Welcome Merle and Steven! Professor Steven Friedman and Sunday Lunch,

The Ramble

The Board has a number of objections to the Ramble in its present form and feels that much of it conflicts with the proposed Club Website.  In order to comply with the Club's requirements the Pages have been deleted as they will be incorporated into the website.  It was also felt that The Ramble appeared too early in the week and here I have compromised by bringing it out on Tuesday as I feel anything later is too late.

Last Week was a business meeting it saw the induction of Merle Langenegger and Steven Anastopoulos, who has transferred from Orange Grove Club, into our Club.

Sponsor, Les Short, Merle Langenegger & President Neville Howes

Steven Anastopoulos is the first of the former Orange Grove Rotarians to be welcomed into the Rotary Club of Rosebank Johannesburg.












Visiting Rotarian Rainer Arntzen from Dortmund exchanges banners with President Neville.








This Week
Our Guest Speaker is Professor Steven Friedman, the Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy which is a joint Rhodes/UJ initiative.  He was National Head of the Independent Electoral Commission Information Analysis Department during the 1994 election.  He is a well-known newspaper columnist and political analyst and he will be talking to us about the New Student Radicalism and University Response.

Sunday Lunch


Last Sunday a number of club members and friends had Sunday lunch at La Madeleine in Pretoria.  The food and the company was exceptional.

Here's the group with Chef-patron Daniel Leusch.

Oh...and here's another Group

KNOCKING DOWN LANGUAGE BARRIERS

Anna Wieczorek, a member of the Rotary Club of Warsaw City, teaches English to elementary school students.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Anna Wieczorek

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russian was the predominant second language offered in Polish schools, leaving tens of thousands of Polish emigrants without the English skills they needed.  

That has changed over the last 25 years. English proficiency drastically improved after the government reformed its education system in 1991. The country overhauled its teaching curriculum and materials and introduced English as the primary foreign language. As of 2013, Poland ranks 8th in the world in English proficiency.

However, one segment of the population isn’t reaping the benefits of the improved curriculum. Thousands of students in poor rural villages attend schools that don’t have the adequate resources or well trained personnel to properly teach English, putting them at a disadvantage in today’s global economy and labor market, says Anna Wieczorek, a Rotary Club of Warszawa City member and author of Poland’s English curriculum for grades 1-3.

“The budgets of state schools in rural areas are limited compared to those in the cities and private schools,” Wieczorek says. “Teachers in these schools are often underpaid and undertrained. Consequently, the level of teaching English is far from meeting the appropriate standards.”

Added to that, she says, their students face social exclusion. “They lack the self-confidence and communication skills that students in the city, who have access to modern technology, might have,” she says. “The inability to learn English -- let alone acquire an appropriate education -- early on in their lives makes it difficult for them to evolve and develop further in life.”

Many of the students come from homes where unemployment and alcoholism are common, according to a report by the CASE Foundation, prepared for the Warsaw Delegation of the European Commission. Many turn their attention to the streets and crime instead of education, the report says.

ROTARY GIVES RURAL COMMUNITIES SUPPORT

The Warszawa City members the Rotary Club of Berlin-Luftbrücke, Germany, and the Rotary Club of Milano Nord, Italy, are trying to change this trend. A $45,000 Rotary global grant project is supporting English and other foreign language education for more than 1,200 underprivileged students in 10 rural communities. The clubs collaborated with Good Start, a program that provides equipment, software, and an interactive e-learning platform for afterschool education centers, as well as training for tutors.

Eleven centers are now equipped with computers, interactive white boards, projectors, multimedia, and printed learning materials. The three clubs, along with the Rotary Club of Edmonton Downtown, Alberta, Canada, have furnished 12 other afterschool centers over the last three years in conjunction with previous Rotary Foundation grants, bringing the total to 23. Each dayroom is supervised by a local Rotary member.

Before the project, the centers would generally be empty after school. They only provided desks and chairs. With the new technology, interactive classes, and motivated instructors, the students now have an “attractive way to learn,” Wieczorek says.

Wieczorek, who also authors children’s books, writes the e-learning software and curriculum. “We are not only teaching English, but we’re improving their reading, writing, and computer skills,” she says. “They have a safe place to spend their free time after school. This makes a big difference in their daily lives and will help them define their future.”

