern Europe.

As a child, Urchick devoured Nancy Drew mystery novels and dreamed of being a spy. “I was in this little place in Pennsylvania, and I really had never gone anywhere,” she says. “I wanted to see the world.” When she went to college, she channeled that desire into a major in international relations, with its focuses on history, political science, and languages. She studied Russian, Polish, Serbian, and Italian, on top of the French she’d learned in high school. As she was finishing up college, she applied to work for the FBI, the CIA, and other U.S. intelligence agencies. But there was one obstacle: All four of her grandparents were from Eastern Europe. “Most people’s background checks take about three or four months,” she recalls. “Well, mine apparently took a year and a half.”

By the time the FBI called with a job offer, Urchick had started down a new career path as an administrator in higher education. And she loved it. She declined what had been her dream job (although she jokes that her work with Rotary is merely an elaborate cover for her cloak-and-dagger pursuits), and she went on to earn a master’s degree in education and a doctorate in leadership studies. Her dreams of an international career were back-burnered — that is until Rotary came along.

Over dinner at the birthday party, Urchick’s nephew Jeremy Layne reflects on his aunt. Layne, now 38, didn’t meet Urchick until he was a teenager, and he recalls the impact that moment eventually had on the trajectory of his life. She encouraged him to push himself toward his goals and refuse to accept “no” as an option. “The day I met her at my Baba’s [grandmother’s] house, from that day forward she has meant everything to me,” he says. “Her vibe, her energy, her spark that she gives off is just intoxicating. She’s just an amazing woman. I’m so thankful for her to be in my life.”

“She really is very authentic and very genuine,” says Rebecca Bazzar, Hatalowich’s daughter. “She could fit in anywhere, in a room full of diplomats or a room full of local yokels. Everybody loves her and she’s going to have a good time everywhere she goes.” Bazzar leans over and in a conspiratorial whisper adds, “You won’t meet anyone more fun than her.”

The dozen people gathered toast “Na zdravja!” and then Urchick begins the long process of hugging everybody goodbye. They discuss where she’s traveling next, her family members wishing that she stay safe. As they walk outside, she and her cousin Peter Merella, the choir director, say goodbye “their way,” in Polish. “Do widzenia.” They loosely translate: “Until we see each other again.”

Urchick mentors Kate Matz (center) of the Rotary Club of Pittsburgh. Matz and her daughter, Mason, join Urchick at Sarris Candies.

The next morning, as she walks into a side room at a diner in Canonsburg, Urchick is welcomed by hoots and applause from the couple dozen Rotary members seated along a string of tables. But it isn’t just Urchick who’s cheered as she enters the room. It’s the greeting that every member gets when arriving for a meeting of the Rotary Club of McMurray, Urchick’s home club.

The tradition started a few years ago when someone arrived late to the meeting. Everybody cheered — and it caught on. Now no matter when they arrive at the meeting, all members are greeted as if they’re the president of an international organization. “How could you not feel good?” Urchick says.

She hugs William Kern, the club president, and the meeting starts. It’s a breakfast meeting, and the smell of toast permeates the air. The table is a jumble of coffee mugs and carafes, empty cups of half-and-half, and water glasses. The food begins to arrive, classic diner fare including French toast, bagel sandwiches, hash browns, and oatmeal. Urchick isn’t much of a breakfast eater and sticks to decaf coffee.

For years, the club had been stuck at around 35 members, Urchick says. But it used Rotary’s Action Plan to take a look at itself with new eyes. Club leaders asked every member about the club’s performance — things such as the club meeting day, time, and location, and club projects. With that information, they determined that meeting at a different time of day might work for more people and switched from a lunch club to breakfast. “Instantly, and I mean instantly, we had two new people come into the club,” Urchick says. “They said they were invited before but could never come.”

The club didn’t stop there. Members talked to other groups in the area and found people who wanted to serve but didn’t want to attend club meetings. Looking into options, club leaders started a satellite club for people to do just that. The concept brought 15 new members to the club. “They pay full dues,” Urchick says. “We don’t discount anything. But we also know they’re not coming to weekly meetings.” Instead, they hold “PBR” nights, referring not to the familiar monogram of the American beer Pabst Blue Ribbon, but to “pizza, beer, and Rotary.”

Urchick’s club, the Rotary Club of McMurray, Pennsylvania, began meeting for breakfast to reach new members.

This morning’s meeting is vibrant, full of lively conversations and bursts of laughter. The cheering, the shared breakfast, the camaraderie is all part of the club’s intention to be, to borrow Urchick’s catchphrase, “simply irresistible.” “It makes my job easier talking about being a Rotarian in an active club,” she says. Being irresistible “means the experience is so compelling, so fun, so dynamic that people are drawn to it and don’t want to leave,” she adds. “At the bottom of that is the whole concept of belonging: Is this the kind of group I want to belong to?”

That was the question Urchick asked herself in 1991, when an acquaintance walked into her office at the California University of Pennsylvania and asked if she’d like to go to a Rotary club meeting. Urchick didn’t know much about Rotary, but she was recently divorced and looking for ways to meet new people. And when the woman mentioned Rotary’s internationality, something clicked.

When she went to her first meeting of the Rotary Club of California, a town south of Pittsburgh, she met Chuck Keller, a member of the club and RI’s 1987-88 president. “He introduced himself and we got to be friends quickly,” she says. “I had a built-in Rotary godfather. It was amazing.” Urchick dove in, hosting Group Study Exchange team members and pitching in with the club’s Youth Exchange students. She organized an indoor picnic complete with a three-legged sack race. “Oh, my gawd,” she says in her Pittsburgh accent, “it was hilarious.”

Urchick was drawn especially to the work of The Rotary Foundation, becoming first the Foundation chair for her club and then for her district. Later, at the zone level, she served as a regional Rotary Foundation coordinator, focusing on fund development. She worked with Lou Piconi, another Pittsburgh-area Rotarian who had served Rotary on the international level as both a director and trustee, to train what they called “major donor possibility teams,” groups of five to seven people who focused on fundraising for The Rotary Foundation. “Lou and his wife, Barbara, and I would get in his big red Cadillac,” she says, and travel around the region. “We had a great time.”

Her work with the Foundation meant more people got to know her and led to a 5 a.m. phone call in 2012. Her name had been put forward to replace Anne Matthews as a Rotary Foundation trustee. (Matthews left her post to join the Rotary Board of Directors.) Later, Urchick became a director herself and led the organization’s Strategic Planning Committee, a role that proved pivotal to shaping her thinking about how to move Rotary into a thriving future.

Given Urchick’s background in international relations, her interest in peace as another of her priorities as president likely comes as no surprise. She encourages living The Four-Way Test, investing in a positive club culture, and engaging with Rotary Peace Centers as ways members can help spread the message of Rotary’s commitment to peace. “We’re not going to get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping a war,” Urchick says, “but we can use what we have in Rotary to make the world a better place.”

Urchick works with McMurray Club President William Kern to scout a location for a peace pole in the community.

One of the pillars of Urchick’s peace push is, well, a pillar. That afternoon after the club meeting, she joins members of the Rotary Club of White Oak at a park in the community about 15 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It’s a gorgeous sunny day that feels like spring although it’s only early February, with a slight breeze on the remaining leaves clinging to the oaks in the park.

Dan Dougherty, the 2024-25 governor of District 7305 and a member of the White Oak club, is holding a white 8-foot pole. The words “May Peace Prevail on Earth” are inscribed on it in eight languages — English, Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Croatian, Spanish, and Vietnamese — spoken in the community. The phrase also appears in Braille, and there is a rainbow flag sticker and another decal for Veterans for Peace. Urchick walks up and immediately pulls out her phone, scanning the QR code on the peace pole’s side that links to a website with more information.

She encourages clubs to put up these poles as visible signals of their commitment to peace, whether at members’ homes, in their club, their community, or around the world. Dougherty’s wife, Autumn, who is also a member of the White Oak club, has made it her goal to get every club in their district to erect a peace pole in the coming year.

When the last White Oak club member arrives, everyone clusters around Urchick like players huddled around their coach during a crucial timeout. “The peace pole project is a favorite of mine because it’s a visual representation,” she tells them. “It’s going to tell everybody in White Oak who comes to this park that your club is about peacebuilding. Rotary is about peacebuilding.”

To conclude the ceremony, Urchick invites the members to reach out and touch the pole. They unite, all part of the same team — the Rotary team. Urchick smiles. Game on.

This story originally appeared in the July 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

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https://www.rotary.org/en/playmaker-stephanie-urchick

The therapeutic benefits of forest bathing

2025-05-24T07:57:00.003+02:00

The therapeutic benefits of forest bathing

By Jeff Ruby Photography by Jeff Marini

The Arashiyama Bamboo Grove, in Kyoto, Japan, is a haven of sylvan serenity.

When my editor asked if I’d be interested in writing about “forest bathing” for Rotary magazine, I assumed I heard him wrong. Florist raving? Tourist baiting? Some other goofy trendlet I was too old to know about? Had the editorial focus of Rotary shifted dramatically without my knowledge?

No, he assured me. Forest bathing. I envisioned something like a polar bear club, with more privacy and fewer clothes. I also envisioned increasing my freelance fee. But before I could respond that, when it came to matters of personal hygiene, I was just fine with my own bathroom, thank you very much, my editor proceeded to educate me. It’s not bathing, nor is it hiking — or even exercise, per se — but rather an experience in which people immerse themselves in nature, often guided as a group through meditation and sensory exercises that make use of all five senses. Think of it as outdoor mindfulness, he said.

Forest bathing, also known as forest therapy, started in 1982 as part of a national campaign in Japan that promoted visiting forests as a way to reduce work-related stress. The concept was called shinrin-yoku (yes, it translates as “forest bathing” or, if you wish, “bathing in the forest atmosphere”). The ritual has grown into a movement sparked by Japan’s Forest Therapy Society, which has certified 65 forest therapy sites in the country. Meanwhile, forest bathing has spread like gentle ripples in a pond, with thousands of guides leading retreats and themed events around the world. Eco-hotels catering to forest bathers have popped up everywhere from the Barrenjoey Peninsula near Sydney to the Pocono Mountains in eastern Pennsylvania. Closer to my home in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, organizations from the Morton Arboretum to the Chicago Park District offer some kind of forest therapy outing.

Some people have incorporated shinrin-yoku into their daily routines. “I work right next to a park with a famous shrine where there are lots of trees,” writes Qing Li, a leader of the forest bathing movement. “From my office window I can see beautiful scenery, and I walk in the shrine at lunchtime almost every day.”

Those comments appear in Li’s 2018 book, Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness. The 310-page volume has become something akin to a holy scripture among forest bathers. In it, Li, a doctor at Nippon Medical School Hospital in Tokyo who has spent 20 years studying forest bathing’s benefits, implores readers to leave their phones behind and find a spot where they can open their senses to nature. If you don’t have a forest handy, any small green space will do. “It will improve your mood, reduce tension and anxiety, and help you focus and concentrate for the rest of the day,” he promises.

None of this feels entirely new. We’re living in an existentially fraught moment in time when the need for “self-care” is a constant refrain. The idea of self-care has evolved into a catchall encapsulating any pastime unrelated to work, from ballroom dancing to journaling to petting puppies. Not long ago, this was called “me time,” but now everyone — doctors, teachers, bartenders, barbers — recommends self-care interventions far and wide. It’s not hard to imagine the guys in my pickup basketball game recommending forest bathing the same way one might suggest, say, paintball.

I’ve always been wary of the line between self-care and self-indulgence, so before the knee-jerk cynicism kicked in, I had to see Dr. Li for myself. In a YouTube video, he appears as an unassuming middle-aged man in an orange North Face jacket strolling through the woods, periodically stopping to caress and sniff various moss-covered trees. In between, he warns viewers that Japan has a word, karoshi, that means, basically, “death from overwork.” As he lists the medical perks of forest bathing — reduction of stress hormones, lowered blood pressure, strengthened immune and cardiovascular systems — the whole enterprise gives off the vibe of a benign self-help video. But the message is clear: Unless you want to die at your desk, you need to take care of yourself.

Point taken. I’ve been living in Chicago for 26 years now, and I have raised three children here, with all the glories and miseries that entails. For nearly half my life, my brain has been bombarded with construction noise, horns honking, car stereos blaring, the dog barking, kids needing. The sound of sirens is so persistent from my home office that I don’t even notice it anymore until I’m on Zoom and someone asks if everything’s OK. I exist in a state of heightened stress and agitation. Of course, I’m not special: Nearly all of us are in danger of losing ourselves in the intermittent boops and bings of beckoning technology, a daily onslaught of headlines and deadlines and responsibilities that never end. Li would probably say we’re all candidates for a slow-motion karoshi.

As manager of adult learning programs at the Morton Arboretum outside of Chicago, Megan Dunning is on the lookout for opportunities to connect people with nature

There’s an old adage that it’s not the stress that kills us — it is our reaction to it. And even my most positive reactions to my stress — half-hearted stabs at meditation, podcasts, therapy, walking the dog — were obviously not cutting it. Maybe disappearing into the woods for a three-hour forest therapy walk at the Morton Arboretum would help. I called back my editor and signed up.

Located about 25 miles west of downtown Chicago, the Morton Arboretum feels like another planet. Calling itself “the champion of trees,” the sprawling suburban oasis boasts 16 miles of hiking trails, over 200 species of resident and migratory birds, and more than 100,000 live plants across woodland, wetland, prairie, and meadow habitats. It’s hard to imagine a more relaxing setting so close to one of the least relaxing cities in America.

Yet, as I arrive on a recent Saturday morning, late and lost, I am a mess. No amount of natural beauty or mindfulness can tamp down my anxiety as I wind along the botanical garden’s looping roads in search of the elusive parking lot P-29. By the time I find it, I feel my heart knocking against my ribcage like an angry neighbor. Nice start.

Ever forward-thinking, education staff members at the Morton Arboretum learned about the rise in forest bathing a decade ago and realized it dovetailed perfectly with their mission. “These experiences that get folks out into the forest and consciously tap into that power to help with mental and physical health — that’s what we’re all about, finding opportunities for folks to connect themselves with nature,” says Megan Dunning, the arboretum’s manager of adult learning programs.

Not far from Chicago's urban cacophony, Morton Arboretum's hushed tranquility prevails.

After working with the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy in 2015 to train and certify guides, the Morton Arboretum launched its own forest therapy program. Now, more than 500 guests participate annually in walks lasting two or three hours. Some are processing grief or trauma, others learning to live with disabilities — people who are at what Dunning calls transitional points in their lives. Many are simply seeking an emotional reboot.

No one asks what issues people are dealing with in my group, which includes 14 women, one man who appears to have been dragged along by his wife, and me. Our leader, the soft-spoken and preternaturally calming Beth Bengtson, describes the forthcoming encounter as a series of invitations to interact with nature and embrace the experience with all five senses. “I’m just a guide,” says Bengtson — actually, a certified forest therapy guide with more than a decade of experience leading education programs at the arboretum. “The forest is the one that provides the therapy.”

We are no more than a few hundred steps into the hiking trail when Bengtson hands out tiny mats and leads the group in a meditation session, right there in the dirt. I find her gentle entreaties to focus on the sounds of nature nearly impossible to carry out. First, a familiar old ache settles into its usual spot in my lower back. Then I feel distracted by noise from nearby traffic on Interstate 88 and the groups of curious hikers who keep passing. Just as I get into a groove, a plane screams across the sky, en route to O’Hare. Such is life when your forest preserve is just a few towns over from an international airport. After that “invitation” concludes, Bengtson passes around a talking stick so we can describe our experiences. I keep my mouth shut as my fellow bathers describe their experiences as grounding and restorative. Sounds like someone drank the herbal Kool-Aid awfully fast.

Forest bathing: What the science says

Scientific research into the practice of forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, is confirming “what we have always known innately” about a walk in the woods: that it has real benefits for physical and mental well-being.

In his book Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness, Dr. Qing Li of the Nippon Medical School Hospital in Tokyo says that what began with a “preliminary … speculative investigation” in 1990 among the pristine forests of the Japanese island of Yakushima has evolved into rigorous scientific inquiries in the decades since.

Li, who is considered a foremost authority on the practice, concludes that forest bathing can boost the immune system, increase energy, reduce stress, and decrease anger, anxiety, and depression. He notes that forest bathing has been linked to measurable decreases in levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline as well as blood pressure. (As an ancillary benefit, it also provides an incentive to preserve and enlarge our forests.)

Another sign of science’s acceptance: More and more doctors are prescribing forest bathing to improve their patients’ overall health and mental well-being.

I got a C in high school biology, but even I know that when a human experiences tension and anxiety, it sends a lightning bolt from the brain through the autonomic nervous system. Waves of stress hormones hitch a ride in your bloodstream until the stressor subsides. But if this happens too often, it can weaken the autonomic nervous system’s ability to stop the stress response, resulting in the production of even more stress hormones. Calling this process a vicious circle is not evocative enough. Imagine it as a traffic jam going in and out of a city in which the driver of every single car persuades another person to drive downtown, until every road leading in and out is a clogged thoroughfare of angst.

