Geoff Green, Club Assembly, Nigeria and Entrepreneurship

Last Week
Geoff Green gave us a very interesting talk about food and the small urban vegetable gardens with which he is involved.  Outside his small urban farm he mentors potential growers and has a network of over 400 vegetable gardens primarily in the townships and informal settlements.
He has a flock of Rhode Island Reds for egg production that was funded by the Rotary Club of Oslo and possible cooperation with them will be discussed at the Club Assembly on Saturday.
There was much interest in his talk and there was a general request that he come back and chat to us about establishing establishing similar bio-dynamic vegetable gardens at our own homes.  We are looking at a date.




Club Assembly Captain Room @ Wanderers, 9,30 Saturday 30th July
The agenda has been drawn up and I am just waiting for confirmation from Lyn Collocott that I haven't missed anything out!
This assembly will set the club's direction for at least the next six months so it is very important that you do your best to attend and provide input.
I have added a number of items to the agenda that have been requested by members.  If you have anything specific that you wish to discuss please let me know.
Something that will come up is the issue of Job Creation.  It's one thing that has been raised by Vocational Service and is something we must seriously look at.
After the assembly we will know what we are going to do this year and you will receive a form asking which committee you wish to be on.  As you know, everyone in the club has to be on a committee but the assembly will enable you to choose your committee so that you are involved with a particular project that appeals to you personally.

This Week
David Bradshaw is going to chat about his Rotary Friendship Exchange to Nigeria.  This should be very interesting as he has put a Nigerian suggestion on the agenda for the club assembly.

MEMBER INTERVIEW: SUSAN DAVIS USES SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO FIGHT POVERTY

Illustration by Monica Garwood

Susan Davis has devoted the past three decades to using social entrepreneurship and microfinance to address extreme poverty, particularly in Bangladesh. A Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship in the early 1980s allowed her to study international relations at the University of Oxford. A decade ago, she co-founded BRAC USA (previously the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee) to help the world’s poor through self-empowerment. She is co-author, with journalist David Bornstein, of the book Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, and has served on numerous boards, including the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships and the Grameen Foundation. At the Rotary International Convention in May, Davis, who is a member of the Rotary E-Club of District 7210, received the 2015-16 Rotary Global Alumni Service to Humanity Award.

THE ROTARIAN: How did your Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship influence your career?

DAVIS: Getting a chance to study at Oxford through the great gift of the Rotary scholarship was eye-opening. It’s one of the oldest universities in the world and a tremendous place to get perspective on international relations and politics. Without that scholarship, who knows what I would have done. It was the first time I had lived outside the country, and it helped to shape my deep sense of commitment to being a good global citizen and being of service. And I’m so touched to be honored by Rotary when I feel that it has already given me so much through the scholarship.

TR: Your time in Bangladesh, specifically when you first went in the mid-1980s for the Ford Foundation, was also life-changing. What did you see there and how did it affect your approach to addressing poverty?

DAVIS: Microfinance and social entrepreneurship were the best strategies I saw to respond to the daily question from women of, “How do I feed my family today?” I had never met people who hadn’t eaten something for days, so when I was confronted with extreme poverty – women who would feed their family grass or make mud cakes to fill their bellies – it’s extremely urgent. Microfinance as a solution, because it’s potentially sustainable, became a passion of mine. It empowers people to change their lives and their communities.

TR: Last year you left your post as president and chief executive officer at BRAC USA, and previously you served on the Grameen board, where you were chair when Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. What are you focusing your attention on now?

DAVIS: I will turn 60 in November, so I decided it was important to see what it feels like to pull back and reflect. I’ll continue to try to be of service, and support young people especially, through my work with New York University and Columbia coaching and teaching social entrepreneurship. I’m also studying racism, looking into other social justice movements, and thinking about gender liberation. I still serve on several boards, including a start-up board called Learn With All, which is a technology company focused on the joy of learning. I’m still working to end extreme poverty and am involved in the Rotarian Action Group for Microfinance and Community Development. If I hadn’t had these experiences of seeing women slowly starving perhaps I wouldn’t feel as strongly, but I know we are rich enough and smart enough to end extreme poverty and hunger. It’s just a matter of political will. 

MSF, Geoff Green & John Germ

Last Week
We were invaded by Medecin sans Frontieres led by Kwanele Ndlovu, their Donor Coordinator.

Kwanele Ndlovu & Sharon Ekambaram

First Sharon Ekambaram (Head of the DNA unit, told us about their activities in KZN and Rustenburg primarily dealing with HIV-AIDS patients.



This naturally led on to  Claire Waterhouse chatting about her experiences in the Central African Republic working with refugees and Ebola victims.
She has the rather grandiose title of Access Campaign Advocacy Coordinator (Southern Africa) which means that she spends much of her time lobbying governments and pharmaceutical companies to make drugs affordable for the poorest of the poor.

Claire Waterhouse

It was a great pleasure having them as we here the name Medecin sans Frontieres quite frequently but I was certainly not aware of their involvement in this country.