According to a 2013 global language study from Education First, countries with higher levels of English proficiency also have stronger economies and their citizens have higher per capita income levels and quality of life. More and more multinational companies are mandating English as their common corporate language.

The study also suggests that because English is the predominant language in business, higher education, and politics, English proficiency is important to succeeding in a globalized society. And low proficiency in English may be connected with weak integration into the global economy.

Gerhart Ernst, a Berlin-Luftbrücke Rotary member, says since his club was chartered in 1979, members have focused their efforts on supporting young people from disadvantaged homes. Their partnership with the Polish club is something they are especially proud of.

Ernst says his club wants to mimic this project in areas in Germany with a large number of refugees from Syria and Lebanon.

In March, members of the Warszawa City club visited one of the centers while an English class was in session. “It brought tears to my eyes to see these children so happy and engaged,” says Wieczorek. “These kids have dreams about getting away from the poverty and affliction. We’re doing all we can to make these dreams come true.”

A Business Meeting & a Wine Tasting

This Week

It's a Business Meeting, a report back of the week's Board Meeting. There's not much to say other than to make sure you ask questions relating to reports.
I know that the meeting is too short for a proper report back and response from every committee but as club members the Board is accountable to us and we should keep the Board on its toes.

Letter to the Editor

SIR: I haven’t got a computer, but I was

told about Facebook and Twitter and am

trying to make friends outside Facebook

and Twitter while applying the same

principles.

Every day, I walk down the street and

tell passers-by what I have eaten, how I

feel, what I have done the night before

and what I will do for the rest of the

day. I give them pictures of my wife, my

daughter, my dog and me gardening and

on holiday, spending time by the pool.

I also listen to their conversations, tell

them I “like” them and give them my

opinion on every subject that interests

me… whether it interests them or not.

And it works. I already have four

people following me; two police officers,

a social worker and a psychiatrist.

Peter White, Holbrook, Derbyshire

David Bradshaw is appealing for more volunteers for the Firlands Fete on the 29th August. 

The Bookstall is our responsibility and we are very short of people to man or woman it.

Contact him on David@Travelvision.co.za

Last Week

Sometimes things go wrong and this week it was the photos so instead of seeing Tutty Faber in action at Rotary you will have to look at him in action as President of the Old Edwardians' Society presenting the Sportsman of the Year Award to Stephen Cook last year.
I had no idea that Tutty was such a great sportsman in the past.  So keen that he neglected his studies and took longer than usual to get his degree.  Many thanks, Tutty, for such an interesting talk.

Wine Tasting with Villiera

We have arranged a wine tasting at Wanderers at 18h00 on Thursday 17 September. It will be held in Bowlers B, where we have our Friday lunch meetings.

We have not organised a planned meal, but invite those who would like to do so to get together in Chariots Bar afterwards and order         from the extensive bar menu.

Villiera is a very well known Stellenbosch family estate, owned by the Grier family, producing excellent, but reasonably priced wines.

         Sauvignon Blanc       4 stars                     R61.50

         Chenin Blanc            3.5 stars                  R48.00

         Down to Earth Red  3 stars                      R45.00

         Merlot                         3 stars                      R61.50

         Cabernet Sauvignon  3 stars                      R72.00

If you would like more information on the estate, the website is www.villiera.com .

The tasting will be limited to 25 people maximum. Please let Mark Franklin know if you plan to attend by Friday September 11th (sextant@mweb.co.za). We need numbers to plan for glasses and the number of bottles for tasting.

Order forms and a card machine will be available for you to purchase any of their wines.

NIGERIA SEES NO WILD POLIO CASES FOR ONE YEAR

Despite historic milestone, country still faces hurdles before being declared polio-free.

Today marks one year since Nigeria last reported a polio case caused by wild poliovirus, putting the country on the brink of eradicating the paralyzing disease.

The last case was reported on 24 July 2014 in the northern state of Kano. If no cases are reported in the coming weeks, the World Health Organization is expected to remove Nigeria from the list of countries where polio is endemic, leaving just two: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Nigeria is the last polio-endemic country in Africa. The continent is poised to reach its own first full year without any illness from the virus on 11 August.