That is the image in my head when the next invitation begins. Bengtson challenges us to move at a snail’s pace and notice the world in motion around us, and, as if on cue, a rabbit bounds past, which seems a good omen. I observe a tree waving in the breeze and think about the way my shoes sink into the soft earth. The creeping bugs begin to appear less as nuisances than curiosities. Something is happening.

“Shinrin-yoku is like a bridge,” writes Li. “By opening our senses, it bridges the gap between us and the natural world.” It is during the third invitation that I officially cross the bridge. The goal this time is to find a quiet spot, sit down, and manipulate your surroundings to create a mini work of art in nature. Bengtson’s voice enters my thoughts: Try and access feelings that have always been there, like from when you were a kid, and you’d just play.

I admit that my attempt to stack pebbles does nothing for me, but as I feel the smooth soil in my fingers, something in my brain shifts. Or empties. All other sensations begin to fade, and the tactile sensation becomes everything. Regular life begins to feel farther and farther away, supplanted by the kind of heightened alertness and wonder that ordinary meditation never quite sparks in me. “These are feelings that we’ve lost as we become adults and stop being curious,” Bengtson explains.

Not long ago, my own therapist asked me to visualize myself sitting beside a gently flowing stream with leaves floating along the surface and told me to place every thought on a leaf, one by one, and let it float away. At the time, I protested that the exercise wouldn’t work, that I would always be running on the shoreline alongside the leaf to be sure it made it downstream. But during the next invitation in my forest bathing experience, as I climb onto a log that had fallen across a creek and dangle my feet into the cool water, I can barely remember feeling that way. With every leaf that floats past, I feel my heart rate slowing. It is the opposite of exercise, and I didn’t realize how badly I needed it.

A natural high carries me the rest of the way through the experience, during which I find inexplicable peace in simple observations such as a cauliflower-shaped cloud drifting by and fiery red leaves clinging to the base of a tree trunk as if unwilling to let go. The beauty around me is both granular and enormous at the same time, leaving me both exhilarated and exhausted. I forget the other members of the group entirely.

At the conclusion of a three-hour walk, Beth Bengtson, a certified forest therapy guide at the arboretum, serves a spruce-infused tea to the forest bathers.

The experience ends with a purifying group tea party in a sunny clearing, where Bengtson pours tea made with spruce tips that she had picked from trees a few hours back and brewed in filtered water. As she dumps a small amount into the dirt to “interweave it back into the natural ecosystem,” I feel a bittersweet tinge. I have to return to my regular life.

This time, when the talking stick comes to me, I’m not so dismissive. But I am too embarrassed to tell the truth: that I came in thinking this whole thing was ridiculous, and after three hours, I feel better than I had in years. I pass the stick to the next person and drive home in a state of suspended bliss, hoping it will last.

Did it? Yes and no. When I think back on my morning in the woods, it feels like it happened to someone else. Attempts to recapture those feelings of peace and awe have been elusive.

But sometimes now when I walk the dog, I close my eyes and concentrate on the wind whispering through the canopy of majestic oaks that line my street. It’s an old song, but it’s new to me. And I’m finally listening.

The former chief dining critic at Chicago magazine, Jeff Ruby graduates in June with a Master of Social Work from the University of Missouri; he described his dramatic career change in a November 2021 essay for the magazine.

This story originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

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https://www.rotary.org/en/arbor-daze-therapeutic-benefits-forest-bathing

An innovator with impact

2025-05-24T07:51:00.006+02:00

An innovator with impact

Rotary’s latest alumni award honoree pursues scientific and societal progress

By Etelka Lehoczky

Gaetano Scamarcio is a member of the Rotary Club of Bari, Italy, the same club that sponsored his Ambassadorial Scholarship.

Image credit: Camillo Pasquarelli

Alone in a lab one night about 30 years ago, Gaetano Scamarcio experienced something every scientist yearns for. After months of failed experiments, minuscule adjustments, and stubborn faith, he finally made a breakthrough: His newly designed laser actually worked.

“I saw the signal from the measurement instruments skyrocket off the scale,” recalls Scamarcio, the recipient of the 2023-24 Rotary Alumni Global Service Award. “Initially, due to fatigue, I thought it was caused by interference. But then I realized that — Bingo! — my superlattice quantum cascade microlaser, which I had designed and longed for so many times, was finally working. It was an indescribable joy.”

Scamarcio’s bingo moment was all the more exciting for where it took place: Nokia Bell Labs, the world-renowned innovation hub headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In the century since Bell Labs (as it was formerly known) was founded, it contributed to the development of the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, and the Unix computer operating system.

For Scamarcio, the place was close to paradise. “I had been traveling and working in Germany and Italy, but that atmosphere was unique,” he says. “Everybody was working and playing and dreaming simultaneously.”

Scamarcio had long yearned to study at Nokia Bell Labs. He got his PhD in experimental physics from the University of Bari Aldo Moro in Italy, focusing on lasers and semiconductors. The chance to pursue his research at the celebrated facility came when a fellow scientist, who would become his mentor there, told him about The Rotary Foundation’s Ambassadorial Scholarship program. He applied for and won a scholarship, and he was soon on his way to New Jersey.

“This opportunity,” he says, “was akin to a soccer player being called up to the national team, opening a world of possibilities for me and my family.”

Those possibilities ultimately went beyond the scientific realm. Ten years after his laser breakthrough, Scamarcio was invited to join the Rotary Club of Bari, in Italy’s Apulia region, the same club that had sponsored his scholarship. Discovering Rotary’s sense of shared purpose sparked a commitment to service that fires him to this day.

“Engagement with Rotary fosters positive transformations not only for our neighbors, but also for ourselves,” he says. “The five core values of Rotary — integrity, diversity, fellowship, service, and leadership — form an interconnected framework. Personally, if I were to pinpoint what resonates most deeply with me, it would undoubtedly be the pursuit of leadership. Within the Rotary context, the call for collaboration is inherently tied to setting a personal example.”

Gaetano Scamarcio

PhD in experimental physics, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy, 1989
Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, 1994-95
Rotary Alumni Global Service Award, 2023-24
Scamarcio’s belief in the power of leadership has influenced his Rotary activities and his professional pursuits. As the president of his club in 2013-14, he spearheaded Rotary Meets the Road, a project to help homeless people in Bari. Devising a workable strategy required qualities similar to those needed in the laboratory, such as the patience for trial and error.
“We started putting a lot of ideas on the table and finally came up with the idea of using a camper to distribute food in a dignified and hygienic way,” he says. “But that was just the starting point. Other organizations wanted to use the camper as a headquarters to give medical support, and then people began offering legal support. The project really exploded and went beyond the initial idea.”
To get their new vehicle on the road, Scamarcio and his club conducted some diplomatic outreach. They obtained the cooperation of the other Rotary clubs in Bari, Rotary members throughout the district, officials of Bari’s city government, and representatives of a local public transit company. “The success of this service underscores the power of synergy and collective action in addressing social issues,” he says.
Scamarcio was later able to draw on his scientific background for another service project. He created a smartphone app to help people with disabilities navigate Bari’s streets. Called Bari4All, it received the Significant Achievement Award from Rotary International Past President Ron D. Burton. Scamarcio’s work to help the citizens of Bari also led to him being honored with the city’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Scamarcio uses both his scientific and interpersonal skills in his work as a physics researcher and teacher. Besides inventing the superlattice quantum cascade microlaser, which is now used in systems for environmental monitoring and quantum physics, he recently contributed to the development of a single-molecule, transistor-type sensor that can be used for early detection of life-threatening diseases. “This new technique has a great potential to detect the presence of antigens which are correlated with problems like cancer,” he says. “We’ve used it to detect the precursor of pancreatic cancer.”
Meanwhile, he has had the satisfaction of teaching more than 1,000 physics students as a professor at the University of Bari Aldo Moro. He also coordinated the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards for his district in 2016, 2017, and 2022. “The interaction with about 45 young future leaders has been very rewarding, and a great experience for them and for us all,” he says.
Observing members of younger generations, he’s been struck by their “profound hunger for ethics” and desire for professional and moral role models. “I’ve observed a significant interest among young people in ethical issues, such as community development and environmental sustainability amid technological advancements,” he says. He’s particularly impressed by his students’ conscientious vision of their role in shaping society and protecting the environment.
“Sharing and teaching these ethical perspectives to young minds has been an immensely gratifying aspect of my career,” he says. “I aspire to leverage the platform of Rotary to further enrich and empower future generations.”
This story originally appeared in the June 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

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https://www.rotary.org/en/innovator-impact

More than US$4 million funds water, education, agriculture supplies, and equipment for affected communities

2025-05-24T07:48:00.005+02:00

More than US$4 million funds water, education, agriculture supplies, and equipment for affected communities

By Etelka Lehoczky

2023-24 RI President R. Gordon R. McInally and his partner, Heather, give children gifts during a visit to Hatay province, Turkey. The area suffered extensive damage in the 2023 earthquake. 24 April 2024.

©Rotary International

The relief efforts and funding Rotary provided after last year’s devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria show that Rotary members create hope where it is needed, said RI President R. Gordon R. McInally during a visit to the country.

“Having met the Rotary members in Hatay province, Turkey, I know that they will [continue to] be there to help rebuild their community,” McInally said while visiting affected areas in April. Among many stops, he toured a kindergarten and a vocational school that Rotary members resupplied and a mobile kitchen and bakery they outfitted. “I thank Rotary members for helping Create Hope in the World for those so badly affected by the disaster,” McInally added, referencing his presidential theme.

Since the earthquake and aftershocks in February 2023, which killed more than 55,000 people, Rotary has distributed over US$4 million to support affected communities. Aid efforts were confined to Turkey since Rotary has no clubs in Syria. Members have assembled container cities for housing, built water treatment plants, provided seedlings and cows to farmers, given equipment to hospitals, donated computers for students, and opened a veterinary clinic.

Immediately after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, Rotary established a dedicated disaster response fund that received more than US$2.7 million in contributions. (The fund is now closed to donations.) Additional aid efforts used global grants totaling about US$1.4 million.

“Once Rotary members witnessed what had happened, they came and provided help,” says Sezgin Acioğlu, a member of the Rotary Club of İskenderun, Turkey. “It was agile. It was very quick, very fast. It … encouraged everybody [else] to help.”

Aid for immediate and long-term needs

The immediate aid included a search-and-rescue van, hospital supplies, tents, sleeping bags, and air conditioners.

Rotary districts in Turkey helped the government set up three communities with housing made of shipping containers. It was challenging to find high-quality, affordable containers, says governor-nominee Lütfi Can Çığırgan of District 2430, because so many companies began manufacturing them right after the earthquake. Fortunately, a Rotary member in Adana, one of the major cities affected, was able to recommend a reputable company there, Çığırgan says.

“We were able to avoid buying the containers at a huge price — something we are always keen on as Rotarians,” he says.

Huseyin Dogon, a farmer, with heifers donated to his community by Districts 2420 and 2440 (Turkey) after the 2023 earthquake. Gaziantep, Turkey. 27 April 2024.

©Rotary International

Rotary members also built water treatment plants for two of the container cities. “Our systems collect water in tanks of 400 tons each and send it to the container cities with the help of pumps,” says Mehmet Altay, the governor of District 2420. “The water passing through our treatment facilities has the same quality as bottled water and is good enough to drink, make tea, and cook.”

Other projects have included a mobile dental clinic, temporary classrooms, and school computers.

“Rotary can still make a significant difference in the lives of earthquake victims,” Altay says. “Everyone who drinks the water in the facility we established thanks and prays for Rotary. We make a difference in the lives of children when they prepare homework on the computers given to them by Rotary. And in our mobile education vehicle, which is equipped with a computer, students can do research on any subject they want.”

Agricultural supplies and equipment and farm animals were another significant category of donations. The districts provided machines that farmers could share to harvest potatoes and make silage (chopped grass or other fodder that can be preserved and used later as livestock feed). The districts also donated seeds, seedlings, saplings, and pregnant cows that will help quickly rebuild herds.

“We want to make life go on. Otherwise, people from that area will go to other sides of the country. They won’t go back if there is no life there, no economic movement,” Çığırgan says.

Altay’s district also supplied a hospital in Hatay’s Dörtyol district with a pediatric echocardiography device and replaced damaged operating room equipment at Adıyaman Education and Research Hospital.

“Spinal cord and brain surgeries, which could not be performed, started to be performed again,” Altay says.

Building a veterinary clinic to help lost pets

To help pets that were hurt or abandoned after the earthquake, District 2420 established a veterinary clinic in Adıyaman province and supplied equipment for treatment and surgery. Staffers at the clinic spay and neuter the animals, tend to their wounds, and vaccinate them to help prevent diseases like rabies, which can spread to humans. Rotary members also donated a vehicle to bring animals to the clinic.

“During our visits to the earthquake area, we saw many dogs and cats wandering among the ruins, having lost their families who looked after them,” Altay says. “Some were injured and needed urgent medical attention. … This clinic will save [or] improve the health of thousands of animals.”

The veterinary clinic was named for Proteo, a rescue dog donated by Mexico, who died while searching for earthquake survivors in the rubble.

“It will ensure that the name Proteo and the aid of the Mexican nation will be remembered forever,” Altay says.

Support Rotary’s disaster response initiatives.

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https://www.rotary.org/en/rotary-continues-support-turkey-it-rebuilds-earthquake

Submerged ships transform into artificial reefs in Mexico

2025-05-24T07:42:00.004+02:00

Submerged ships transform into artificial reefs in Mexico

By Clara Germani

Marine life is drawn to the submerged skeleton of the first of two ships sunk in a planned chain of artificial reefs at Guaymas.

Courtesy of Juan Dworak

Marine biologist Carlos Sánchez has spent much of his 40-year career plying the placid blues of the Sea of Cortez on census expeditions, counting the rich biodiversity that has lured explorers from the Spanish conquistadors to oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.

Beneath this 750-mile-long inlet of the Pacific Ocean along Mexico swarms an array of life that Cousteau is said to have called “the world’s aquarium.” Rocky and coral reefs sustain a food chain starting with microscopic phytoplankton and topping out with the largest mammal on Earth, the blue whale.

However, scientists like Sánchez and the people who depend on the region for their livelihood know that the sea isn’t all it once was.

The loss of reefs is a source of eco-anxiety globally — from subsistence fishers with empty nets to people far from shorelines touched by heartbreaking documentaries about the death of brilliant reef life. But the problem, in turn, does inspire hopeful environmental and economic innovation.

The contagiousness of that innovative impulse has taken shape in an ambitious artificial reef project in the port city of Guaymas in northwest Mexico.

A coalition of city, state, and Mexican navy officials — supported by far-flung Rotary clubs and a Rotary Foundation global grant — are sinking an armada of decommissioned Mexican military ships, helicopters, an airplane, an amphibious vehicle, and artillery to form reefs.

Intentionally submerging vessels and other structures, including bridges and lighthouses, has been used around the world to form reef-like habitats for corals, fish, and other marine life. Behind the Guaymas project’s sink-it-and-they-will-come approach is the hope that the hard surfaces of these structures will quickly draw flora and fauna, and in turn tourists, local subsistence fishers, and conservation education and research opportunities. The idea is not to replace but to supplement and take pressure off natural reefs, and to capture carbon that contributes to global warming.

Keeping track of habitat loss — and reversing it

To illustrate how dire habitat loss has become, Sánchez offers a bit of nostalgic show-and-tell: a 1982 episode of the TV show Wild Kingdom featuring scientists as they free dive in a roiling school of dozens of hammerhead sharks at an underwater ridge off Espíritu Santo Island. Today, he says, divers at that spot near the entrance to the Sea of Cortez are wowed if they encounter a single hammerhead.

The health of a reef, he says, can be measured by how many sharks and other top predators, like big grouper and snapper, it hosts: “Around Espíritu Santo you see small fish [today] but no big predators.” Their absence, explains Sánchez, a professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur in La Paz, is evidence of the collapse of links in the food chain.

A census that Sánchez helped conduct last fall in partnership with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego examined about 100 reefs throughout the sea. Ninety percent were found to be suffering significant degradation. One obvious cause is the industrial fishing trawlers that haul away vast amounts of sardines, groupers, and shrimp. Less understood, but well-documented, are the warmer water temperatures caused by climate change.

To sink the 190-foot Suchiate, a decommissioned Mexican navy research vessel, small explosives were detonated in the hull.

Courtesy of Kikis López de Arbesú

In the attempt to reverse the declines, the first ship was sunk to the sandy bottom, 100 feet deep, less than a mile off the rocky shore in 2022 and has grown a thriving reef system. But “nobody knew how to do the next step,” says Juan Dworak, the Guaymas marine consultant who conducted the environmental impact study for the project.

Then, he says, The Rotary Foundation’s $176,000 global grant provided a “miracle” boost and became “a crucial factor for a cascade of events that are happening now.” It paid for the cleanup and sinking of a second decommissioned ship, the 190-foot Suchiate, a 1940s-era U.S. Navy water barge inherited by the Mexican navy as a research vessel. But possibly more crucial, the grant funded the environmental impact study, which was written to cover all future sinkings in the project.

“There was the first sinking without Rotary. But there wouldn’t be a second vessel sunk without Rotary, and there wouldn’t be an environmental impact assessment already approved for the other artifacts to be sunk,” explains Dworak.

