Our Speaker is J Brooks Spector, Associate Editor of The Daily Maverick and a member of the Rotary Club of Johannesburg.He settled in Johannesburg after a career as a US diplomat in Africa and East Asia.
He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, been a consultant for an international NGO, run a theatre, and been a commentator for South African and international print/broadcast/online media, in addition to writing for The Daily Maverick from day one.
He says he learned everything he needs to know about politics from ‘Casablanca.’
Maybe he's cynical about some things, but a late Beethoven string quartet, John Coltrane’s music and a dish of Pad Thai will bring him close to tears.
Last Week
It was a Business Meeting and I wasn't there so I cannot comment.
Attendance
Please note that a make-up is only valid for a period of 14 days. This means that if you take part in a Club event outside the normal meeting or attend another Rotary Club and do not attend one of our ordinary Club Meetings within 14 days that make-up falls away. So if you help at the Arts Festival for 4 sessions it will only count as one or two make-ups, depending on how they are spaced, as long as you attend a meeting of our Club within 14 days of each.
This is very important because if you have less than 40% attendance you are technically no longer a member unless you have been granted Leave of Absence by the Board.
ROTARY DAY AT THE UNITED NATIONS HIGHLIGHTS THE STRENGTH OF PARTNERSHIPS
To strengthen their 69-year-old partnership, leaders from Rotary and the United Nations met in November, 2014 in New York City for Rotary Day at the United Nations. The two organizations began working together with the aim of maintaining peace after World War II. Today, the relationship has evolved to include humanitarian work in areas like gender equality, child and maternal health, and disease treatment and prevention.
While the UN's Millennium Development Goals are set to expire in 2015, its leaders are preparing for an even more ambitious humanitarian agenda of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, said Amina J. Mohammed, special adviser of the UN secretary-general on post-2015 development planning, speaking at the event.
The UN considers those living on less than $1.25 per day to be in extreme poverty. Around the world, 1.2 billion people fall into this category.
"We have the resources in the world to deal with the issues we have today," said Mohammed. "We need to find a way to unlock that." She added that building strong partnerships with organizations that share a similar vision will be crucial to solving the global issues that are related to extreme poverty. As proof of the power of partnerships, Mohammed cited the polio eradication work of Rotary and its global partners.
Describing that work, Rotary Foundation Trustee Chair John Kenny, in his address to the meeting, said, "we persist, we overcome challenges, we make progress -- and we do not yield."
Nina Schwalbe, principal health adviser for UNICEF, noted that the skills honed in fighting polio -- such as identifying the people an infected person has come into contact with, known as "contact tracing" -- can be used "as a model to make advances in other global health issues," such as Ebola.
Nigeria's government stopped its recent Ebola outbreak largely by employing the strong health care systems it had put in place to tackle polio, said Schwalbe. Extreme poverty can be eliminated, insisted Mohammed, but infrastructure must be improved, and not merely through ad hoc projects scattered around the world. Eliminating extreme poverty, she said, requires making sure girls have access to education and addressing other forms of gender inequality.
"Women and children are the world's greatest untapped resources. Helping them is the quickest way to end poverty," said Nana Taona Kuo, senior manager for Every Woman Every Child, an initiative of the UN secretary-general. "When women and children are healthy and strong, entire economies grow."
By reaching decision makers, Rotary can play a critical role in civil society, said Kuo.
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