“Every Rotarian in the world should be proud of this achievement,” says Rotary International President K.R. Ravindran. “We made history. We have set Africa on course for a polio-free future. But we have not yet reached our goal of a polio-free world. Raising funds and awareness and advocating with your government are more crucial than ever.”

Progress in Nigeria has come from many measures, including strong domestic and international financing, the commitment of thousands of health workers, and new strategies that reached children who had not been immunized earlier because of a lack of security in the northern states.

“Rotary’s commitment has been the number one reason for the recent success in Nigeria,” says Dr. Tunji Funsho, chair of Rotary’s Nigeria PolioPlus Committee. “We have infected political leaders with this commitment. The government has demonstrated this with political support and financial and human resources. And that went down the line from the federal level, to the state, to the local governments.”

Nigeria has increased its domestic funding for polio eradication almost every year since 2012 and has allocated $80 million for the effort this year.

Funsho also applauds religious leaders who championed the vaccination efforts to families in their communities.

Despite the historic gains in Nigeria, health experts are cautious about declaring victory. Funsho says the Global Polio Eradication Initative partners must strengthen routine immunization especially in hard-to-reach areas, in addition to boosting sensitive surveillance to prevent resurgence of the disease. If no new cases are reported in the next two years, Nigeria, along with the entire Africa region, will be certified polio-free.

“The virus can be introduced from anywhere where it is still endemic, particularly now in Afghanistan and Pakistan, into areas that haven’t had polio in years,” Funsho says. “It is important we keep the immunity level in Nigeria to at least 90 percent.”

For instance, Syria experienced a sudden outbreak of the disease when 35 cases were reported in December 2013. None had been reported there since 1999. “Immunizations become imperative for history not to repeat itself in Nigeria,” says Funsho.

In June, Rotary announced $19 million in grants for continued polio eradication activities in Africa, including almost $10 million for Nigeria. Since 1985, when Rotary launched PolioPlus, the program that supports the organization’s polio eradication efforts, its worldwide monetary contributions to the cause have exceeded $1.4 billion.

“We’ve come a long way and have never been so close to eradicating polio in Nigeria and around the world, but it’s not a time to fully celebrate,” says Funsho. “We have some grueling years ahead of us before WHO can certify Nigeria and Africa polio-free.”

An Interesting Meeting on Art Therapy.

Format Change

I have moved the pages to the Side Bar as only three pages will appear across the top of the page and there are already four of them.  Take a look as already there have been significant additions to them.

This Week

Our speaker is Tutty Faber, the first of our new members from the former Rotary Club of Orange Grove.  As you are aware a new member has to give a "My Job" talk at some stage but as Tutty is retired we would be subject to 20 minutes of silence so instead he's going to talk about himself which is much more interesting.  

He looks rather fierce in this photo, quite unlike his usual amiable self.  Maybe because he has just won the bottle of wine last week he needs to guard it from the rest of the table.  

I happen to know that he is a keen twitcher.......or is he?  

The term twitcher, sometimes misapplied as a synonym for birder, is reserved for those who travel long distances to see a rare bird that would then be ticked, or counted on a list. The term originated in the 1950s, when it was used for the nervous behaviour of Howard Medhurst, a British birdwatcher. Prior terms for those who chased rarities were pot-hunter, tally-hunter, or tick-hunter. The main goal of twitching is often to accumulate species on one's lists. Some birders engage in competition to accumulate the longest species list. The act of the pursuit itself is referred to as a twitch or a chase. A rare bird that stays put long enough for people to see it is twitchable or chaseable.  

I think that any serious birder would resent the term twitcher as it is very similar to the train spotters of my youth who were only interested in underlining the number in the Ian Allan books and weren't interested in the steam locomotives as such.

Ian Allan died at the age of 93 in June.  He was president of the Main Line Steam Trust based at Loughborough, vice-president of the Transport Trust and the Heritage Railways Association, chairman of the Association of Independent Railways. Here are a couple of train-spotters....one of them could have been me.

Last Week

Artist Danny Myburgh talked about her work as an Art Therapist.  She not only encouraged us to do new things and to be creative but showed us how important it was to think out of the box as you age.  It was a fascinating talk with much description of brain functions from an early age up to adulthood and beyond.  It's not just a case of seeing yourself as others see you but also how your self-image changes.  She showed an interesting collage of self portraits by a man suffering from Alzheimers disease that showed how his perception of himself changed.