Avery Paxton, a research marine biologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says there was a 2,000 percent increase in the seafloor “footprint” of artificial reefs in the past 50 years in the United States. But growth has slowed significantly due to costs, challenging logistics, and a lack of materials permitted for use in artificial reefs. Paxton’s studies suggest artificial reefs are “hot spots” for large predatory fish, likely because they create such tall underwater habitats.

Some illegal dumping to create habitat, however, has also caused environmental problems in sensitive ecosystems.

Sánchez, the marine census taker, says that the natural reef nearest Guaymas he has visited is so degraded that he deems the prospect of artificial reefs nearby a good idea for drawing fishing pressure away if done well.

A district governor makes a difference

Standing in the warm gulf breeze aboard a Mexican navy frigate last March was Kikis López de Arbesú, a member of the Rotary Club of Puebla Gente de Acción, 1,000 miles to the south. López, a driving force behind the global grant, recalls shivering with goose bumps as she watched the Suchiate barge descend gently — her dream of making a difference as a Rotary district governor reaching its climax. (The sinking was gentle because only small explosives could be detonated in the hull to prevent damage to the reef forming on the first ship nearby.)

This all started in 2020, she says, when she saw a documentary about the loss of coral. A year later, as she was trying to decide on a project for her 2022-23 year as governor of District 4185, she focused on the idea of protecting reef ecosystems. A conversation with her brother, a Mexican navy officer, led to a plan to sink a ship for an artificial reef in Veracruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. But that project was scuttled when local officials who had supported it were voted out of office.

Rotary members joined government and navy officials to watch the sinking of the Suchiate from a frigate last March.

Courtesy of Kikis López de Arbesú

López’s project partner Kevin Pitts, an Arizona Rotarian who served as 2023-24 governor of District 5495, admits the loss of Veracruz felt like the end. But he and Salvador Rico, a member of the Rotary Club of South Ukiah, California, who is a member of The Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers, both point to López’s description of herself as a “restless spirit” who won’t take no for an answer. Soon, through her brother, she found the Guaymas project.

Rico considers the Guaymas project one of the most complex he’s ever seen, with difficult layers of state, local, and environmental requirements to meet and a significant fundraising burden. But keys to successful Rotary grants, says Rico, are walking the talk and channeling volunteer passion impactfully. And López was serious about those points as she stepped in to help the Guaymas project, which was already showing signs of its sustainability with a nascent reef and tourists eager to visit.

Within months — record time, says Dworak — the project was approved, all parties were cooperating, and the barge was ready to sink.

López, who plans to dive on the reef this month, still chokes up when she repeats a line from her speech at the sinking as a way to encourage club members to fulfill their service to help the world: “If we can dream it, we can live it.”

This story originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/submerged-ships-transform-artificial-reefs-mexico

With transplant changes afoot, Rotary members push to end global organ shortages

2025-05-24T07:38:00.006+02:00

With transplant changes afoot, Rotary members push to end global organ shortages

By Neil Steinberg

Anil Srivatsa, who tells his kidney donor story to make people feel more comfortable about giving, is pushing Rotary members to new levels of advocacy for organ donation.

Image credit: Gayatri GanjuAnil Srivatsa drives an SUV plastered with stickers and slogans across India on a quixotic mission: to teach as many of the country’s 1.4 billion people as he can about the importance of organ donation.

He’s one man in his truck, often accompanied by his wife, driving from town to town for several weeks each year to try to increase India’s organ donation rate, because it ranks among the world’s worst. “There is a deep cultural bias against organ donation in India,” says Srivatsa, a media entrepreneur who helped found the Rotary Club of Organ Donation in 2022. “There is much work to be done in this space, to counter misinformation and fear.”

For Srivatsa, the mission is intensely personal. Ten years ago, he donated his left kidney to his brother, Arjun Srivatsa, a neurosurgeon and a member of the Rotary Club of Bangalore, who had chronic renal failure. On his driving tours, Srivatsa sleeps in a rooftop pop-up tent on his SUV. One of its decals says “Kidney donors are sexy!” He speaks to a Rotary club if there is one in town — there are more than 4,000 in the country — or he assembles what residents he can when there’s not.

India trails most of the world in organ donation for varied, sometimes complicated reasons, including a simple lack of information, inadequate transplant care hospitals in rural areas, and distrust among families of potential donors about how organs will be used. But major shifts are happening with donation regulations and initiatives in India and other countries, giving organ donation its strongest spotlight in years. That includes attention affixed on early experiments in the U.S. and China with transplanting gene-modified pig organs into humans as one potential solution for shortages. And a 2023 U.S. law that will overhaul the national donation system to try to break up an inefficient monopoly and reduce organ shortages.

Education and access

For years, Rotary members have taken a lead position in expanding access to kidney and liver surgeries and coordinating transplant training for medical staffs. That includes a project led by clubs in District 3640 (Korea) to teach surgeons in Myanmar and Mongolia advanced skills to transplant organs from deceased people, a source of organs that is growing but lagging its potential to save lives.

With walkathons, social media campaigns, and more recently a chatbot that answers organ donation questions, Rotary members contribute to a movement to educate people about how important the gift of their organs and tissues can be — whether after death or in life with a kidney or part of a liver.

Rotary and Interact clubs in India, where members helped eliminate some restrictions on organ donation, are particularly active in promoting the cause. They educate people using expert speakers at club meetings, support from well-known Rotarians like RI Past President Jennifer Jones, and a walkathon that included many high schoolers. Courtesy of Anil Srivatsa

In India, the laws pose their own challenges. Until recently, citizens in some states could only register to receive a deceased-donor organ transplant in their home state. With the help of other Rotarians, Srivatsa successfully challenged the requirement through the nongovernmental organization he formed to coordinate international support of his work, the Gift of Life Adventure Foundation.

In Britain, instead of relying on people to sign up, under recent laws most adults are considered potential organ donors when they die unless they opt out. In 2021 the Rotary Club of Leicester Novus, England, hosted a speaker to explain the law.

For more than 20 years in Mexico, people have received help paying for kidney transplants through an initiative of the Rotary Club of Cuajimalpa. The project is supported by a nonprofit in the country, other Mexican clubs in District 4170, and U.S. clubs in zones 30 and 31, a slice of Middle America. Like many parts of the world, Mexico is experiencing increases in chronic kidney disease as two main causes, diabetes and high blood pressure, rise too. While kidney transplants are increasing, their high cost keeps them out of reach for a large portion of Mexicans. Rotarians have used multiple global grants for the project, guiding donors and recipients through the process leading up to the surgery and quelling fears about donors’ health afterward, similar to how Srivatsa counsels people in his travels across India.

Clubs in India have been particularly active promoting the issue, with education sessions for factory workers and college students, rallies of people with banners and flags who walk city streets, and events to encourage people to pledge to donate their organs when they die.

Srivatsa, who divides his time living in Bengaluru (formerly called Bangalore) and New Jersey in the U.S., has also done drives to counter transplant myths across Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. He circles the globe to address business groups — in December he went to Bali to talk to Pepsi executives. He estimates he has spoken to more than 270,000 people in 58 countries on over 1,000 occasions, many of those at Rotary clubs. “Love gets thwarted by fear, and I believe fear comes from unanswered questions,” Srivatsa says. “What I’m trying to do is answer those questions. I don’t go out and tell people to become organ donors. That’s a decision they can make once they learn that the fear is misplaced.”

Left: Anil Srivatsa says his kidney donation to his brother, Arjun Srivatsa, was not a sacrifice. Image credit: Gayatri Ganju. Right: The Srivatsa brothers demonstrate healthy post-transplant life with grueling mountain biking and other physical challenges. Courtesy of Anil Srivatsa.

He helped start the Interact Club of Venky Yoda, which stands for youth organ donation awareness, at the Venkateshwar International School in Delhi. The Interactors worked with his club to launch a chatbot recently that teaches people about organ donation. Srivatsa, who has helped form two other clubs, also worked with the Rotary Action Group for Blood Donation to add organ donation to the group’s mission (and its name) to increase Rotary members’ focus on the issue. The group already has hundreds of members dedicated to supporting blood drives, so the expansion to include organ donation advocates will be a powerful force.

Srivatsa uses his experience of giving his brother a kidney to show that donors live normal, healthy lives. “When people say I sacrificed a lot to give a kidney to my brother, I don’t believe that was sacrifice,” he says. To demonstrate how active post-transplant life can be, the brothers took a grueling mountain bike tour in 2015, six months after their operations. They competed in the World Transplant Games in England in 2019 and in Australia in 2023, with medals for Arjun in golf and Anil in cricket ball throwing and race walking.

Removing hurdles

Despite grassroots efforts by Rotary members, the World Health Organization estimates that transplants cover only about 10 percent of need. Many people waiting for kidneys survive only through the debilitating process of dialysis, where their blood is cycled through a machine and washed of toxins that are usually removed by healthy kidneys. (See the author’s essay about helping his cousin on dialysis and trying to give him a kidney.) But dialysis isn’t available everywhere or is too expensive for many people around the world. In India and many countries, the use of organs donated from people who died is minuscule, and transplants are limited mostly to kidneys from living donors.

Among Rotary members with a personal link to the issue are Prashant and Hemali Ajmera, a couple in India who hit the legal hurdle requiring a residency certificate in Gujarat state, where Hemali Ajmera was getting dialysis treatments and needed a kidney transplant.

The two, who are both Canadian citizens, learned about the requirement in spring 2022 when Prashant Ajmera went to a Gujarat hospital to register his wife to receive a transplant from a deceased donor, he says. “I made the application, and in four days I heard back from the police department: Your wife is a Canadian citizen so is not entitled to a domicile certificate in the state of Gujarat. So the hospital will not take her as a patient.”

“As a lawyer, it didn’t make sense to me,” says Ajmera, a member of the Rotary Club of Ahmedabad Metro. He did his research and discovered that such residency requirements were a significant drag on the transplant rate nationwide. “It was not only a problem for me, but it was affecting people across India,” Ajmera says. A judicial petition by Hemali Ajmera succeeded, and Gujarat’s residency requirement was ruled unconstitutional in late 2022. Srivatsa’s NGO advanced a challenge to the highest court in India. “We used Anil’s foundation to file a class action,” Prashant Ajmera says. “It all happened because of Rotary.”

The federal government adopted a policy in March 2023 that forbids domicile requirements for those seeking deceased-donor organ transplants, along with lifting a ban on people older than 65 receiving such transplants. “Doctors came to me and told me this was the big hurdle, and it has been removed, making one less complication in the process,” says Ajmera, who speaks to Rotary clubs about the complexities of India’s organ donation rules.

Srivatsa’s SUV is his home on the road for weekslong treks to reach Rotary clubs and anyone else he can gather to address hesitancy about organ donation.

Image credit: Gayatri Ganju

Srivatsa’s SUV is his home on the road for weekslong treks to reach Rotary clubs and anyone else he can gather to address hesitancy about organ donation.

Before the legal battle could be resolved, however, Hemali Ajmera’s condition deteriorated, forcing her to get a kidney transplant from a living donor — her sister. The operation was performed in February 2023 at a hospital recommended by a Rotarian doctor, and Hemali Ajmera later moved her membership to the Rotary Club of Organ Donation. “Rotary has helped me in all my life, connection after connection, doctor after doctor, all because of wonderful Rotary,” Prashant Ajmera says.

To help others in considering whether to donate, Srivatsa’s foundation published a book, A Rotarian’s Guide to Organ Donation, edited by Hemali Ajmera.

Prashant Ajmera pushes for Rotary members to play a wider role in promoting organ donation. No one expects progress to be easy, but members are in it for the long haul.

Srivatsa says members sprinkled in communities across the globe are in a strong position to push systemic changes that improve organ donation and get people’s attention on how to prevent conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, that can lead to organ failure. “Me passing through, making one passionate speech then walking away is not optimum. You need someone on the ground always there pushing the agenda.”

This is an abridged version of a story that originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit:-

https://www.rotary.org/en/its-time-consider-organ-donation

Rotary projects around the globe

2025-05-24T07:33:00.005+02:00

Rotary projects around the globe

August 2024

By Brad Webber

Belize

The Rotaract Club of Belize City is renovating a rural school and a Rotary club-sponsored park as part of its youth-focused agenda. In April, club members met at the Hattieville Government Preschool to paint restrooms and complete other beautification work. A later phase will include new toilets. “We’ve been able to replace chalkboards in 10 classrooms with whiteboards and to donate a printer and other school and hygiene materials,” says Kristoff Nicholson, immediate past president. The club partnered with a telecom provider and raffled off smartphones to help pay for the project. It also received a District 4250 grant of $1,000. In March, club members replaced basketball and goal nets and painted benches and a playset at Love Park in Balama, another element of the project, Nicholson says.

Colombia

In January, the Rotary Club of Cúcuta-Ciudad de Arboles purchased about $600 of school supplies and delivered 100 sets of notebooks, pencils, pens, erasers, sharpeners, and more to students in the city. It’s about 350 miles northeast of Bogotá. Club members also visited with students in the neighborhood of Las Delicias, says Dora Patricia Lobo, a past president of the club. “The hustle and bustle and joy of these students when they receive their school package warms our souls and encourages us to continue,” Lobo says. More than 1,400 students have benefited since the project began.

35
.6%
Share of Belize’s population younger than 15

96
%
Literacy rate in Colombia

Liberia

The Rotary Club of Monrovia is helping train young women to establish microenterprises to make and sell reusable sanitary pads and address “period poverty.” With financial support from the Rotary Club of Loveland, Colorado, the Liberian Rotarians paired with the nonprofit Dignity:Liberia and held two training sessions for 200 women earlier this year in Monrovia, the capital, and in Kakata, a semirural community. “The high, recurring cost of pads makes them out of reach for many families that struggle to make ends meet,” says Monique Cooper-Liverpool, a past president of the Monrovia club. “This leads thousands of girls to miss classes so often that they eventually drop out of school.” The initiative grew out of a partnership between the two clubs to advance reproductive care and treatment for fistulas, an injury often caused by prolonged labor during childbirth.

Northern Ireland

Volunteers led by the Rotary Club of Belfast made improvements to the courtyard garden of a senior home in January. The team of Rotarians, community members, and people in transitional employment through the judicial system cleared weeds, constructed raised garden platforms, and filled them with soil. Cold temperatures scaled back their plans, but it was still a “rather back-breaking” effort, says club member Jenny Boyd. A District 1160 grant of about $1,250 was used to underwrite the expense. Karen Blair, a past president and project leader, recruited colleagues from her law firm to get a little dirt under their fingernails. “This project allows all members to be involved in a very hands-on activity,” Blair says. “And even those with no gardening ability can participate by chatting with the residents over coffee.”

$
24
.4 billion
Global sanitary napkin market in 2021

18
28
Belfast Botanic Gardens and Palm House founded

Thailand

About 1,500 drowning deaths occur each year in Thailand, one of the highest rates per capita in the world. While the Thai government is working to prevent fatalities, drowning remains the leading cause of death for those 15 and younger in the country, which has thousands of miles of coastline. On the island of Samui, a popular tourist destination, there are no public swimming pools, says Adam Preston, immediate past president of the Rotary Club of Samui-Phangan. Club members received training from the Rotary Club of Global Water Safety and Drowning Prevention and in 2019 started Swim4Life, a series of lessons for children ages 10 to 12 at an international school’s pool. Three Samui-Phangan club members offer basic instruction alongside 15 community members who serve as assistant teachers. Nearly 100 children had completed the course as of April. The children, from public schools, “have gone from being scared of the water to being able to swim 25 meters,” Preston says.

This story originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Rotary projects make a difference in communities around the world.

Learn more

For centuries, people have gathered at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. Now, with its June 2025 convention, it’s Rotary’s turn.

2025-05-22T12:43:00.000+02:00

For centuries, people have gathered at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers. Now, with its June 2025 convention, it’s Rotary’s turn.

By Geoffrey Johnson Photography by Monika Lozinska

Enjoy eclectic boutiques, patio dining, and people watching at Calgary’s Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall.

I arrive expecting to see mountains. What I get is sky, lots and lots of sky with muscular white clouds coursing across that vast blue expanse like a herd of wild horses galloping over the open range, unbridled and unbroken.

OK, maybe that’s a bit much. Or not. Because when I get off the plane in Calgary, the first thing that greets me at the airport, after a mural of red maple leaves emblazoned Bienvenue au Canada, is a swirling maelstrom of bronze horses in full stride that their sculptor, Calgary native Robert Spaith, has said evokes the “strength, spirit, and maturity” of Calgary. So clouds as stampeding stallions it is.

These thoughts occur to me as I travel by taxi toward downtown Calgary. Three centuries ago, this was a traditional gathering site of the Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani nations, known collectively as the Siksikaitsitapi or Blackfoot Confederacy. They called this place Moh'kinstsis, which means “elbow” and references the big bend where today’s Bow River abruptly changes course from east to south shortly after its confluence with the Elbow River. “In the old Blackfoot sign language, patting your elbow indicated you were going to Moh'kinstsis,” explains the Piikani scholar and storyteller Eldon Yellowhorn. Even today, “the same sign means a trip to Calgary.”

