Weekly Rotary Foundation Thoughts October 2011
At the end of each month I will email you a Rotary Foundation newsletter and a set of Weekly Foundation Thoughts to cover the ensuing month.
The following preamble is for your information and doesn't need to be printed in your bulletin HOWEVER it is recommended you publish, each week, the weekly Rotary Foundation Thoughts. These weekly Thoughts have been amended to reflect Australian and D9680 examples and are designed to coincide with Rotary Foundation activities to support what you might be promoting in your weekly club meetings.
Educating Rotarians about the work of The Rotary Foundation is one of the most effective tools for gaining and broadening support of our Annual Programs Fund and the Every Rotarian, Every Year effort. The Weekly Rotary Foundation Thought is designed to inform our members of the many ways in which we impact the world -there's always something new and exciting going on in Rotary.
The club president can begin the tradition by opening each meeting with a brief moment on The Rotary Foundation, but consider rotating ownership of the weekly reading among club members. In fact, didn't Paul Harris have a similar idea about rotating?
It is recommended that you publish each week’s Thought in your Bulletin.
Below is a summary ofthe October schedule of Rotary Foundation Thoughts and each week follows this summary, please don't print this summary as it has no relevance:
This months’ Rotary Foundation Thoughts will be about:
October13. Rotary's Disaster Recovery efforts
14. The generosity and dedication of our Foundation Alumni
15. What a US$I00 donation can do
16. Foundation Alumni
13) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought is about Rotary's Disaster Recovery efforts.
Naoko Kurauchi, a nurse and former Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar, provided medical relief in Miyako, Japan, two weeks after her country was hit by an earthquake and tsunami on 11 March.
The disaster was overwhelming, she says. “My mind suddenly slipped back to the South Asia tsunami in 2004, which was what made me decide to apply for the Rotary scholarship,” explains Kurauchi, who studied international health at Queen Margaret University in Scotland in 2008-09.
Her team traveled from Okinawa to Miyako, arriving with two ambulances full of medical supplies and food. Evidence of the tsunami was everywhere. “There were boats in the middle of the road, cars on top of houses, and houses on top of roofs,” she says, adding that “the whole town was filled with mud and garbage.”
Kurauchi served in Miyako for five days. “I believe we all have something to offer,” she says, but emphasizes that “the aid needs to be really organised and well prepared.”
Her passion for humanitarian service has taken her to other parts of the world as well. In February, she traveled with Japanese Rotarians to India for a National Immunization Day. And while she was a Rotary Scholar, she did field research in Niger for her master’s thesis on PolioPlus, interviewing staff from the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Islamic Relief, and other groups about the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
“Rotary taught me the concept of helping out,” she says.
Reflecting on Japan’s recovery from disaster, Kurauchi believes the damage will take years to mend, both psychologically and financially. “I wish for things to settle down as soon as possible so that I can show how beautiful the cherry blossoms are, when the wind is full of their pink petals.”
14) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought is about the generosity and dedication of our Foundation Alumni.
Yashar Keramati, a 2009-10 Ambassadorial Scholar from Canada, recently returned to Fisantekraal, South Africa, to launch his Peace & Love International initiative. “If it were not for the Foundation, I would not be able to have come here to do what I have been doing,” he says.
With violence and drugs dominating the streets of Fisantekraal, Keramati says that young people have little opportunity for education and positive personal growth. Peace & Love International aims to create such opportunities through music.
Workshops, held at least four times a week, offer dance practice and songwriting sessions. Through the songs, Keramati concentrates on important issues like drug awareness and respect for those of other genders and religions.“The goal of this initiative is to create a musical haven and nonthreatening space for the community’s youth, which they have been denied,” he says. “A highlight was one of our outings where we were invited to Cape Town’s biggest radio station to have our kids perform live on the air.”.
15) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought is about what US$100 can do.
It is as simple as having a notebook, pencil and glue. In Pavas, a poor district in San Jose, Costa Rica a packet of educational materials means the difference between an education and working on the street. Most public schools in Costa Rica are under funded and lack many basic supplies, so the Rohrmoser Rotary Club, Costa Rica developed a packet of teaching materials for students and partnered with the Vancouver Rotary Club, Canada to distribute 777 packets to children in five very poor elementary schools. $100 buys 15 packets. Without this project many students would not be able to continue their education and would be forced to drop out of school.
When Every Rotarian, Every Year participates, our Foundation is able to continue to build a brighter future for the children of the world.
16) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought is about Foundation Alumni.
In South Africa, Erin Koepke, a 2010-11 Ambassadorial Scholar from the United States, partnered with Abalimi Bezekhaya, a nonprofit that introduces poor townships to sustainable food sources through urban farming. The effort resulted in a number of farmers selling their produce through the organization’s Harvest of Hope program.
“I was eager to get involved with the organization, so I jumped at the opportunity to create an Abalimi-Harvest of Hope cookbook to sell as a way to market the program and provide an additional source of income to support their cause in Cape Town,” Koepke says.
She teamed up with two other Ambassadorial Scholars and cooked with several farmers to learn traditional cuisine, using vegetables the farmers had grown. The resulting recipes were compiled into the Seed to Table cookbook. Net proceeds from sales of the book are donated to Abalimi Bezekhaya to help support organic microfarmers in Cape Town.
“Abalimi-Harvest of Hope has inspired many to take ownership and pride in their community, leading to invaluable individual development,” Koepke says.