In 1995, U.K.-based artist William Utermohlen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. This is a difficult diagnosis and disease for anyone, but before his death in 2007, Utermohlen created a heart-wrenching final series of self-portraits over a roughly 5-year period documenting the gradual decay of his mind due to this crippling disease.

An essay by the artist’s widow Patricia explains perfectly exactly why these images are so powerful; “In these pictures we see with heart-breaking intensity William’s efforts to explain his altered self, his fears and his sadness.” It’s hard to say whether the changes in his portraits came about due the loss of his artistic skills or due to changes in his psyche but, in either case, they document the emotional turmoil of an artist watching his mind slip away from him bit by bit.

Dr Charmaine Blanchard

Charmaine receiving her Paul Harris Fellowship from the Rotary Club of Hatfield, UK.  Left to Right... PDG Debbie Hodge, Dr Charmaine Blanchard,  DG Prue Dixon, the irrepressible Frank Taylor and  Angela Ferris, Pastoral Minister of St Paul's Letchworth.

Charmaine is Head of The Centre of Excellence for Palliative Care, Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital.

Other Appointments

• Senior Lecturer. Faculty of Health Sciences. University of Witwatersrand

Key Accomplishments

• Established the Gauteng Palliative Care Doctors’ Group in Gauteng in collaboration with Dr. Trish Luck of Big Shoes Foundation in Johannesburg. A support group for doctors working in palliative care in Gauteng to exchange information and ideas and to debrief on a monthly basis.

Education / Honors

• Graduate, International Palliative Care Leadership Development Initiative, The Institute for Palliative Medicine at San Diego Hospice, San Diego, CA, and Ohio Health, Columbus, Ohio, USA, 2012-2014
• Higher Certificate in Management at the Foundation for Professional Development, South Africa, 2010
• Master of Philosophy in Palliative Medicine at University of Cape Town, Graduated 2009
• Postgraduate Diploma in Palliative Medicine at University of Cape Town, Graduated 2004
• MBBCh at University of Witwatersrand, Graduated 1998
• Bachelor of Science (Honours) at University of Witwatersrand. Graduated 1993

Why her interest in Palliative Care?  It's a fascinating story that you can read HERE.

And rather a different video this week

A Letter of Thanks

From DGR Steve Margo

To all clubs who participated in the blanket drive.

Dear club Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurers, Rotarians, Ann’s Interactors, Rota-actors and Friends of Rotary.

A special word of thanks to each and every one of you for your untiring commitment to our collective blanket drive. Thank you for your time and the effort you have put in, in ensuring that a person less fortunate than you would be a little warmer this year.

Despite increased competition from many organizations, Churches and Schools, all of whom ran their own blanket drives we again have come out on top.

The blanket drive now in its 5^th successful year has exceeded all expectations and has surpassed the target laid down.

We have collectively this year collected  R1,040,966-50  IN CASH and have, to date, distributed 17,686 blankets to the destitute and needy. An achievement to be proud of..

Well done and thank you to one and all.

This project also illustrates the huge success clubs can attain by working together on a single project, so let’s do it again next year!

Will anyone with good clear photographs taken at blanket handovers please forward to me for an article in Rotary Africa and Caxton. Photographs must be a minimum of

 700 KB’s and not more than 3 MB.

Please pass this message onto all members who participated in this project

With my sincere best wishes to all for a successful and enjoyable Rotary year

Yours in Rotary

S F Margo

DGR Steve

ILLITERACY TRAPS ADULTS, AND THEIR FAMILIES, IN POVERTY

A student attends a literacy program at the Mercy Education Project in Detroit to build her reading skills. The agency offers free educational programs to improve the lives of low-income girls and women.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Reading Works

Around the world, millions of adults are unable to read or write, and therefore struggle to earn a living for themselves and their families.

Even in the United States, with its considerable resources, there are 36 million adults who can’t read better than the average third-grader, according to the international nonprofit ProLiteracy. In Detroit, Michigan, a widely cited 2003 survey conducted by the National Institute for Literacy found that almost half of residents over age 16 were functionally illiterate -- unable to use reading, speaking, writing, and computer skills in everyday life.