Club Assembly  Saturday 30th July
Apart from the Projects that we will discuss there are also other issues that have to be approved.  One of the most important is setting the Club Subscriptions for the year with the decline of the Rand against the US$ as well as the Board's suggestion for Business Meetings in the future.  You can raise any issue at the Assembly but it would help if you sent anything through to Lyn Collocott well in advance so that it can appear on the agenda.

This Week

Our speaker is Geoff Green...and this is what the Farmers Weekly has to say about him.

Organic farmer Geoffrey Green of Sparrow Village Farm has created a farming operation on just 0,4ha of land in Maraisburg, Gauteng. 

Geoffrey Green is a geographer-turned-farmer with a passion for organic farming, an enterprise he runs from Sparrow Village Farm, in Maraisburg, west of Johannesburg. Although he has a mere 0,4ha at his disposal, he has utilised the space optimally and today grows up to 36 different crops, including sweetcorn, butternut, horned cucumber, cabbage, and cauliflower.

While still a geographer, Geoffrey worked on a project that examined the food supply chain. This stirred in him an interest for farming, which later found expression in a new career as an organic urban farmer. This venture was also inspired in part by concern over the distance that food must be transported from the rural farm to the urban fork.

As a geographer, he was well aware of the impact of climate change on farming conditions, and says that transporting food over long distances produces a large carbon footprint. His solution? Farm closer to the city.

“I did some research and found that on a 5m x 5m piece of ground, you can grow enough food to feed a family,” Geoffrey recalls. “I found this farm and my agreement with the landowner was that my first point of supply was to the orphanage next door– and I’ve proven that farming on a small scale can feed 150 people a day.”

Organic farming
Composting is one of the primary activities on Sparrow Village Farm. Geoffrey ensures that not a single scrap of plant material goes to waste – everything gets composted.

“All the fertilisers I use are natural composted materials supplemented with worm tea and compost from the vermiculture bins,” he explains. The worm tea, diluted to a ratio of 1:20 with water, is applied approximately once a fortnight. Any leftover tea is poured onto the compost heaps.

He also makes his own chemical-free pesticides using garlic, khakibos and cayenne pepper. The garlic and cayenne pepper solution involves crushing two heads of fresh garlic and putting this into a 20l barrel of water for two hours. Two tablespoons of cayenne pepper are added to the water and left to dissolve for four hours.

“If there are no visible signs of insects on the plants, I don’t always add cayenne pepper,” says Geoffrey. To make the khakibos solution, he fills a 210l drum with khakibos, covers this with water and lets it stand for 10 days or until the mixture has turned a dark colour. The khakibos is then removed and the infused liquid is applied to plants.

“Both treatments are put through a sieve before application and applied using a handheld sprayer,” he explains. “The garlic solution is made every Wednesday and applied on a Friday afternoon. I only use the khakibos solution about once a month. The thinking is that by switching between the two treatments, it’ll take longer before the insects become resistant to either one.”

According to Geoffrey, healthy produce relies on healthy soil, and he utilises various methods to keep his soil fertile. To check the quality of his soil he will, for example, insert a yardstick into the earth to check the compaction level. “It all comes down to soil quality, maintaining a healthy ecosystem and creating biodiversity in the soil and plants.”

No-till and crop rotation
All Geoffrey’s organic crops are grown under cover in five 6m x 12m and two 10m x 30m tunnels. “I practise intercropping with several different plants such as ginger, garlic and onions for pest control. We also intercrop basil with the tomatoes and peppers, because the insects that like them don’t like basil,” he says. “I estimate that if we could maximise our efforts, we could probably produce 20t per harvest cycle.”

Geoffrey practises no-till and follows a rotation cycle that starts with mustard to produce green mulch, which is worked back into the soil. This is followed by tomato, beans and carrots, and then, after a fallow period, vegetables such as beetroot and kale.

“We use drip irrigation from a borehole, but because the soil has so much organic matter in it, we irrigate for only 40 minutes a day.”

In addition to crops, Sparrow Village Farm also has free-range chickens, with a breeding flock of about 40 hens and eight roosters. Birds are sent for slaughter at about 1,8kg, which is at approximately 10 weeks.

Out of touch 
According to Geoffrey, there is a disconnect between people and their food. “Ask children living in cities today where milk or meat comes from and they’ll say it comes from the supermarket.”

He says that as a small-scale, organic farmer he has encountered reluctance from supermarkets to buy food with any imperfections, and consumers too expect produce to be perfect in shape, size and appearance. “To limit wastage, the imperfect produce get used in products such as sauces or frozen vegetables. But it still means consumers are unaware of the realities that farmers deal with – not every tomato is free of marks on its skin.”

He adds that today’s customers prefer convenience, and want vegetables that have already been washed, chopped and packaged. Although this may make life easier, it adds to the disconnect between people and food, according to Geoffrey. People don’t know where their food comes from; they don’t understand the food system and many do not think about the consequences their food choices have on farmers and the environment.