Following that ancient impulse to gather by the water, other First Nations people, among them the Tsuut'ina and the Nakoda, congregated at the junction of the two rivers, and when European settlers made their way into southwestern Alberta, they too made this place home. A great city arose, and today, with a population of 1.6 million people, Calgary is Canada’s fourth-largest metro area, though one that retains a palpable sense of its place and its past.

Smithbilt Hats is renowned for Calgary’s signature white hat, but crafts colorful options as well

Craig Stokke of the Rotary Club of Calgary Stampede Park browses at the Recordland store in the Inglewood neighborhood.

Bicyclists ride in the Inglewood neighborhood; Calgary has more miles of bike and walking trails than any other city in North America.

The Confluence Historic Site and Parkland

And now here am I in late October 2023, come to get a close look at the city that will host the Rotary International Convention in June 2025. It’s not Rotary’s first rodeo (for once the tired cliché is apt): In 1996, 25,000 Rotarians from 126 countries and geographical areas traveled to Calgary for the 87th annual convention with its theme of Rotary Family Roundup. Pay attention to that second word, because when you come to Calgary for the 2025 convention, you will want to bring your family (kids included), as well as your friends and any strangers you meet along the way. Because if you haven’t experienced Calgary and the great North American West, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. It is a city and a country you must see for yourself.

First stop: an ascent into that crystalline cerulean canopy — this place provokes rhetorical excess — otherwise known as the sky.

And mountains? Rest easy. There will be mountains.

Big-city fun without big-city problems

When the Calgary Tower opened in 1968, it was not only the tallest structure in Calgary but the tallest in all of western Canada. Since then, in this city alone, it has been surpassed six times. Yet the tower remains the lofty symbol of Calgary and the lodestar by which visitors can orient themselves as they explore the city. It is also their stairway to heaven.

The Calgary Tower is reflected in one of the many pieces of public art in the city’s downtown.

Make that elevator, which I take to the observation deck that stands near the tower’s 626-foot summit. As you proceed around the deck, there are brief descriptions of everything you’re observing from above and might want to see up close later; that includes the concave-roofed Scotiabank Saddledome, the arena that lies at the center of Stampede Park, the venue for the 2025 convention. For the daring and the bold, there is a glass-floor platform onto which you can step and stare directly down onto distant Ninth Avenue. And finally, off to the west, a craggy apparition beckons: the Rocky Mountains, rising like a gray ghost on the western fringe of the Great Plains.

As the view from the tower suggests, Calgary has a lot to offer. “Anyone who grew up here will tell you that Calgary has all the big city amenities without the big city problems,” says Craig Stokke, the co-chair of the Host Organization Committee. “And though we’ve grown to be a big city, we still have that small town mentality” — as evidenced last year when Condé Nast Traveller readers voted Calgary the friendliest city in the world.

The city of Calgary’s story began in 1875 when the North-West Mounted Police established an outpost at what had been for centuries the traditional gathering place of Indigenous people; the commander’s superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel James Farquharson Macleod, eventually dubbed it Fort Calgary after a castle in Scotland. By some accounts, “Calgary” means, in Gaelic, “clear running water,” a fitting name for this place where the Elbow meets the Bow.

Today, Fort Calgary is a 40-acre campus devoted to the city’s origins. In May, it was renamed the Confluence Historic Site and Parkland (or I'táámito'táaattsiiyio'pi — “harmonious meeting place” — in Blackfoot), aiming to present a broader and more comprehensive narrative of the area’s history.

Viewed in person at the Confluence Historic Site and Parkland, the wooden installation called Marking transforms into three-dimensional shadows of people and horses.

I already see that as I walk through the campus, reading the copious signage outside the replica of the military barracks and spending a few enlightening hours touring the interpretive center. Alongside and intertwined with the settlers’ stories are the tales of those who were here first. There are some beautiful artifacts — such as the brightly beaded Métis octopus bag, named for the four pairs of decorative tabs that hang from its body — but what I primarily see is a progression of losses. The Great Slaughter, a three-dimensional piece by the Saulteaux Métis archaeologist and artist Autumn Whiteway (Night Singing Woman), evokes the near-extermination of the bison and the decimation of the people who relied on and revered them. There’s a reproduction and explanation of Treaty 7, by which the Blackfoot and other First Nations ceded their lands in southern Alberta. It’s accompanied by an interactive exhibit that focuses on truth and reconciliation and their relationship to the treaty.

Before leaving the Confluence site, be sure to explore the grounds. Pay close attention to an unassuming assemblage of lumber that, on close inspection, turns out to be a remarkable optical illusion. Called Marking, the wooden framework delineates in part the outline of the original fort. Its vertical uprights are irregularly shaped and in some instances resemble the silhouette of a face or a body’s curve. Ignore that. Instead, stand back from the structure and pace alongside it. Look at it without looking at it, and from behind the unfinished palisade wall emerge three-dimensional shadows of people and horses. Stare directly at those ephemeral figures and they vanish. And yet …

Earlier, on my walk to the fort, I passed a theater whose exterior wall was draped in green artificial grass. From it, four words had been cut: THIS FEELS SO REAL. Exactly.

Saddle up

The Calgary convention ends on 25 June; stick around for the world famous Calgary Stampede, which begins 4 July. Those intervening days are the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunity to visit a few of Alberta’s six UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks consists of seven contiguous national and provincial parks. One of them, Banff, is justly celebrated, but with their waterfalls and lakes, their snowcapped mountains and starlit nights, the other parks warrant a visit — and perhaps an extended stay.

Over the years, Alberta’s boundless Badlands have yielded a treasure trove of Cretaceous jewels. See for yourself at Dinosaur Provincial Park, followed by a swing up to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller.

A vivid insight into Plains culture, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is more than just the 33-foot-high cliff where, beginning more than 5,500 years ago, Indigenous people on the hunt drove bison to their deaths.

Straddling the border between Alberta and Montana and comprising Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park and the U.S. Glacier National Park, Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is both a monument to global amity and a breathtakingly beautiful natural wonderland.

A sacred Blackfoot site, Áísíai'pi (meaning “it is written” or “it is pictured”), also known as Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, is one of the largest aggregations of petroglyphs in North America, carved either by the Indigenous people who once lived here or by the spirits said to dwell among the adjacent hills.

A 14-hour drive from Calgary, the vast Wood Buffalo National Park is home to about 3,000 free-range bison, in addition to bears, moose, wolves, owls, and whooping cranes. Stargazers take note: It’s also the world’s largest dark sky preserve.

A pedestrian paradise

In the heart of Calgary’s revitalized East Village, Studio Bell offers an irresistible array of euterpean delights (look it up). Home to the National Music Centre and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, four of the five floors are devoted to different aspects of music, and there are endless opportunities to listen to it, learn how it’s made, perform it, and comment on how it makes us feel, as scores of people have done in a variety of languages. Start on the top

Top: From left, Mark Starratt and his son Alex enjoy the Calgary Zoo, joined by Rotarians Luanne Whitmarsh, Craig Stokke, and Corinne Wilkinson. Starratt and Stokke are co-chairs of the Host Organization Committee. Bottom left: Calgary’s light rail system is part of the city’s public transportation network. Bottom right: Studio Bell is home to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

The same holds true for the Calgary Zoo, which when I visit is a work in progress. There are signs announcing what is temporarily closed and what will be open when Rotary members arrive in 2025. Chief among these impending attractions is a new exhibit called Wild Canada, devoted to gray wolves, polar bears, and other wildlife that dwell in the country’s untamed regions. Despite the closures, I stroll leisurely through lush gardens and see lots of animals, including zebras and giraffes, lions and lemurs, and a water-loving waddle of king penguins. And in Prehistoric Park, I encounter animatronic dinosaurs that disconcert and delight the enraptured children.

In this pedestrian- and bike-friendly city — with more miles of bike and walking trails than any other city in North America — I had walked to the zoo. With various stops along the way, that took a couple of hours. To return downtown, I hop on the CTrain light rail — part of Calgary’s extensive public transportation system that will be free for full registrants for the 2025 convention — which makes for a significantly shorter trip. I’m back at my hotel, the venerable Fairmont Palliser, with plenty of time to prepare for my dinner reservation. Just as Calgary has world-class architecture, bike trails, bonhomie, and nightlife, it is also a gastronomical paradise, with opportunities to sample every imaginable cuisine. But tonight I plan to dine on what I’m led to believe is the city’s signature dish.

Calgary is a cattle town, and residents are proud of their beef, whose rich flavor is a result of the Alberta cows’ barley-based diet. And so tonight I find myself at the convivial and cozily lit Vintage Chophouse & Tavern, where I enjoy a 24-ounce bone-in New York strip streak, dispatched with the aid of a knife masquerading as a small saber. The meal leaves me well fortified for what lies ahead.

‘Matchless scenes’ in Banff

It had snowed for much of the night and traffic was a mess. “If you don’t have to drive today,” advised the stern voice on the radio, “stay home.”

I ignore him. I must drive. Blame it on Cindy Walker, the central Texas girl who in 1950 composed a quintessential lyric of the Canadian West. It begins:

In the blue Canadian Rockies,
Spring is sighing through the trees.
And the golden poppies are blooming
Round the banks of Lake Louise.

Because of that plaintive song, I had always wanted to visit Lake Louise, and now it was a mere 115 miles away. It was going to take more than an October blizzard to kibosh my quest.

Charming Banff and the majestic Rocky Mountains are a short, astonishingly beautiful drive from Calgary.

I find my way to the Trans-Canada Highway and point the car toward Banff, where I plan to spend the night. The snow has let up, but the skies have not cleared and visibility is minimal. An hour or so into my journey I appear heading directly into a big, densely black thunderhead, which only at the last minute reveals itself to be the side of a mountain huddled close to the road.

I finally arrive in Banff, having accomplished the usual 90-minute drive in about three hours. It is a charming, little low-rise town. Because it’s between seasons, the streets are relatively quiet. After checking into my room, I walk through the town, stopping into two or three shops before I make my way to Chuck’s. There, I launch into an 8-ounce tenderloin, wielding the small cutlass that will be the second entry in my forthcoming treatise, The Steak Knives of Alberta.

The next day, in the moments before sunrise, I open the curtains on my first-floor window and discover two towering lodgepole pines holding aloft an azure sky touched by gold. I’m soon back on the Trans-Canada, and in less than an hour I am a sigh among the trees of Lake Louise.

In the summer of 1882, Thomas Edmonds Wilson, a seasoned 23-year-old Alberta trailblazer, followed his Nakoda guide Edwin Hunter through the thick, virgin timber of the Rockies until they emerged on a pristine body of water. Wilson was astounded. “As God is my judge, I never in all my explorations saw such a matchless scene,” he later recalled. “On the right and the left forests that had never known the axe came down to the shores, apparently growing out of the blue and green waters. The background, a mile and a half away, was divided into three tones of white, opal, and brown where the glacier ceased and merged with the shining water.”

The Nakoda called this place Horâ Juthin Îmne, the “lake of the little fishes.” Wilson changed it to Emerald Lake, and in 1884 it was changed again, this time to honor Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the wife of the fourth governor general of Canada, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, and the woman who gave this province its name. The Canadian Pacific Railway arrived at about that time, and today’s 539-room Chateau Lake Louise, a magnet for politicians, movie stars, and tourists from around the world, had its origins with a single-story building erected in 1894. Things would never be the same, and despite today’s snow and cold weather, dozens of people jockey for position along the shoreline so that they might return home with a memorable photo.

Yet the scene remains exactly as Tom Wilson described it, with the aquamarine water, the white fields of snow, and the differently shaded green trees and brown mountainsides layered in a series of overlapping and magically integrated planes. Immutable, Lake Louise is still capable of instilling a sense of wonder.

I close my day serenely soaking in the mineral-rich waters of the Banff Upper Hot Springs. The vertical panorama is unsurpassed: a forest of snow-laden firs giving way to the summit of Mount Rundle, its jagged peaks flush with the rays of the setting sun. If there are any sighs this evening in the blue Canadian Rockies, they are only sighs of contentment.

The tastes of Calgary

Calgary is cattle country, as attested by its world-class steakhouses, such as Caesar’s, Chairman’s, and Vintage Chophouse & Tavern. But the city also offers a wide variety of dining experiences that will tempt even the most discerning palates.

Owned and operated by the gastronomically gifted Sal Howell, Deane House on the banks of the Elbow River and River Café on Prince’s Island Park serve memorable meals in, respectively, historic and verdant settings.
A contemporary supper club, Fortuna’s Row transports diners from the plains of Alberta to the climes, cultures, and cuisines of Central and South America.
To discover fresh, coast-to-coast Canadian cuisine, travel to Klein/Harris on the Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall.
Situated in the lively 17th Avenue neighborhood, yet with a Pacific Ocean vibe, Lulu Bar showcases fare influenced by the cuisines from nearby — think California and British Columbia — and afar (Hawaii and Asia).
Situated on the 40th floor of Stephen Avenue Place, the lofty Major Tom accompanies its divine food with heavenly views.
Deemed one of Calgary’s best new restaurants in 2022, Orchard dishes up Asian-Mediterranean cuisine in a casually elegant setting.
A great spot for lunch, Park by Sidewalk Citizen welcomes guests to its solarium-style space in Central Memorial Park (Calgary’s oldest park) situated in the Beltline neighborhood.
Celebrity chef Darren MacLean’s Shokunin, which offers Japanese-influenced dining, perennially lands on the list of Canada’s 100 best restaurants.
A day of welcomes
My last full day in Calgary is a day of welcomes. The first comes at the midday meeting of the Rotary Club of Calgary at Stampede Park, where I am the guest of Craig Stokke. As much as anyone, it was Stokke who ensured Calgary got the opportunity to host its second Rotary International Convention. He was not a member of Rotary 28 years ago, so did not attend the 1996 convention. But nine years ago, while in Rome, he met another member of Rotary. When he learned that Stokke was from Calgary, the Italian Rotarian described his marvelous experience at that ’96 convention and vowed that, if Calgary ever hosted another convention, he would not fail to attend.
Wilkinson and Stokke relax along the extensive Mattamy Greenway, created in part by Calgary’s Rotarians.
Working alongside Mark Starratt, the other co-chair of the Host Organization Committee and a member of the Rotary Club of Calgary, Stokke got to work at bringing another convention to his hometown. They were assisted by scores of enthusiastic Rotary members, by the city’s civic leaders, and by its most prominent public face: the Stampede, the annual rodeo, parade, and 10-day festival that each year attracts more than 1 million visitors to Calgary. “The people at the Stampede are skilled at working with crowds,” says Stokke. “We’ve got thousands of volunteers who know what to do, and they’re ready to go. Their participation helped make our case that Calgary deserved the convention.”
In 2017, Rotary made it official: Calgary would host the 2025 convention. Stokke, Starratt, et al. quadrupled their efforts. “The ’96 convention set the bar high,” Stokke admits, “but we didn’t want to do a redo.” He doesn’t provide any specifics, but he does make one promise. “We can put on a great party,” he says. “People are going to know they’ve been in Calgary.”
Stokke explains all this as we tour the Stampede grounds prior to the meeting. Situated on the perimeter of the park, the club’s gathering space is a rustically modern cabin. Today it’s packed, with roughly 125 people filling nine tables. After lunch, the meeting gets underway with an official welcome to visiting guests.
I meet many Rotary members, and even 18 months out, they share a mutual excitement for the upcoming convention. On more than one occasion I hear about one benefit of holding the convention in Calgary that these folks plan to press to maximum advantage. “There are a lot of things we hope to do by bringing people in from the community and letting them know about Rotary and the great things it’s doing locally,” Stokke says. “This is our chance to show who Rotary is.”
Steve McDonough, past president of the Calgary Stampede, and Wilkinson, a member of the Rotary Club of Calgary at Stampede Park, stop by Smithbilt Hats, where one of the city’s signature white hats is steamed.
After the Stampede Park meeting, I dash to my lunch date with the folks from Tourism Calgary. My three hosts — Aviva Kohen, Shelley Zucht-Shorter, and Fraser Abbott — treat me to a delicious meal at Deane House, one of Calgary’s finest restaurants. It’s one of two, along with River Café, run by Sal Howell, a champion of locally sourced ingredients and sustainable dining.
But the highlight is the surprise premeal ceremony where Abbott officially welcomes me to Calgary. “‘It’s not relevant where you come from or what you look like or how you worship or whom you love,’” says Abbott, quoting a former mayor. “‘What really matters is that you are welcome here and you belong here, and you’ve come to a place where you can be your best.’”
Abbott presents me with one of the city’s signature white, red-beribboned Smithbilt cowboy hats. I don the chapeau as instructed and join Abbott in reciting the traditional white hat oath of hospitality, which concludes with a rousing “yahoo!” With that, I saunter into the dining room. And were I wearing spurs, they would undoubtedly be jingle-jangle-jingling as I go stridin’ merrily along. All that’s missing is a horse.
This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/calgary-calls-going-mohkinstsis

Long overlooked, farmers are finding supports tailored to the stresses of rural life

2025-05-22T12:17:00.003+02:00

Long overlooked, farmers are finding supports tailored to the stresses of rural life

By Elizabeth Hewitt Photography by Kathryn Gamble

Dorothy and Don Harms with their dog Max in the pasture to move beef cattle.