Kristen Barnes-Holiday, director of program outcomes for Reading Works, an organization tackling adult illiteracy in Detroit, says the agencies -- many of them underfunded and understaffed -- that have been trying for years to address the problem there have made little progress.   

Illiteracy affects all areas of life. Those with low literacy skills are far more likely to live in poverty, face health problems because they can’t read prescription labels or instructions, and grow isolated in a world increasingly dependent on computers. And the lack of a skilled workforce, Barnes-Holiday notes, has slowed Detroit’s economic revival.

But she worries most about the impact on future generations.

“A lot of children are raised in households where parents are low-skilled or illiterate, and we all know only a certain amount of learning happens in the classroom,” she says. “We are raising this generation with the expectation that if we pour a certain amount of dollars into their education, we will get better results. But that is only partially true if we do nothing to address the households they are coming from.”

Rotary member Mark Wilson, who also has been involved with Detroit literacy efforts, agrees that adult literacy is not receiving the attention it deserves.

“It doesn’t pull at the heartstrings the same way as when you see a child who can’t read,” says Wilson, a member of the suburban Rotary Club of Grosse Pointe. “But, in fact, it’s a vicious cycle and it perpetuates itself.”

Wilson’s club, along with other Detroit-area Rotary members, partnered with ProLiteracy Detroit to raise money to recruit and train more tutors. Also, members have collected 261,000 books and 587 computers to donate to literacy agencies throughout the city.

A grant from The Rotary Foundation brought a team of literacy experts from Australia to Detroit, to share their expertise with those who are training the tutors. The grant helped launch a weekly program on local television to raise awareness and broaden corporate and community support.

Through the efforts of the volunteer tutors, more than 500 adults raised their reading levels by three grades, according to testing by the Michigan Adult Education Reporting System.

Margaret Williamson, executive director of ProLiteracy Detroit and a member of the Rotary Club of Detroit, said the project has produced benefits even beyond initial expectations.

“Not only do we look at reading, but we look at building the skills the individual will need for employment,” she says. “And what happened was that, through the Rotary network, [these adults] had access to people who knew other people who were willing to give them an opportunity. We had people call us and say, “Do you have a person who would be good for this entry-level position?’ ”

The Rotary members have become better advocates for adult literacy, influencing policymakers at several levels, adds Williamson. Among the results of that advocacy: A financial institution donated a banking center for vocational training, and ProLiteracy received more money for tutor training and has expanded its network of partners.  

“The ripple effect is still benefiting us,” she says.

Wilson also talks about ripples.   

“When you teach somebody how to read, they have that for a lifetime,” he says. “It ripples through the community, one by one. And that was our goal.”

The Ramble - a New Format

The New Format
I hope you like the new format.  All comments are very welcome, even if you hate it.... and you can always revert to the way it was done previously, if you so wish.
Side Bar
In the Side Bar you will find such things as future speakers, future events, birthdays etc.  I have added "Our Links to the Rotary World" with the District & RI websites as well as that of the Rotary Club of Hatfield UK.  If you click on that you will see what they have to say about our joint Palliative Care Project.  If there are other Rotary links that should be included just let me know.
Pages
There will be separate pages for different projects with links at the top of this page.  I have established one temporarily for the Discon Reports rather than put them in the main body of the text.  There is another for Region 2 to which we belong.  Ideally we should have one for Community Service, for Youth, Rotary Anns etc.  When you have something for your page just send it to me, plus photos or whatever and we will establish the page.  The page is there for ever so it will provide a useful source of reference and an archive.
Jokes
The last thing in The Ramble is the Joke of the Week.....and that, I'm afraid, is somewhat subjective.
Contributions to The Ramble
For the time being they can be sent to me by clicking HERE!
How to Propose a Potential New Member
I will be sending out later in the week the guidelines for proposing a potential new member.  One is a pamphlet from RI describing the process and the other is the Rosebank Form to be completed.  Any questions please refer to me.

This Week
Our speaker is Danny Myburgh who is "Artist in Residence" at The Bag Factory.  I'm not sure what that means but no doubt she will explain it. She's an old girl of St Mary's Waverley and took a BA in Law at Stellenbosch and then studied History of Art through UNISA.
She took this one step further by studying Art Therapy at the Art Therapy Centre - Lefika la Phodisa in Rosebank Johannesburg where she stayed on as Project Manager for 2 years.
From 2004 -to 2007 she was an art therapist at the Johannesburg Parent and Child Counselling Centre, in Berea  until becoming Head of the Art Department at The Ridge School where she stayed for 5 years.
From 2012 she has been Artist in Residence at the Bag Factory in Fordsburg.
She is still involved at The Ridge School as she is producing 'Oliver' with the whole school involved.
Children and Art is something that she feels very strongly about and sees a knowledge of art as an important aspect of training for life.

Last Week

Our speaker was David Scholtz who talked about his fascination with the minor skirmishes of the Anglo-Boer War and his search for the sites of these little battles and the graves of those killed in these small conflicts.  he also talked about the memorials that he has been instrumental in having erected at various sites and passed round albums of many of these.  It was an interesting talk that meant that he only left half an hour after the end of the meeting!

Attendance: 22 Rotarians and visitors were Helen Aron (Marian Laserson's guest), Merle Langenegger, Morake Mokgosi and Nicole Nsegbene.

The Club Directory
Jean Bernardo produced the 2015/16 Club Directory that she had been working on for ages.  I think it must be the least rewarding job of anything in the club because no matter what, there will always be mistakes and complaints.  Somehow Jean manages to survive this and appear relatively unruffled.
As you can see the directory is compulsive reading!

Rotary History
Here's an interesting video of the first Rotarians of Club No 1 Chicago.  I'll put on a video each week but it won't always be something relating to Rotary.

THE LOST GIRLS OF SOUTH SUDAN AND THE ROTARIAN WHO FOUND THEM

Groenendijk and younger kids take a break from jumping on the center's trampoline. Staff say it's her energy that holds Confident Children out of Conflict together.

Photo Credit: LuAnn Cadd

From the August 2015 issue of The Rotarian

The girls were alone. Their families were dead, or gone, or lost in the broken landscape of southern Sudan. They had nowhere to turn, and no one to turn to. Some lived in the market, others in the cemetery. When Cathy Groenendijk saw them, she couldn’t help herself. She offered them tea, then some food, then a place to sleep in her guesthouse.

“In the morning, we would sit together and talk about what had happened the night before,” Groenendijk remembers. “And what I heard I could not believe. I could not believe it.”

One girl’s father had died, and after the funeral, she never saw her mother again. She was living on the streets with some other kids when four men started chasing them. The other girls were faster. She fell behind and was caught and raped by all four men. Groenendijk knew a doctor who repaired the physical damage, saving her life.

Another three girls, ages eight, six, and one, lived with their mother, but they all slept in the open. Groenendijk helped them build a tarped shelter, but the hot sun ate it away. One night, a man snuck in and tried to assault one of the girls. After that, Groenendijk let them sleep on her veranda.  This was in 2006.

Groenendijk was born in eastern Uganda, where her father grew coffee and bananas on the family farm. She had three brothers and seven sisters, so when she was three years old, she was sent to the capital, Kampala, to live with an aunt. After secondary school, she went on to study nursing.

“When I was in Kampala,” she says, “I used to take the food that was left from our kitchen in the training school and give it to the children who were without food. It was a very, very bad time under Idi Amin, and after.”

It was a time of war, suspicion, and fighting. Between 1971 and 1979, about half a million people died under Amin’s dictatorship. Another 300,000 died under Milton Obote before he was deposed in 1985.

When she finished nursing school, Groenendijk got a job at a hospital in the north of Uganda. “There were so many militias and armed groups, especially among the northern tribes,” she says. “Even after the war, there were militias who were never fully disarmed. They were always fighting.”

Not long after she arrived, she met a young Dutch missionary named Wim, who worked with a relief organization called ZOA that aids people trapped in conflict and disaster zones. The two fell in love, got married, and for 10 years remained in Uganda, mostly in Karamoja, the remote northeast corner of the country.

In 1993, the couple went to the Netherlands. Shortly after they moved, the genocide in Rwanda began to unfold. An estimated 800,000 to 1 million people were killed in 100 days. When the violence subsided, a colleague at ZOA asked if Wim and Cathy would be willing to go to the country. Groenendijk would run a health program, and Wim would do agriculture and food security work in the town of Nyamata, south of Kigali. One of the most devastated areas, it’s now the site of a genocide memorial, at a church where 10,000 people who had gathered for protection were murdered.