Courtesy of Dorothy Harms

For almost four decades, Dorothy and Don Harms tethered their lives to the needs of their dairy cows. Twice daily milking. Seasonal races to plant and harvest corn and alfalfa for feed. The fourth generation in his family to run the Reedsburg, Wisconsin, dairy farm, Don Harms knew each of their 130 cows by name. For many people who work in agriculture, Dorothy Harms says, farming is part of their identity. “It’s not their job,” she says. “It’s who they are.”

But the grueling schedule took a toll, so they gradually transitioned, launching a farm-stay tourism business, switching to beef cattle, and selling off their dairy herd little by little until they parted with the last 25 cows five years ago. In the weeks that followed, the couple grieved. Dorothy Harms’ body, so used to hard but rewarding work, yearned to go to the barn. Her husband struggled with anxiety and self-medicated with alcohol. “It was not an easy year,” she says.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health emergency, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the U.S. by calling or texting 988 or going to 988lifeline.org. If you are outside the U.S., visit findahelpline.com to get connected with a service in your country.

Around the same time, another farmer in their community, a close friend of the Harmses, took his own life. As the community rallied around his family, another farmer shared candidly how he had struggled with suicidal thoughts. At one of those community gatherings, Dorothy Harms learned about an opportunity to try counseling with a voucher from the Wisconsin agriculture department, and the couple found the experience somewhat helpful for processing their emotions. In the agricultural town of Reedsburg, the subject of mental health, so often kept private, was suddenly in the spotlight.

The conversations led people in this area of south-central Wisconsin to start the Farmer Angel Network, an organization that connects farm industry professionals and their families with mental health resources. The group builds a sense of community through events like drive-in movie nights and trains health providers to better understand agriculture’s unique pressures. Dorothy Harms, co-founder and board president, says the network is a resource that people know they can turn to if they need help. “There’s so much isolation, oftentimes, in farming,” she says. “By having an opportunity for fellowship and people getting to share what’s going on, it just opens the doors for possible further discussion, deeper discussion.”

Farmers’ livelihoods are shaped by many factors beyond their control, from fluctuations in global markets to extreme weather that can derail an entire growing season. These stressors are contributing to a mental health crisis in agriculture. The suicide rate among male farmers and ranchers in the U.S. is about 60 percent higher than that of all working-age men, and farmers have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide risk than the general population.

Amid this crisis, efforts are growing to break down stigma and improve access to mental health supports. Crisis hotlines and teletherapy are working alongside grassroots initiatives, like the Farmer Angel Network, to open conversations about mental health among farmers and neighbors.

“What we’re trying to do is acknowledge that there’s a spectrum of need and comfort,” says Josie Rudolphi, an assistant professor and extension specialist with the University of Illinois who has researched farm stress. “We’re trying to provide a menu of resources along that spectrum.”

FOR MANY FARMERS, BUSINESS IS PERSONAL. On family-run farms, there’s often no clear separation between work and home life, according to Remington Rice, who leads Michigan State University Extension’s Managing Farm Stress project. He grew up on his family’s cattle farm, where his dad can still see the cows from his bedroom window. “Agriculture can be more a way of life than a 9-to-5 job,” he says.

This makes the unique stresses of farming difficult to compartmentalize, Rice says. Those uncertainties are significant: Anything from a late-season frost to a shift in global commodity markets can affect the farm’s financial security.

(up left) Kathy Fahy, a longtime Rotarian, on her farm in Bancroft, Iowa. Farmers Tim Bernhard (left), a member of the Rotary Club of Bancroft Area, and Tony Heldorfer, Fahy’s brother.

(From left) Rotarians Tim and Carole Bernhard of the Rotary Club of Bancroft Area met up with Kathy Fahy and Katy Carey of the Rotary Club of Iowa Great Lakes (Spirit Lake) at an event to distribute goody bags with mental health resources.

A 2018 survey of young farmers and ranchers in the Midwest found that more than half of respondents met criteria for depression, and 71 percent showed signs of generalized anxiety disorder. The U.S. is not alone. In India, where climate change-driven weather extremes are diminishing harvests, about 30 farmers and farmworkers took their own lives every day in 2022.

But many farmers avoid talking about their struggles, a discomfort Rice attributes to a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality. “I never heard my grandpa say that he was stressed or that he was sad,” Rice says. “Even though it was apparent to all of us that he was struggling at times, he never vocalized that.”

That may be changing. As awareness of rural mental health issues grows, so does the number of initiatives to confront them, including funding through the 2018 federal farm bill to build out a network to support farmers through regional centers. Rice is optimistic this mosaic of efforts is making a difference. In a 2021 Farm Bureau poll, a majority of rural adults said there was still stigma around mental health in the agriculture community, but 92 percent of farmers and farmworkers felt comfortable talking with a friend or family member about mental health, an increase of 22 percent over 2019.

WHEN FARMERS DELIVERED corn and soybean harvests to local cooperatives in Dickinson County, Iowa, in 2022, many left with something unexpected: a goody bag. Each bag contained a cookie, a granola bar, a bottle of water, and a small card that read: “Work in Agriculture Can be Stressful. It’s Okay to Ask for Help.” On the other side was a QR code to access a list of local mental health resources.

That fall, 760 of the goody bags were distributed by the Rotary Club of Iowa Great Lakes (Spirit Lake), which was part of a coalition including local health providers, school officials, and county resource officials aiming to connect residents with mental health supports.

Farmers seemed like an obvious place to start, says Kathy Fahy, a longtime Rotarian who helped lead the effort. Fahy grew up on her family’s farm, about an hour’s drive from Spirit Lake, during the 1980s agriculture crisis when high debt rates and low crop prices forced hundreds of thousands of farms to shut down. She now runs the 800-acre soy and corn operation with her brother. Each season requires big investments of time and money to get started. This spring, the wet weather kept them waiting to get their crops in the ground. “The stresses of farming are real,” she says.

One day in 2005, Fahy’s mother — whom Fahy calls a “strong farm woman” — went missing. The next day, as community members gathered to help search the farm, Fahy’s mother tried to climb out of the loft door high up on the huge barn.

Fahy dashed into the barn and scrambled up hay bales to pull her mother back from the edge. When Fahy asked what she was doing, she responded she wanted to be with her mother, who had died months earlier. Fahy had no idea what a hard time her mother was having.

There is a culture of keeping quiet about emotional struggles among many farm families, Fahy says. “We had to get through to her that it’s OK to talk.”

Fahy’s mother got mental health treatment, which helped her process her grief and led the entire family to adopt a more open approach to emotional health. Those experiences helped inform the discreet approach the Iowa Great Lakes club took when reaching out to farmers. The club has since worked on other initiatives to connect people with mental health services, including events through schools. By starting conversations with young people, they hope the effects will ripple through families to reduce stigma. In the meantime, distributing goody bags from grain coops and farm machinery dealers offered a quiet way to get resources directly into the hands of farmers and farmworkers. “We didn’t want to scare people away,” says Fahy.

The QR code from the goody bags has been scanned about 200 times, connecting people with a website (letstalkdickinson.org) with information about symptoms of farm stress, links to resources like hotlines, and a guide to finding a mental health care provider.

GROWING ACCESS TO MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES has emerged as a priority for rural areas. Some states offer programs that make services free for farmers. Even so, finding providers can be a challenge. As of 2019, 70 percent of nonmetropolitan U.S. counties did not have a psychiatrist, and almost half did not have a psychologist.

Teletherapy is helping, according to Rice of MSU, which connects Michigan farmers to free online mental health services. The online sessions also help overcome stigma because they make meeting privately easy and don’t require taking time off to leave the farm.

Demand in Michigan has grown since the program started in 2020, when 20 people reached out. That climbed to 53 by 2022 and has held steady.

Another approach has been telephone hotlines, an effort funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In recent years, the Iowa Concern hotline has been expanded to serve 12 Midwestern states with around-the-clock support, as well as legal and financial resources, for farmers dealing with stress.

A postcard promoting mental health resources for rural agriculture workers.

Relationships with family and neighbors are also important. Farm stress initiatives have focused on training community members in basic mental health awareness.

Norlan Hinke, a financial specialist at Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, has distributed thousands of mental health pamphlets throughout Iowa. A Rotarian since 2004 and the District 6000 governor-elect, Hinke has spoken with Rotary clubs and incorporated the agriculture-focused campaign into the work of the district’s chapter of the Rotary Action Group on Mental Health Initiatives.

He has passed out information to people with jobs linked to agriculture, like veterinarians, bankers, and machinery suppliers because they are well-positioned to hear when farmers are struggling. One equipment dealer Hinke spoke with was enthusiastic to share the pamphlets about farm stress with his staff. “His salespeople told him they were spending as much time just listening and counseling as they did selling merchandising equipment,” Hinke says.

A YOUNG FARMER WAS GETTING READY to inherit the family farm. The person had been involved with farming and invested in farm equipment. But the parents, in their 70s, simply wouldn’t talk about a plan for the future.

The young farmer shared the stress caused by this precarious situation at an online “resiliency circle” event to help people in agriculture navigate farm transitions. Led by a counselor, 20 participants each month share their experiences and worries in writing and by speaking anonymously, without using video or identifying details. The sessions help people manage the practicalities of farm transitions and the complex accompanying emotions, like loss and grief.

While therapy appointments and crisis hotlines are important mental health options, says Monica McConkey, a Minnesota-based counselor who specializes in agriculture and leads the circles, these online support-group-like spaces can be more approachable. People listen in while driving a tractor or doing farm chores. “It’s a no-barrier option,” she says. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to pay anything.”

These resiliency circles are run by the Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture project of the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center. The project launched virtual “coffee chats” in 2019 to give farmers an outlet to talk among peers about problems. The resiliency circles — focused on farm transitions and the particular pressures facing women in farming — started in 2022. These programs have grown to reach nearly 900 participants, most of them women, from almost every U.S. state, five Canadian provinces, and multiple other countries. “There’s just not enough support in rural areas,” says Doris Mold, a Wisconsin dairy farmer who co-leads the Cultivating Resiliency project. “So we’re just trying to offer additional services.”

Scenes from Kathy Fahy’s farm.

Wind turbines can provide farmers with a steady source of income.

Peer support can also be more comfortable for farmers than speaking with mental health providers, who don’t always understand the pressures and lifestyle of farmers. Mold has heard of counselors advising dairy farmers that they should take a few weeks off work, a near impossibility for a farm operator. Cultivating Resiliency programs fill the gaps. One woman told Mold the program had “saved her life.”

Efforts to support farmers are also looking beyond symptoms of stress to address root causes. Another organization that focuses on women in farming, Annie’s Project, offers courses that teach skills in managing farm finances and marketing. The program has proven particularly valuable for the networks it builds among women farmers, according to Karisha Devlin, who co-leads Annie’s Project with Mold.

Devlin, a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Knox County in Missouri, says those relationships help farmers navigate stressful situations. “Being able to make those connections and have that peer group is really powerful for women,” Devlin says.

MSU Extension also aims to address the deeper causes of stress, offering links to teletherapy alongside guides to farm budgeting and strategies to manage aspects of extreme weather, like harvesting frost-damaged soybeans. Rice often gives suicide prevention presentations at more general gatherings, like farm succession planning events or Farm Bureau meetings. Intertwining mental health and farm resources makes people more likely to engage.

For some farmers, addressing the root causes of stress can mean finding other ways of bringing in income. The expansion of renewable energy across the Midwest has offered some farmers opportunities to establish a steady cash flow by siting wind turbines on their land.

Around 2009, when the Michigan utility Consumers Energy was looking for wind turbine locations in Mason County, Ralph Lundberg signed up his family’s farm, which he had run since 1980.

“We’re not gamblers,” Lundberg says. “But this spring between the seed corn and the herbicide and the fertilizer, we’re going to put $150,000 in the ground and then sit back and wait and hope we get enough rain, enough sunshine for the crops to be raised.

“So in that sense, we are gamblers.”

But Lundberg also has five turbines on his land that generate an annual royalty of $10,000 to $25,000. The income just about covers the property tax bills.

Diversifying income is not always easy or cheap for farmers, says Rudolphi of the University of Illinois. But such opportunities for stable cash flow can reduce the pressures. “It’s providing some consistent income that a lot of farm families have never known,” she says.

The Harmses, in Wisconsin, have settled into life without their dairy cows. The beef cattle they raise now are less labor intensive, and they sell the meat directly from their farm, giving them more financial control than they had in the milk commodity market. Their oldest daughter and her husband are preparing to take over the farm.

And Farmer Angel Network’s influence has grown. Not only is the group reaching farm families across the county through events including ice cream socials and county farm breakfasts but it’s also inspiring mental health networks in other places. Another chapter launched recently in northwest Wisconsin. These grassroots networks build connections and a sense of belonging. “There’s room for everybody in this,” says Rudolphi, “and we need everybody in this.”

This story is a collaboration between Rotary magazine and Reasons to be Cheerful, a nonprofit solutions journalism outlet.

This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/seeds-hope-farmers-mental-health

Gala dinners and donor forums underscore the transformative power of contributions to The Rotary Foundation

2025-05-22T12:10:00.000+02:00

Gala dinners and donor forums underscore the transformative power of contributions to The Rotary Foundation

By Etelka Lehoczky

Rotary International President Stephanie A. Urchick delivers a celebratory toast at the Inspiration of Hope Dinner, which honors active and substantial Foundation donors.

Arch Klumph Society members from Taiwan enjoy a cocktail reception just before the Unity Ball.

Arch Klumph Society honorees Alla O. Lubin (left) and Abbie Engelstoft (right) attend The Rotary Foundation Unity Ball, the annual gala dinner celebrating the collective impact of Arch Klumph Society and Legacy Society members.

Aidan O’Leary of the World Health Organization discusses Rotary’s work toward polio eradication and the importance of effective global partnerships. He is joined by Rotary Foundation Trustee and Past RI President Jennifer Jones, End Polio Now Coordinator Stella Anyangwe, and host Amanda Drury.

Danz People open The Rotary Foundation Donor Summit with a performance that honors the Singaporean culture of the 2024 Rotary International Convention’s host city.

Donors who fund much of Rotary’s work around the world gathered during the 2024 Rotary International Convention to connect with others, get updates about the programs they make possible, and celebrate the impact of those efforts. Donors planning to attend the 2025 convention in Calgary, Canada, can anticipate a similar array of events.

“Whether your interests focus on education and scholarships, health initiatives, or clean water programs, Rotary has the knowledge and infrastructure to turn your philanthropic dreams into reality,” 2023-24 Rotary Foundation Trustee Chair Barry Rassin said at The Rotary Foundation Donor Summit, held on 27 May in Singapore. With more than 1,600 registrants, the Summit is the largest annual gathering of Foundation donors.

Other events included The Rotary Foundation Unity Ball and the Inspiration of Hope Dinner. In addition, two Arch Klumph Society ceremonies honored 18 new or elevated members from 11 countries for their contributions of US$250,000 or more to the Foundation. These special ceremonies are often a highlight of a donor’s Foundation giving.

“Our members are implementing a wide variety of projects all over the world, based on local community needs,” Rassin said. “Our seven areas of focus are all interconnected, allowing for thoughtful, holistic solutions to some of the most pressing global issues. It is the impact of your collective efforts that allows Rotary to continuously strengthen this work.”

Rotary donors can have a significant impact on the world, said Rotary Foundation Trustee Chair-elect and Past RI President Holger Knaack. By making global grants from the Foundation possible, donors help bring about substantial change.

“We are all here today because we firmly believe that we can change the world — and not on a small scale but, together with our Rotary Foundation, on a large scale. Together, we can create the future that we want to see,” Knaack said. “Our global grants bring lasting change for the betterment of people’s lives. This is what makes our projects so powerful.”

The program for the donor summit also featured a panel discussion about Rotary’s work against polio, a key priority for four decades. It featured Aidan O’Leary, the World Health Organization’s director for polio eradication, and was hosted by Amanda Drury, a news anchor with CNBC from Sydney, Australia.

“Rotary members around the world are truly helping to write the story of polio eradication, a story marked by milestones and steady progress,” Drury said. “In fact, this year marks one decade since the [World Health Organization’s] South-East Asia Region was certified polio-free. This region includes India, once thought to be the country that would be the last to finish the job.”

The panel also included Rotary Foundation Trustee and Past RI President Jennifer Jones, a member of the Rotary Club of Windsor-Roseland in Ontario, Canada, and Past District Governor Stella Anyangwe, an epidemiologist and member of the Rotary Club of Pretoria West, South Africa.

The next day featured two gala dinners. The Rotary Foundation Unity Ball was held at Gardens by the Bay, Singapore’s celebrated nature park, and honored Arch Klumph Society and Legacy Society members. The annual event is named for the Unity Building, where the first Rotary club meeting was held on 23 February 1905 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The Inspiration of Hope Dinner, held at the Hilton Singapore Orchard, welcomed Level 4 Major Donors, Level 5 and 6 Bequest Society members, and donors who elevated their giving or commitment levels in 2023-24.