In 1998, ZOA asked Groenendijk if she would help establish a health program in Sudan, which, on the map, was the largest country in Africa. In reality, though, it had never been much of a country at all. The south and the north were very different, and since 1955, animist and Christian groups in the south had been fighting for independence from the primarily Muslim north.

When Groenendijk and her husband arrived in 1999, the fighting was still intense. They lived in rebel territory, in a village called Katigiri. “There were areas with no medical care at all,” she remembers. “Many people were dying.” They’d lived in conflict zones before, but this time was different. Planes bombed areas that had relief operations. “When we first arrived,” Groenendijk says, “we were bombed as were driving. Every house had foxholes, and when you heard planes flying over, you got out of the house and into the foxholes. We also had one large bomb shelter for everybody, but if a bomb landed on that one, there would be many casualties. So we used several foxholes to spread the risk.”

For nearly five years, she ran the ZOA health program in Katigiri. She made sure health workers were trained, medicines delivered, new health units opened, and transportation arranged for patients. All the while, the bombs kept coming as the war dragged on. When the danger and stress grew unbearable, the couple went back to Rwanda.

In 2005, a peace accord was signed and the fighting stopped. A date was set for a vote on independence. Groenendijk thought of the people she knew there, especially the children who’d lost so much. In 2006, she and Wim decided to return.

Now people were flooding into Juba. In the future capital of the world’s newest country, everything had to be built from scratch, including Rotary clubs. Michael Elmquist had been a Rotarian in Kastrup, Denmark, for more than 20 years when he arrived in Juba in 2008 to work for the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He could see that the area could benefit from Rotary’s work. The country had only 200 miles of paved road. Barely 2 percent of children completed primary school. Infant and child mortality rates were among the highest on every ranking. Everything needed to be restored: families, villages, lives.

“Once in Juba, I realized that the whole country of Sudan [before South Sudan became independent] had only one Rotary club, and that was in Khartoum, over 700 miles away,” Elmquist recalls. “I felt I could not live for three years without access to a Rotary club.”

He started to round up prospective candidates. But because few people in Juba knew much about Rotary, most of the initial recruits were expatriates. And because the streets didn’t have names, people listed their addresses as “the big house with the yellow roof opposite Equatoria Hotel.” Nonetheless, Elmquist soon found the required 20 people. TheRotary Club of Juba was chartered in 2010, bringing the number of Rotary clubs in a country almost twice the size of Alaska, to two.

After she and her husband moved to Juba, Groenendijk started working for an NGO called War Child, but grew frustrated with the slowness of a big organization. She needed to keep pace with the brothel owners who were recruiting girls. So she started her own organization, offering what she had. First, she gave the girls tea, then one meal. Friends would help out.

“For two years,” she says, “I was providing tea and one meal, which was better than nothing. Some of the kids had never had a meal apart from scavenging and eating leftovers from restaurants. Once a week, I would buy a proper meal for all of them.”

She started going door to door, asking for funding. Help started to trickle in. As volunteers and donors appeared, her organization started to take shape. She called it Confident Children out of Conflict (CCC).

Elmquist heard about her work and invited her to join the Rotary Club of Juba. She accepted. “When they saw what I was doing,” Groenendijk says, “they used every opportunity to support us. A lot of credit goes to Michael. I went there and showed pictures of a girl who had been raped, to show what was happening in Juba. After that, a lot of people started paying attention to what we were doing.”

“The job she’s done looking after these children has just been amazing,” Elmquist says. “You can’t believe the difference in the young girls who come in. They don’t talk, they don’t know how to hold a knife or fork or anything. And she trains them and gets them to school. She gets them dressed. She saves them from prostitution, which would be their only source of income.”

Soon Groenendijk started looking for a piece of land. Eventually, she bought some property and built a dormitory that could house about 40 girls. She hired a small staff.

The Juba club continued to support her work, along with other rebuilding projects in South Sudan – which became an independent nation in 2011. At one fundraising dinner, the club auctioned drawings done by the girls at Groenendijk’s center and raised $3,000 for CCC, as well as an orphanage in Juba.