Registration for similar events at the 2025 Rotary International Convention in Calgary will open later this year.

Learn more about The Rotary Foundation and how you can become an Arch Klumph Society member, Major Donor, or Bequest Society member.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/donors-impact-celebrated-special-events-during-2024-rotary-international-convention

Global partnership a dream come true for clean water advocate

2025-05-22T12:04:00.003+02:00

Global partnership a dream come true for clean water advocate

By Arnold R. Grahl

“I was always impressed with the passion Rotarians have,” Lis Bernhardt says.

Image credit: Sarah Waiswa

Few people could have been more thrilled than Lis Bernhardt, a former Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, when Rotary and the UN Environment Programme announced a joint initiative this year to empower Rotary members to protect, restore, and sustain local bodies of water with technical guidance from UNEP experts.

A program officer for UNEP, Bernhardt spent five years moving the idea for Community Action for Fresh Water forward through leadership changes at both organizations. After the agreement was revealed during Rotary’s International Assembly in January, she posted on her LinkedIn page: “A professional dream has come true.” (Read about Bernhardt’s experience in her own words on Rotary’s blog.)

“Rotary has been a huge part of my working for the United Nations,” she later explained. “To be able to give back to Rotary, close that loop, and connect in a global partnership is super exciting.”

Bernhardt has held multiple positions in international development since her Rotary-supported studies at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland in 2000-02. Her work has often focused on the overlap between development and the environment. As a program officer for UN-Water in New York in 2015, she essentially “held the pen” for the UN’s sustainable development goal 6, which is to ensure the availability and management of clean water and sanitation systems. Many of her roles have had one thing in common: water.

That may have something to do with a chance encounter midway through her Rotary scholarship that altered her career trajectory.

Bernhardt arrived in Geneva sponsored by the Rotary Club of Valparaiso, Indiana, in her hometown. With her undergraduate degree in international studies from Northwestern University near Chicago, she intended to focus on conflict resolution and the rights of minorities.

As an intern with UN Volunteers during the summer between her first and second year, she was part of a program where nongovernmental organizations and other civil society groups in developing countries could apply for online volunteer assistance for projects like building a website, translating documents, or writing a funding proposal. Her job was to vet applications, including one from the Navajo Nation in the United States.

“Their request met all of our qualifications,” she recalls. “They clearly needed access to education. They had issues with drinking water and sanitation. They were a disadvantaged group and a minority. They met all the criteria, except that they were in the U.S.,” which disqualified the group.

Lis Bernhardt

Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, 2000-01
Master’s in international affairs, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland, 2002
MBA, Henley Business School, England, 2012
Though the group’s application was rejected, its plight stuck with her. She remained in contact and visited the Navajo Nation. The example became the basis for her master’s thesis that explored the disconnect between the environmental and socioeconomic tracks of development.
“In the end, all of their issues were environmental. I saw how conditions in the environment underpin all other development issues,” she says. “That’s where I shifted my thinking. Every job I have had since has been in the environmental sphere.”
After short stints with Amnesty International and as a consultant for UN Volunteers, Bernhardt joined the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change in Bonn, Germany, serving as a program officer and head of external relations. In 2009, she took a job with a UN-Water program in Bonn and later moved to UN-Water’s office in New York where she contributed to writing the sustainable development goals on water and sanitation.
As influential as that work was, she began to get an itch for the implementation side “to help make these sustainable goals a reality.” Moving to Kenya in 2016, she joined the Freshwater Ecosystems Unit at UNEP. It was there in 2018 that she was part of the reception for a Rotary International delegation, including incoming President Barry Rassin, that was exploring a partnership. Wheels were already in motion for the environment to become one of Rotary’s areas of focus.
“A couple of us, including Dan Cooney, our head of communications who was a Rotary Peace Fellow, were largely responsible for driving the idea of a partnership on our end forward,” Bernhardt recalls. “We had both been involved with Rotary and knew what a relationship could look like.”
up: Lis Bernhardt at Lake Geneva, Switzerland. down: Bernhardt and a colleague crossing the Congo River from Brazzaville to Kinshasa for a project to preserve the carbon stores in basin peatlands. Courtesy of Lis Bernhardt

After many conversations, Bernhardt’s bosses at UNEP wanted to collect data before ironing out an agreement. Bernhardt got together with Joe Otin, then Rotary’s representative to UNEP, and together they launched a pilot project, called Adopt a River for Sustainable Development, in District 9212 covering Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan. Bernhardt and her colleagues worked with Rotary members in 20 clubs as they “adopted” nine rivers to collect garbage, catalog pollution information, hold community engagement events, and meet with responsible parties to discuss solutions. They performed a type of research known as citizen science, driving the creation of a long-range plan for each river.

Looking back, Bernhardt credits her scholarship year with her desire to work with Rotary members. “That year, I met with Rotarians in a lot of clubs, and it was just like talking with the club back in Valparaiso. I was always impressed with the passion Rotarians have, the fact that they are all over the world and that they want to do good for their communities.”

She remains enthusiastic about the partnership’s potential.

“Water is so valuable to everything we do,” she says. “Not a day goes by that we don’t use fresh water in some way. We drink it to live. It is embedded in the food we grow. It makes our industry go. It is essential for every kind of energy we use. Water is so present and so essential in all these processes.”

This story originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/global-partnership-dream-come-true-clean-water-advocate

Media literacy is crucial for healthy societies. Rotary members are teaching people to think critically about what they see and read

2025-05-22T11:59:00.003+02:00

Media literacy is crucial for healthy societies. Rotary members are teaching people to think critically about what they see and read

By Etelka Lehoczky

The first day at a new school can be disorienting for any teenager. But your first day at Virginia Hall High School is even stranger than most. Your grandfather claims he used to be a spy, your sister accuses some students of locking her in a closet, and everyone says a monster is stalking the hallways.

What is happening? Is any of this true? Instead of rushing off to fight the monster, you read about the weird recent events in the school newspaper. You ask yourself: Do these sources provide multiple pieces of evidence for their claims? Could they possibly be earning money because of what they’re saying? Do their stories cast a negative light on people who disagree with them?

You ask all these questions because you’re actually playing a video game designed to increase your media literacy. Co-created by Anahita Dalmia, a member of the Rotary Club of Newport Beach, California, USA, the game Agents of Influence is being developed to help 11- to 13-year-olds think critically about what they see on social media and in the news.

“We’re teaching kids to understand media bias, logical fallacies, and confirmation bias. We teach things like reading closely — tools you can use to determine what to trust online,” says Dalmia, the founder and CEO of game developer Alterea Inc.

Experts interviewed for this story recommended several nonpartisan fact-checking sites. Here are a few:

PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize-winning site run by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit school for journalists
Full Fact, a London, England-based factchecking site
Snopes, a source of information on urban legends and online rumors since 1994
FactCheck.org, a nonprofit project of the Annenberg Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, USA
Dalmia, a third-generation Rotarian, says the game’s approach was inspired partly by Rotary’s Four-Way Test.
“The first question is, ‘Is it the truth?’ And there’s a reason that’s the first question,” Dalmia says. “If it’s not the truth, you cannot make a strong judgment call based on any of the other questions, because you’re starting on an unstable foundation.”
“An unstable foundation” is one way to describe the current state of the media landscape. Experts say we’re exposed to far more media than ever before. That includes both misinformation (unintentional untruths) and disinformation (deliberate falsehoods meant to mislead people). Although many outlets are responsible and credible, figuring out what to believe can take time and effort.
“Before the internet, if I went to get a newspaper, it was run by journalists for whom truth was an important standard. Of course newspapers were biased. But today, people who want to believe things just post stuff,” says Alan Dennis, a professor of internet systems at Indiana University.
“There are active disinformation campaigns by foreign governments designed to influence voters in democratic countries. The actors have become much more sophisticated, and they have learned quite a bit about what messaging works.”
People are aware of this problem, and they say they want to become savvier about the media they consume. A study released this year found that about seven in 10 Americans were interested in learning how to better distinguish between true and false information online. But media literacy is more than just separating fact from fiction.
“We need to be able to judge things like, ‘What’s the bias behind it? Who created it? Who’s benefiting from it?’ So there’s not a simple fix here,” says Jeff Share, a lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a co-author of “The Critical Media Literacy Guide.” “We need to slow down and investigate. It might mean it’s going to take me a couple more minutes, but I can go to some different sources. I can also recognize that some are more legitimate than others.”
Training storytellers
Many people believe that ideological biases and financial interests guide major news outlets’ coverage, says global grant scholar Alex Freeman, who is pursuing a master’s degree in global media and communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
“It’s one of the big reasons that people have turned against media, but I think it’s an overcorrection,” Freeman says. “A lot of people have turned to independent journalists who are more willing to incorporate their own personal experience into their reporting. But without a traditional media apparatus — without standard practices for ensuring accuracy — it’s hard to know who’s trustworthy.”
Still, independent voices can be crucial in places where media organizations lack funding or are restricted by repressive governments. When Rotary Peace Fellow Thomas Sithole realized his hometown in Zimbabwe was ignored by major media outlets, he launched a community radio station. Then he founded the Zimbabwe Centre for Media and Information Literacy to teach people to think more critically and tell their own stories effectively. He believes the two skills are intertwined.
“We tell citizens how to arm themselves against disinformation and misinformation,” he says. The Centre also trains citizen journalists and other content creators, teaching skills like fact-checking and ensuring balance in a story.
“We’re trying to build a movement across the region, because we see that there is no appetite from our governments to push for policies that support media and information literacy among citizens,” Sithole says.
The threat of artificial intelligence
Even as he trains an army of storytellers, Sithole worries that the arrival of artificial intelligence will make it easier to create and spread disinformation.
“For unsuspecting citizens, it’s creating a lot of challenges,” he says. “It becomes very difficult now to tell whether a piece of content is true or false, especially if it’s in the form of videos or images. It’s something that is really a challenge even to the professional journalist.”
Some believe the key is educating younger media consumers. Erin McNeill meets many students through her job as CEO of the U.S.-based nonprofit Media Literacy Now, and she’s heartened by what she finds. “AI is definitely making it harder to identify good and credible sources,” McNeill says. But she says people can use the same skills to analyze human-generated and AI-generated content.
“Young people are so creative and smart. We’re educating them so they can rise to the challenge,” she says. “They’re going to find solutions as long as they’re given the skills and the education they need.”
The same belief animates Dalmia as she continues to develop and promote Agents of Influence. She has presented the game to numerous Rotary clubs and hopes Rotarians will encourage their local schools to use it. “This started as a passion project, but there was a huge demand from parents who were concerned about how social media was shaping their kids’ perspectives and interactions with the outside world,” Dalmia says. “The resounding feedback we’ve gotten is, ‘Can I have this for my kid who thinks TikTok is a reliable source of information?’”
Learn about Rotary’s work to support education and promote peace.

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https://www.rotary.org/en/beyond-truth-vs-fiction-media

President-elect sees Rotary’s Action Plan as key to a vibrant future

2025-05-15T14:26:00.004+02:00

President-elect sees Rotary’s Action Plan as key to a vibrant future

Leaders from Rotary’s 518 districts worldwide gathered in Orlando, Florida, USA, on 7-11 January for the 2024 International Assembly, which helps prepare and inspire the governors-elect for the year ahead. The annual training is focused on how to increase Rotary’s impact and relevance, and it provides innovative ways to keep membership strong, vibrant, and growing. Rotary magazine recently spoke with Urchick about her vision for the 2024-25 Rotary year.

Interview by Diana Schoberg

It’s late October at One Rotary Center, one of those autumn days that feels like summer, a last blast of warmth before the Chicago-area weather abruptly shifts. In less than a week, on Halloween, nearly an inch of snow will fall.

Luckily, Rotary President-elect Stephanie Urchick isn’t one to wither in the face of change. Instead, she embraces it. On the bookshelf in her office at Rotary headquarters, among the club directories and banners, the commemorative plates and plaques, and — surprise! — even some real books, there is a wooden sign adorned with multicolored leaves that reads, “Fall is proof that change is beautiful.”

“It’s the same reason I like butterflies,” explains Urchick. “They start out in little cocoons and don’t look like much, but then they burst out and become a beautiful creature.”

Urchick, who wears an Action Plan pin this day on her black quilted jacket, champions the Rotary plan as a guide for Rotary clubs hoping to undergo a similar metamorphosis. “I’m all about helping clubs look for ways to change their culture so they become simply irresistible,” she says. “If you look at our worldwide numbers, there’s something like 150,000 people who come into Rotary every year, but there are 160,000 who leave. What that says to me is that some people are not finding value in their club experience. They’re not really leaving Rotary; they’re leaving a Rotary club. We need to get clubs to examine what’s happening.”

A member of the Rotary Club of McMurray, Pennsylvania, Urchick joined Rotary in 1991 and was quickly drawn to the work of The Rotary Foundation. As a new member, she heard about Rotary’s work to eradicate polio and became intrigued. She became the Foundation chair for her club and then for her district. Later, at the zone level, she served as a regional Rotary Foundation coordinator, focusing on fund development, and in 2012-14, she was a Rotary Foundation trustee at the international level. “There are so many great things that Rotary clubs do, and much of it is because they have worked through the Foundation,” she says.

As fall teetered between summer and winter, Urchick sat down with Rotary magazine senior staff writer Diana Schoberg to talk about her past and Rotary’s future.

You’ll be the second woman to serve as president of Rotary. Should we even be making that distinction anymore?

From my perspective, no. It’s about being the best leader for the time. However, I also recognize that people, especially women, will look to the position of Rotary president, and if they see a woman, they’ll say, “Wow, if that’s somebody who could do it, maybe I could do it too.”

I’ll also be one of only a few Rotary presidents who have been single while in office. Lots of people come up to me and say, “I’m single too, and it’s so great that you’re in the position.” To me, having a spouse does not determine whether you’re qualified for this role. But again, it does mean a lot to people to see someone in this position who looks like them or who has the same life status as they do.

It’s like another element of diversity. Do you think the view of diversity at Rotary has shifted over the past few years?

Diversity has always been one of our core values. But I think the way we’ve measured diversity has definitely changed. Today it means so much more than it did 40 years ago when we were an all-male organization. For instance, we now ask people to look at their community and see if their Rotary club mirrors that community. That could mean all kinds of things. It could be age; it could be gender; it could be religion or political affiliation. It could include things like a different perspective, the fact that people think differently. If your club mirrors the community, then you really have a handle on the future. And if it doesn’t, you have an opportunity.

You became a Rotary member in 1991, shortly after women were allowed to join. Why did you join and why did you stay?

Well, I was recently divorced. And when you are married, you tend to do a lot of things together. You go out to dinner together, you go on vacation together, and so on. I suddenly didn’t have that. Much like Rotary founder Paul Harris, I was looking for ways to meet new people. A woman walked into my office and asked me about going to a Rotary club meeting with her. I didn’t know anything about Rotary, but when she talked about the service and the internationality, I got interested. So I went, and I ended up joining.

Originally for me, it was about the fellowship. I wanted to meet new people. And I did; I met all kinds of people. But I also immediately got involved in service activities. By the fourth meeting, I was doing the newsletter, so I was already doing club service. That club was active in Rotary Youth Exchange and Group Study Exchange and Rotary Foundation grants. It was all amazing to me. So like most people, it was the service that kept me engaged in Rotary.

Why did you want to become Rotary president — and what makes you the right leader for the organization right now?

Becoming Rotary’s president was never really on my radar screen. I’ve served Rotary in so many different ways over the 30-plus years I’ve been a member. A special opportunity that really shaped my thinking was chairing the Strategic Planning Committee. We had the chance to look at the organization’s strengths and weaknesses and reach out to the Rotary and non-Rotary world to get information about what people thought would move us into a thriving future.

Rotary had had the same meeting model for decades. We met four times a month; we rang the bell; we took attendance, etc. Clearly the world had changed, but we hadn’t. We really needed to catch up! Now we have e-clubs and passport clubs and satellite clubs and corporate clubs, all different opportunities for people to come into Rotary and to serve.

I started to look at all of that, and I realized that we are positioned to move into a thriving future. That’s what really propelled me to put my name forward. I truly believe that if Rotary districts and clubs use the Action Plan, we can thrive. It’s a future where there are many more Rotary members involved in service and fellowship.

What skills from your past professional life will you lean on as president?

I have a background in three different fields. I sang with a band when I was in college and for a few years after that. I had the experience of getting on stage and inspiring people, getting them to dance and have fun. It may sound simple, but it really did develop a set of skills. My second career was in higher education. I worked in college and university settings. For much of that time, I was helping students find careers and jobs. It was both fulfilling and eye-opening. My third career was as a self-employed person at my consulting and business development firm. I did a little bit of training and a whole lot of business development. I don’t think there’s any skill that we leave behind. They all become part of your package.

What was your band name?

The Harmoneers.

Will there be any Harmoneers music playing as you arrive onstage at any events?

No, I don’t think so. I hope they’ll be playing Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible.”

You used that phrase earlier: “simply irresistible.” Is there a significance to it?

That’s what I want Rotary to be: simply irresistible. I’m hoping Rotary and Rotaract clubs will be simply irresistible to community members who have a heart for service and fellowship. They will use the Action Plan to assess where they are and figure out where they need to go. Hopefully the outcome is clubs that are more attractive and will retain more people.

Every club is different. There’s not a cookbook that we can give to clubs and say, “Do this and you’re going to be fine.” Every club develops its own culture. Country to country, Rotary is done differently. You can have Rotary clubs in the same district that are very different. We need every club to take a moment, do an assessment, and look at the four priorities of the Action Plan. Then they must ask themselves, Is there something we can do a little differently, or are we already doing the best we can in this or that category? If you’re already irresistible, then stay that way. But we have to attract people to our existing clubs, and we have to start new clubs. That’s the way to grow Rotary and to have a future.

What’s your theme, and how did you come up with it?

It’s simply The Magic of Rotary. People can put any verb they want in front of it. Believe in the magic of Rotary. Spread the magic of Rotary. Build on the magic of Rotary. Celebrate the magic of Rotary. There are all kinds of words that we can use.

It came from a visit to the Dominican Republic. We were helping install a water filter in a home where a grandmother, a mother, and three little boys lived. We assembled the water filter and then put dirty water in it so that the family could see that it came out clean. The women learned how to use the filter, and we were getting ready to leave when one of the children grabbed my sleeve and said, “Show me that magic again.” That caught me, and I thought: It is magic. We’re helping create a change in their lives.

What will be your priorities as president, and why did you choose them?

Advancing the Action Plan to grow membership is at the top of my list. I love this organization, just like every member of Rotary whom I meet. I want Rotary to have a future.

My second priority is healing a divided world through Positive Peace. There are several ways to get involved. If everyone would live The Four-Way Test instead of just reciting it, we would have a more peaceful world. I hope clubs will rally around The Four-Way Test and use it in creative ways. And there is the peace pole project: Clubs can have peace poles erected in their local park, town square, or college campus. The message of peace on the poles is a visible sign to the community that Rotary is a peacebuilding organization. Additionally, Rotary has a Positive Peace Academy, which is an online activity. Any Rotary member or non-Rotary member can take the time to go through that. And our Rotary Peace Centers are powerful activators in changing lives. We’re opening a new peace center in the Middle East, in Istanbul. In February 2025, we will have a peace conference at that location.

My final priority will be continuity. That means two things: all of us in leadership positions working with our predecessors and those who follow us. It also means looking at the things that clubs have rallied around and things that have taken root. Just because a president leaves office doesn’t mean that you should drop a successful program. What would have happened if Rotary had abandoned its efforts to eradicate polio after Clem Renouf or James Bomar were no longer president?

One of your favorite mantras is “life is more interesting on the other side of yes.” Can you talk about that?

Usually what I tell people is: “Say yes, and then just figure it out.” “Hey, do you want to be newsletter editor?” “Yes.” “Hey, do you want to be president?” “Yes.” “Hey, do you want to do this?” “Yes.” The only time I say no is if I follow it up with the word “problem.” No problem. Life gives you so many opportunities. Say yes to them. You’ll have time to figure out what to do next.

This story will appear in the February 2024 issue of Rotary magazine

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https://www.rotary.org/en/simply-irresistible-q-and-a-stephanie-urchick

Rotary International is launching a new peace center at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey.

2025-05-15T14:23:00.002+02:00

Rotary International is launching a new peace center at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey.

By Etelka Lehoczky

Bahçeşehir University

Next month, Rotary International and administrators at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey, will begin recruiting fellowship candidates for a new peace center opening at the university. The Otto and Fran Walter Rotary Peace Center will offer experienced peacebuilders based in the Middle East and North Africa the opportunity to complete a one-year professional development certificate program, earning postgraduate diplomas in peace and development studies.

“The center will bring together peacemakers from across the Middle East and North Africa — people with different backgrounds and viewpoints, but who share common goals — and provide them with the resources and experiences needed to work together to promote peace within the region,” says Martha Peak Helman, a trustee of The Rotary Foundation and president of the Otto and Fran Walter Foundation. The Walter Foundation donated US$15.5 million to fund the center’s operations and fellowships for up to 40 students per year in perpetuity.

Rotary International offers emerging leaders in peace and development from around the world the opportunity to learn and grow at its peace centers. The centers are located at universities with well-established programs in peace studies, conflict resolution, and international development.

The curriculum of the newest Rotary Peace Center will address issues that are particularly relevant in the Middle East and North Africa: land disputes, climate change, food insecurity, refugee integration, and economic and community development. Fellows will also attend seminars and workshops offered by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research through CIFAL Istanbul, the UN’s international training center for local leaders and organizations, located at the university. The fellows will then implement a nine-month social change project in the region and present their work at a capstone seminar.

“The university’s unique partnership with the UN Institute for Training and Research, and its focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, will offer Rotary Peace Fellows from the region an opportunity to receive high-level training that is aligned with Rotary’s mission,” says Rotary Peace Centers Manager Laura Descher. “Their fellowship teaches them to use innovative policy and advocacy tools to address issues that drive conflict, and to adapt what they learn to their local contexts.”

The center’s academic director, Esra Albayrakoğlu, says its regional focus will be one of the keys to its success. “As the discipline of conflict management has given way to conflict transformation, bottom-up approaches based on finding local solutions to local problems more effectively address the root causes of conflicts,” she adds.

Bahçeşehir University, also known as BAU, is a private university with a global presence. One of the leading higher education institutions in Turkey, it has nearly 30,000 students from more than 125 countries. The peace center will be located on the university’s Future Campus , recently built in the suburbs of Istanbul. The peace fellows will live at the campus during the 10-week residential portion of the program and will have access to a spacious library, a study room, medical and fitness facilities, and other services.

“Fellows will have the opportunity to learn about various refugee communities, participate in sustainable development practices, visit areas affected by disasters, interact with nongovernmental organizations, and attend events reflecting the region’s cultural mosaic,” Albayrakoğlu says. “Bahçeşehir University represents the multiculturalism and spirit of hospitality that is so prevalent in Turkey. The university stands out as a microcosm of the Middle East and North Africa, hosting many students from this region and its environs.”

In February 2021, The Rotary Foundation Trustees gratefully accepted a record-breaking US$15.5 million pledge from the Otto and Fran Walter Foundation to establish a new peace center in the Middle East and North Africa region. This gift is allowing the Foundation to make progress toward its longtime goal of expanding the Rotary Peace Centers program to cover key geographic regions. In January 2023, the Trustees approved Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey, to host the peace center and authorized the Foundation to proceed with a partnership agreement.

Applications for Rotary Peace Fellowships at all centers, including at BAU, will be accepted 1 February through 15 May. The fellows will be selected in November and begin their studies in early 2025. To be eligible for the fellowship at BAU, candidates must either be from the Middle East or North Africa, have worked in the region, work elsewhere with communities or initiatives connected to the region, or demonstrate strong interest in learning about peacebuilding approaches in the region. The fellowships will pay for tuition and fees, room and board, round-trip transportation to the university, and internship and field study expenses.

Rotary members in the region will play a crucial role in supporting the new center by encouraging peacebuilders from their communities to apply for the fellowship. Rotary members in Turkey will welcome peace fellows to the campus and help them become oriented to the Istanbul area.

“With clubs working together around the world to support community projects locally and globally, Rotary’s heart is in creating peace, goodwill, and friendship,” says John F. Germ, a past president of Rotary International and a member of the Rotary Peace Center Search Committee. “Our peace fellows learn to support community development programs that create environments for peace. Rotary’s partnership with Bahçeşehir University will enhance these efforts not only in the Middle East and North Africa but around the world.”

Based at premier universities, Rotary’s peace centers, which now total seven, offer fully funded master’s degree or professional development certificate programs. They have graduated more than 1,700 fellows, who now work in more than 140 countries. Many program alumni serve as leaders in governments, nongovernmental organizations, educational institutions, and international organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank. Each year, The Rotary Foundation awards up to 50 fellowships for master’s degrees and up to 80 for certificate studies.

“This new peace center builds on Rotary’s long history of working for peace,” says Bill Boyd, a past president of Rotary International and the chair of the Rotary Peace Center Search Committee. “We will not solve every problem, but we will make a difference through the many peace fellows who will become catalysts for peace across the region.”

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/new-rotary-peace-center-open-turkey

Rotary projects around the globe

2025-05-15T14:19:00.003+02:00

Rotary projects around the globe

February 2024

By Brad Webber

United States

Rotary clubs in the ski resort towns of Park City, Utah, and Breckenridge, Colorado, have a friendly rivalry for the longest “shot ski” — a ski affixed to shot glasses that people raise together to down whiskey at the same time. In October, the Rotary Club of Park City Sunrise recaptured the crown as 1,363 people lined a street to drink rye whiskey (or apple cider) in unison from hundreds of shot skis held end to end. The event raised more than $43,000 for grants to assist community organizations, club member Connie Nelson says. She concedes that she and fellow club member Mike Luers were inspired by the Colorado club during a “reconnaissance” tour of successful winter resorts. “Their main street was closed for a festival. I looked at Mike and he looked at me and we said, ‘We can beat that,’” she says. The festive affair is “branding for our Rotary club,” Nelson adds. “We not only sell out but we have people on a waiting list to try to get on the line. It’s not just to sample the alcohol. It’s about the getting together, the unique community sharing.”

Honduras

Nearly 40 percent of adolescents are not in secondary school in Honduras, where educational achievement scores are low. The Rotary clubs of Tegucigalpa Sur and Peterborough, Ontario, teamed up to address the issue. In 2018 the clubs, which have collaborated on projects before, constructed a teacher training center in the municipality of Lepaterique and supplied books and other learning materials. Most recently, the clubs partnered with a nonprofit organization and the country’s Ministry of Education to provide literacy training to primary school teachers. “Sixteen-hour workshops are being held on a rotating basis with 160 teachers” representing 62 schools, says Marie Press, a member of the Peterborough club. “The feedback has been incredibly positive.”

England

For its centennial project, the Rotary Club of Halifax built a scenic overlook above the town on an ancient road and footpath known as the Magna Via. Illustrated panels identify landmarks such as Wainhouse Tower, Borough Market, Square Church spire, the Halifax gibbet (a replica of the 16th century precursor to the guillotine), and the Town Hall, designed by Sir Charles Barry, architect of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. QR codes link to descriptions of the landmarks on the club website. “The views are magnificent and span the horizon,” says Ken Robertshaw, a past governor of District 1040. The $25,000 project, dedicated in late June, was funded by sponsoring businesses and individual donors, including Robertshaw, who contributed in honor of his late wife, Pauline. The Town Council agreed to maintain the overlook. “Given the history of the site, it seemed like an appropriate place for us to build something that celebrates the rich heritage of the town,” Robertshaw says.

Sri Lanka

All the world’s a stage for young Sri Lankan thespians who, with their Rotarian supporters, take their Shakespeare seriously. For nearly five decades, tens of thousands of them have participated in the All Island Inter-School Shakespeare Drama Competition. Known as the “Shakes,” last year’s contest, held in September and organized by the Rotary Club of Colombo North and the Colombo YMCA, included more than 1,000 students. The ensembles performed 30-minute scenes that organizers chose from eight plays. “They are judged mainly on acting, and marks are also allocated for direction, teamwork, and effects,” Club President Lasika Jayamaha says. Rotaractors assisted with front of house and backstage roles. “The competition has been a springboard for thousands of young people across the island” to careers in acting, directing, and media, Jayamaha says. Adding to the shine, the coveted rotating trophy is a silver bust of Shakespeare that was a gift from the mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of the Bard.

Senegal

The Rotary Clubs of Dakar-Soleil and West Chester, Pennsylvania, celebrated a milestone last year in their project to drill for water in three villages in Senegal. Despite delays during the pandemic and “several difficult months searching for water on the part of the construction company,” productive boreholes were drilled in July and August in the southeastern Kédougou region, reports Samuel Lowry, a member of the Rotary Club of Greater Huntsville, Alabama, who assisted with the project. Three of five planned pumps are now in use providing potable water, Lowry says. A $130,000 global grant supported the project. Funds were also raised online during the pandemic. A project Facebook page yielded contributions as well as comments like “How can we get one of these where we are?”

This story originally appeared in the February 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

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https://www.rotary.org/en/rotary-projects-around-globe-february-2024

A Rotary Peace Center intends to strengthen peacebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa

2025-05-15T14:14:00.005+02:00

A Rotary Peace Center intends to strengthen peacebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa

By Jason Keyser

Left: Turkey has been home to the largest population of refugees in the world in recent years, including more than 3.7 million people fleeing the war in neighboring Syria, like those at Suruç camp, seen here in 2014. Image credit: Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo. Right: Istanbul, home to the newest Rotary Peace Center, has been a crossroads of cultures since antiquity. Image credit: Ozgur Donmaz/Getty Images.

When government officials in Saudi Arabia went looking several years ago for someone who could help establish mediation and conflict resolution as a pillar of the kingdom’s judicial reforms, they ran into a problem. “This was a bit sad to hear, but they said they couldn’t find an expert in the field who could speak Arabic,” recalls Sherif Elnegahy. Fortunately, Elnegahy, a Rotary Peace Fellow from Egypt, had just co-authored a book on the topic — in Arabic — and it caught the eye of the justice minister himself. The Saudis had found their expert.

One of about 100 peace fellow alumni working in the Middle East or North Africa, Elnegahy has expertise that is in high demand in a region with a tremendous need for peacebuilders. Elnegahy, who completed his fellowship in 2016 at the former Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, remembers calling out the need for such a center in the Middle East on his program feedback form. Now, he has reason to celebrate. This month, after years of planning, Rotary is announcing its newest peace center partnership, with Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul. “It’s a dream coming true,” he says.

The certificate program will train peacebuilders who are from or have worked in the region, or who do related work elsewhere in the world. “This new peace center builds on Rotary’s long history of working for peace,” says 2006-07 Rotary President Bill Boyd, chair of the search committee for the site. “We will not solve every problem, but we will make a difference through the many peace fellows who will become catalysts for peace across the region.”

The Istanbul center is another step forward in Rotary’s plan to establish a total of four certificate programs by 2030 in Africa, the Middle East or North Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The program at Bahçeşehir (pronounced BAH’-che-sheh-hir) is the second of those after the center at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, which welcomed its first cohort in 2021. In addition, the two-decade-old peace centers program has five master’s degree offerings around the world.

Establishing a center in the Middle East has long been a goal for Rotary. The need for trusted local leaders to become effective advocates for peace is greater than ever, as evidenced by the war between Israel and Hamas and other long-running conflicts in Yemen, Sudan, Syria, and elsewhere. “This center will provide a place for fellows to openly talk about long-standing conflicts and the future of the region, and to explore new approaches and paths to building peaceful communities,” says Laura Descher, director of the Rotary Peace Centers program. “The program presents an opportunity for them to examine issues of conflict, identity, poverty, and displacement, and discuss the complexities and possible solutions with each other.”

Among the 1,700 peace fellow alumni working in about 140 countries today are leaders in governments, nongovernmental agencies, education and research institutions, media and the arts, peacekeeping and law enforcement agencies, and international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. Some have founded their own organizations. They are working with refugees and displaced persons, young people, women and children, those affected by conflict and poverty, and others.

While only a small percentage of those peace fellows work in the Middle East, one of the goals for the new center is to build on that network of professionals who can create the conditions needed for peace by addressing the underlying causes and drivers of conflict. That concept, known as Positive Peace, addresses issues like poverty, discrimination, ethnic tension, lack of access to education, and unequal distribution of resources. To understand what that looks like, consider Elnegahy’s work.

The Otto and Fran Walter Rotary Peace Center at Bahçeşehir University will welcome its first students in 2025. Applications are being accepted through 15 May for the one-year professional development certificate in peace and development studies. It will accept up to 40 students a year. The curriculum covers peacebuilding, sustainable development, conflict resolution, diplomacy, mediation, and cooperation. During field studies, the fellows will examine refugee issues and land and religious conflicts, and visit disaster sites and frozen conflict zones. Learn more about Rotary Peace Fellowships.

He is a former public prosecutor and a chief judge in his home country who now specializes in mediation and conflict resolution. Elnegahy crisscrosses the Middle East, advising UN agencies and programs, the Saudi Justice Ministry, private companies, and others. The work takes him from packed courthouses in the Persian Gulf region to village streets in Egypt’s Nile Valley.

He has intervened in conflicts ranging from family revenge killings in Upper Egypt to disputes between major companies and communities, including one in which Egyptian farmers attacked workers and sabotaged the equipment of an oil and gas company. “The whole village went crazy over it,” he recalls. The solution he worked out over three weeks of shuttle diplomacy led to the company offering to use its influence to get the farmers permits to build shops and small businesses to cater to the project’s workers and bring the farmers income. “It was that simple,” he says.

In a similar case, he is working to resolve a dispute over a project in southern Egypt that is crucial to the country’s economy and to North Africa’s drive to become a major renewable energy supplier. He has also trained court mediators to settle disputes in civil, family, commercial, and criminal cases. While visiting some of his trainees in the Saudi city of Dammam, he was moved by the scene of three mediators dedicatedly working through a docket of cases involving hundreds of people standing shoulder to shoulder inside the courthouse. The vast majority were settling their cases before trial. “I felt that in a way I had touched their lives,” Elnegahy says. “They were able to put their conflicts behind them.”

With his help, Saudi Arabia now has a robust mediation program and has institutionalized the practice across the kingdom. The impact of such work goes beyond individual disputes. “It establishes an atmosphere of conciliation; it becomes part of a community,” Elnegahy says. “It’s not just war or litigation; there are other methods. So I think it spreads a positive culture when it comes to how to deal with our differences.”

Now, he’s training the next generation, teaching mediation to law students in Egypt and facilitating a nationwide student mediation competition. He also worked with UN Women, a United Nations entity advancing gender equality, to design and present a training program for young women peacebuilders from Arab nations. “The participants were amazing,” he says. “Any one of them is a future leader for sure.” The first cohort, in 2021, included women who went on to jobs with the UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and the African Development Bank.

While a peace center in the region has been a dream for Elnegahy and Rotary for some time, the effort gained momentum with the single-largest gift to the peace centers program, a pledge of $15.5 million accepted by The Rotary Foundation from the Otto and Fran Walter Foundation in February 2021. The next challenge was selecting a university partner. Rotary has a smaller footprint of clubs in the Middle East and needed to be deliberate in choosing a host institution, and it is convinced it found the right partner. “We’re bringing Rotary’s global network and our reach, and they’re bringing their expertise about the region and about peace and development,” says Descher.

With campuses and offices in more than 10 countries, and more than 7,000 international students in Istanbul alone, Bahçeşehir University promotes a global focus.

Courtesy of Bahçeşehir University

Among the criteria, it had to be in a country with a Rotary presence, it needed to be accessible to all international students, and the university had to demonstrate a commitment to a true partnership with Rotary. More than 30 institutions in 11 countries were considered. Ultimately, three institutions were invited to submit full proposals. Besides Bahçeşehir, they were the American University in Cairo and Sabancı University, also in Istanbul.

Each had a particular strength in peace and development. At Bahçeşehir, for instance, peace fellows will benefit from a partnership the university maintains with the United Nations to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which address challenges including poverty, inequality, climate change, and peace and justice. “Rotary Peace Fellows will participate in high-level diplomatic trainings and connect with United Nations experts working in sustainable peace governance,” explains Ebru Canan-Sokullu, dean of the university’s faculty of economic, administrative, and social sciences and director of its United Nations training center, called CIFAL Istanbul.

With campuses and offices in more than 10 countries, and more than 7,000 international students in Istanbul alone, Bahçeşehir promotes a global focus. “The university also stands out as a microcosm of the Middle East and North Africa, hosting many students from this region,” says Esra Albayrakoğlu, the peace center’s academic director.

When the Otto and Fran Walter Rotary Peace Center at Bahçeşehir University welcomes its first students in 2025, its success will also hinge on the involvement of the region’s Rotary members, who will host and engage with the visiting peace fellows and connect them with peace fellow alumni in Turkey. The country’s three Rotary districts have a long history in peacebuilding, including facilitating a major peace conference for the Balkans in 2014. Suat Baysan, past governor of District 2420, chairs a committee that works with the new peace center and Rotary International to engage local members with the program. The job for Rotary members, including those in the fellows’ home countries, will be to support their work and offer guidance into the future, Baysan says. “That’s so critical,” he says. He knows it firsthand, having traveled the region for years as a telecommunications engineer. He compares the work of maintaining peace to the detailed care engineers take to keep Istanbul’s bridges safely suspended over the Bosporus. “You have to take care of it all the time,” he says.

A global network

The Rotary Peace Centers program offers fully funded master’s degrees or professional development certificates through fellowships based at seven premier universities around the world. The newest program, at Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University, opens in 2025.

A global network

Sitting as a land bridge between Europe and Asia, the Anatolian Peninsula has been a crossroads of cultures and a center of empires — Byzantine, Seljuq, Ottoman — since antiquity. Today, the modern Turkish republic, a NATO member country of about 85 million people, is a regional power with influence in both Europe and the Middle East.

Its position straddling continents also made it home to the largest population of refugees in the world in recent years. More than 3.7 million came from neighboring Syria, where more than 12 years of war have wrought large-scale destruction and claimed at least half a million lives. Hundreds of thousands of additional refugees and migrants have come from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and other countries.

That rapid influx, along with inflation and other economic troubles, has strained resources and led to social tension. The catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkey and northern Syria a year ago magnified the trauma and pressures.

Left: Peace fellow alum Mustafa Öztürk is an associate professor in the school of education at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. He trains teachers in inclusive practices to integrate immigrant and refugee children. Right: Elif Avcı, a 2019 peace fellow from Istanbul, says the new peace center can serve as a hub for research and advocacy and “has the potential to be a transformative force in our region.” Images credit: Faid Elgziry.

Peace fellow alum Mustafa Öztürk is an associate professor in the school of education at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. He designs and implements continuing education programs for teachers, with a focus on training educators in inclusive practices to integrate refugee children and other disadvantaged students, many of whom have experienced serious trauma. Along the way, he’s come to realize that teachers can be powerful agents of peace.

He saw it happen in 2021, when violence erupted in Ankara after the fatal stabbing of a Turkish teenager during a fight with a group of Syrians. Mobs responded by vandalizing businesses, attacking houses, and overturning cars in an area of the capital home to many Syrian migrants and refugees. Öztürk says it was the neighborhood’s teachers who helped calm tensions. “They were entering the streets and they were going to families’ houses easily, without any risk to their safety because they were trusted by both sides, and playing an effective role in negotiating,” he says. “They have such a powerful role in bringing peace into schools and disseminating peace from schools to the wider society.” Having a peace center focused on the region, Öztürk believes, will open more such avenues for building peace throughout society.

Elif Avcı, another peace fellow from Istanbul, says the new peace center can serve as a hub for research and advocacy. She began her career as a child and adolescent psychologist. Since completing her peace fellowship at the University of Bradford in England, she’s been advocating for marginalized groups by helping them find a voice in local affairs and making sure those in power are listening. “The establishment of a peace center in Istanbul has the potential to be a transformative force in our region and be a catalyst for sustainable peacebuilding,” she says.

The opening of the new center is cause for hope. The region’s conflicts may seem intractable, but Elnegahy’s view is that peace and justice are possible, even in the aftermath of humanity’s worst atrocities. It’s an outlook shaped by an experience during his own fellowship half a world away in Southeast Asia. During a site visit to Cambodia’s Killing Fields, his faith was shaken seeing a woman crying in front of a tree where young children had been killed during the Cambodian genocide. That evening, he found himself at a circus, watching a performance that told the story of a child survivor of the Khmer Rouge who finds healing through art. The circus, he learned, was founded by survivors of that reign of terror who made it their mission to spread healing and joy. It was a stark demonstration, he realized, that we have the freedom, as individuals and as a community, to choose the path of peace. “It’s up to us,” he says, “to decide which mark we want to leave.”

Additional reporting by Diana Schoberg.

This story originally appeared in the February 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Clean rivers are central to life

2025-05-15T14:05:00.004+02:00

Clean rivers are central to life

Eunice Kamau participated in a cleanup of Lake Naivasha through the Rotaract Club of Naivasha, Kenya. “If we don’t take care of this lake, then the whole of society of Naivasha will crumble,” she says. “I’m taking care of my people.”

Image credit: Andrea Dekrout

UN environment body looks to Rotary’s reach to protect freshwater ecosystems

By Diana Schoberg

When Salvador Rico was a boy, his dad leased a farm near the town of Buenavista in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The Ameca River ran nearby, and his older siblings would often stop for a swim when they’d deliver lunch to their dad in the fields. When his sister Agueda contracted polio and died in the 1960s, his family believed the sewage-tainted waters where she swam were to blame. Sitting on his mom’s lap and watching her cry over the loss night after night left an indelible imprint. “I promised myself I would do something to help,” he says.

A path to making good on that promise opened after Rico joined Rotary in the United States in 2007. Two years later, his club, the Rotary Club of South Ukiah, California, partnered with a local environmental group to clean up the Russian River, a vital waterway north of San Francisco. “It brought memories of Mexico, of how the creeks and rivers are so polluted,” Rico says. “I saw that we were doing the cleanup here, and we could probably empower people in Mexico to do the same.”

Rico connected with Rotary members in Mexico at a 2013 project fair in the country. They stayed up late into the night mapping out an ambitious plan, looking at everything from cities where Rotary clubs were located to which communities had no sewage treatment to the biggest industries contributing to water pollution. The river the Mexican Rotarians proposed starting with? None other than the Ameca. “I said, ‘That touches home,’” Rico recalls.

Over several years, Rotarians along the Ameca initiated cleanups, advocated with governments to modernize sewage systems, and convinced a sugar mill to use a composting system for its waste. In the city of Puerto Vallarta at the mouth of the river along the Pacific coast, Rotary members launched a massive cleanup that was backed by government officials. Neighborhood associations took on the project and have continued the work. “That was what we saw was huge with Rotary clubs — their influence in the community,” Rico says. “It’s going and planting the seed, finding leaders, and letting them run with it.”

It’s this local reach and influence that Rotary and the United Nations Environment Programme are banking on for their new collaborative initiative, Community Action for Fresh Water. The two organizations are partnering to empower members of Rotary, Rotaract, and Interact clubs to adopt a body of water, with guidance from UNEP’s experts, step-by-step instructions, and other resources. The strategic partnership was announced in January at Rotary’s International Assembly in Orlando, Florida. “This partnership will help Rotary spur collective action and raise our profile in our newest area of focus, and make the most of existing assets at Rotary and The Rotary Foundation,” RI President-elect Stephanie Urchick says.

How your club can get involved

At all levels, the Cadre of Technical Advisers engages with activities, project design, and monitoring.

Basic

River cleanup days
Community awareness campaigns
Commitment to local bodies of water

Intermediate

Ongoing water cleanup activities
Basic measuring of water quality, assessing of threats
Develop project
plans and connect with partners

Advanced

Continuous monitoring and evaluation of watershed health
Collective site-based action on causes of freshwater degradation
Connect with UNEP experts and international advocacy
Reporting to national database (citizen science)
Freshwater systems are under threat from climate change, habitat and biodiversity loss, and pollution. Billions of people around the world are at risk because they don’t know how safe surface and groundwater sources are.
UNEP’s goal is to protect ecosystems, and the key is working with the communities living near those systems. That’s where Rotary and its global network come in. “UNEP is excited by this partnership with Rotary and its ability to work directly with local communities on a global scale,” says Gavin Reynolds, an expert with UNEP’s freshwater ecosystems unit. “Rotary, with its global reach, close connection to communities, and action-focused engagement ensuring projects create change and have impact, is an excellent partner for UNEP.”
The initiative will give Rotary clubs a coordinated way to work on protecting the environment, The Rotary Foundation’s seventh area of focus. Clubs will be able to apply for district funds and global grants for Community Action for Fresh Water projects. Activities could include river cleanups, habitat restoration, native plantings, biodiversity projects, wastewater treatment, and lake monitoring.
Rotary’s history with the United Nations dates to the UN’s founding in 1945. For many years, Rotary celebrated Rotary Day at the United Nations. In 2018, that event was held at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, spurring talks about how the two organizations could advance their collaboration. Joe Otin, then Rotary’s representative to UNEP, worked with the agency’s staff to develop the adopt-a-river concept. As Otin was about to become the 2019-20 governor of Rotary District 9212 (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan), the team worked to launch a pilot there.
In the past, flooding had swept contaminants into Kenya’s Lake Naivasha, and there was an outbreak of cholera, says Eunice Kamau (left).
Image credit: Andrea Dekrout
Otin recalls a stream, a tributary of the Nairobi River, running through the backyard of his family’s home when he was growing up in Nairobi. There were frogs, crayfish, and fish that they would try to catch and keep as pets. “It was an amazing education for me and my siblings, seeing this whole ecosystem come together,” he says. But over time, development strained the waterway. The river became dirtier and dirtier, blackened with human, industrial, and agricultural waste, with a terrible stench, he recalls. The river was dead. “When you look at it on Google Maps, it looks like somebody has taken a black marker and drawn a line over the rivers,” he says.
Otin and his team started researching what success looks like, and for that, they turned to the River Thames, which runs through London and across southern England. Surveys of the polluted river in the 1950s led scientists to declare much of it biologically dead. Thanks to conservation efforts that identified the sources and types of pollutants, incorporated stakeholders, and improved sewage infrastructure, the river today boasts more than 120 fish species.
Rotary members in District 9212, working with UNEP, took that example to heart. They selected nine rivers to focus on, involving 20 Rotary clubs. They focused not just on collecting garbage but cataloging information about the pollution and its impact to drive the development of a long-range plan. This type of data collection is known as citizen science.
“I felt from the beginning that we had to get the concept right,” Otin says. “If we didn’t get the concept right, we’d be doing the same things we’ve been doing from time immemorial.”
UNEP is relying on Rotary clubs to eventually conduct their own citizen science initiatives, with the data they collect contributing toward a global picture for policymakers and donors of the health of the world’s freshwater ecosystems.
While the Rotary-UNEP pilot was developing in Africa, Rico continued his work to clean rivers in Mexico and beyond, partnering with Rotary Action Groups, including those for water, sanitation, and hygiene and for environmental sustainability, to spread the project globally. Rotary clubs have been involved in river cleanups in countries including Ecuador, Colombia, India, Egypt, Serbia, Turkey, Venezuela, and more.
In September, Rotary clubs, nonprofit organizations, companies, and the government of Guatemala signed an agreement to create an alliance to clean up the Motagua River. The waterway, one of the world’s most polluted rivers, carries at least 8,500 metric tons of waste to the Caribbean every year. A few days later, Rico traveled to Honduras, part of the Motagua River basin, to attend a signing ceremony for participating Rotary clubs in both countries.
“I went to the beach. You cannot walk barefoot on the beach, there are so many needles, all kinds of plastics,” he says. “I wanted to do a cleanup, but we cleaned up about 50 meters. You could probably fill a truck, it was that bad.”
Still, he’s motivated to keep going. “It’s a promise I made to my mom,” he says, “so I cannot stop until it’s done.”
This story originally appeared in the February 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/clean-rivers-are-central-life

Rotary Activities

Autunno Benefietconcert 2024

(Place image here)

Volunteers are at the heart of the Rotary Youth Exchange program

Volunteers are at the heart of the Rotary Youth Exchange program

Hosting

Counselors

Serving on a committee

Supporting cast

solar energy expands access to health care

Solar energy expands access to health care

Solar solutions

Revolutionizing vaccine storage

channels the ‘power of peace’

Lebanon club channels the ‘power of peace’

Make your club a peacebuilding powerhouse

Watershed moment gives rise to a revitalized riverfront

The Rotary Club of Milwaukee transformed its city’s riverfront with a contribution from a local landowner — a strategy that could work in other communities

A river revitalization

The value of land grants

Get involved

Protecting the ecosystems

Exhibit documents the scope of polio eradication efforts worldwide

Exhibit documents the scope of polio eradication efforts worldwide

Q: How did you become interested in photographing polio eradication efforts?

Q: Are there particular countries where it’s easier or harder to photograph people?

Q: Is it hard to photograph polio eradication work in general?

Q: What are your favorite photos in the exhibition?

Q: Were there times when your alliance with Rotary helped you get the photos you wanted?

Q: Did you anticipate challenges like that when you began taking polio pictures?

Rotary clubs engage with refugees by training teachers, organizing medical care, and offering other assistance

Rotary clubs engage with refugees by training teachers, organizing medical care, and offering other assistance

A training program for teachers in Malaysia

A Medical trip to Cambodia

A shelter that helps Ukrainian refugees

A medical convoy for Sundanese refugees in Egypt

Rotary clubs launch initiatives for community well-being

Rotary clubs launch initiatives for community well-being

Youth Mental Health in Hilden, Germany

Friendship Dinners in Boise, Idaho, USA

Support for Hikikomori in Tokyo, Japan

Bridging Generations in Chichester, England

Promoting Well-Being in Lima, Peru

Fostering Inclusion in Sardinia, Italy

Mental Health Awareness in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Enhancing Understanding of Neurodiversity in Haiti

President Stephanie Urchick is ready to lead Rotary toward another winning season

President Stephanie Urchick is ready to lead Rotary toward another winning season

The therapeutic benefits of forest bathing

Forest bathing: What the science says

An innovator with impact

An innovator with impact

Rotary’s latest alumni award honoree pursues scientific and societal progress

Gaetano Scamarcio

More than US$4 million funds water, education, agriculture supplies, and equipment for affected communities

More than US$4 million funds water, education, agriculture supplies, and equipment for affected communities

Aid for immediate and long-term needs

Building a veterinary clinic to help lost pets

Submerged ships transform into artificial reefs in Mexico

Submerged ships transform into artificial reefs in Mexico

Keeping track of habitat loss — and reversing it

A district governor makes a difference

With transplant changes afoot, Rotary members push to end global organ shortages

With transplant changes afoot, Rotary members push to end global organ shortages

Education and access

Removing hurdles

Rotary projects around the globe

August 2024

Belize

Colombia

Liberia

Northern Ireland

Thailand

Rotary projects make a difference in communities around the world.

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