And now for a little about our new RI President,

JOHN GERM: CHAMPION OF CHATTANOOGA

Photo Credit: Rotary International / Alyce Henson

The son of a stonemason, who built the family home with his own hands, excavating its foundation with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, Germ developed his work ethic early in life. Nothing came easily. Other schoolboys made fun of his name – “they called me ‘Bacteria’ ” – and his parents couldn’t afford college tuition. After a stint in vocational school, he paid his way through the University of Tennessee at Knoxville by working in a machine shop and serving food in a dorm cafeteria. After graduating, he joined the U.S. Air Force. Soon promoted to captain, he was navigator on a 50-ton Douglas C-124, ferrying troops and tanks to Vietnam. “Unfortunately,” he says, “we flew home with soldiers’ bodies.” In 1965 Germ’s C-124 carried the Gemini IV space capsule to Cape Kennedy. On another mission, the giant plane lost two engines and skimmed the ocean, shaking like a bumper car all the way back to base. “When we landed, we found seaweed hanging off the fuselage,” he says. “That’s how close we came to a watery grave.”

When Germ’s military service ended, he joined engineering firm Campbell & Associates in his hometown. His boss, George Campbell, liked the young flier’s can-do attitude. “Within 10 years,” Germ told him, “I’ll either own some of this company or I’ll be your biggest competitor.” He wasn’t wrong. He eventually became chairman and CEO of the firm, which went on to serve Chattanooga’s airport, its most prominent hospital, several downtown high-rises, and the Convention Center. One of his challenges was a new cineplex, where the owner gave him a warning that puzzled him at first: “Don’t make the air conditioning too good.”

Germ asked, “Why not?”

“Because the customers need to smell the popcorn; we make most of our money at the concession stand.”

As president, Germ wants to “find the popcorn smell that’ll bring people to Rotary. And what is that? Service. We’ve got a service-minded generation coming up. We’ve got to get our message out to them, and we’d better do it fast.”

Lee Roebeck, Doctors without Borders and Peace Fellowships

Last Week

Lee Roebeck talked to us about humility and told us a lot of interesting stories about his family.

What was particularly interesting was his knowledge and admiration for the Four-way Test.

He is, in many ways, an aspirant motivational speaker.  He really believes that you are able to influence people for the better and is working hard at it.

I suppose we were guinea pigs, in a way.



This Week

Our speaker this week is Kwanele Ndlovu who is the Donor Development Coordinator for Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders.
She seems to be bringing a whole team along!

MSF is a fantastic organisation...see below.
I just hope she is not coming just to ask for money.



Amid the Parisian upheavals of May 1968, a group of young doctors decided to go and help victims of wars and major disasters. This new brand of humanitarianism would reinvent the concept of emergency aid. They were to become Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), known internationally in English as Doctors Without Borders.

Medics in Emergencies  For a number of years, Max Recamier and Pascal Greletty-Bosviel—volunteer doctors with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva—had been regularly intervening in armed conflicts.  "Contrary to popular belief, the Red Cross is not a medical organization at all," says Max Recamier. "Pascal and myself were the only two doctors they knew because of our previous mission in Yemen, so they asked us to find some doctors for the ICRC. The first one to volunteer was Bernard Kouchner, who was much younger than I was; he was just finishing his studies and hadn't even finished his thesis yet, but he volunteered to go over there."

A team of six set off on the ICRC mission to Biafra: two doctors—Max Recamier and Bernard Kouchner—as well as two clinicians and two nurses. Being thrown into such a bloody conflict was a real shock for these fledgling doctors, who found themselves having to provide war surgery in hospitals that were regularly targeted by the Nigerian armed forces.  Recamier and Kouchner believed the world needed to know about the events they w ere witnessing: civilians being murdered and starved by blockading forces. They openly criticized the Nigerian government and the Red Cross for their seemingly complicit behavior.  In the following three years, other doctors began to speak up. These doctors, or "Biafrans," as they were known, began to lay the foundations for a new and questioning form of humanitarianism that would ignore political or religious boundaries, and prioritize the welfare of those suffering.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) opened the Kgomotso care centre to provide emergency medical and psychosocial care to victims of sexual violence in Rustenburg, a large town in the ‘Platinum Belt’ mining area of South Africa.In Rustenburg, with one in three women report having been raped at some point in their life.
Since the project opened, MSF health promotion teams have spoken to over 25,000 adults and high school students about sexual and gender-based violence. MSF aims to use this project as a model for providing comprehensive care for victims of sexual violence in South Africa, and to advocate for a primary care-level response run by nurses and psychologists instead of a centralised physician-led service.
Raising public awareness and encouraging women to break their silence is also extremely important, as the preliminary results of an MSF survey show that up to 30 per cent of women do not seek medical care after a sexual assault.

Emergency intervention in Durban
In April, an emergency team from our Eshowe project responded to an outbreak of xenophobic violence in the coastal city of Durban.Over 7,000 migrants, mainly Malawians, Zimbabweans, Mozambicans, Congolese and Burundians, fled and sought refuge in three hastily erected displacement camps.MSF provided medical care, psychosocial counselling, water and sanitation logistics, and helped coordinate the response with other organisations like the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN Refugee Agency.
Stop Stock Outs 
The Stop Stock Outs Project (SSP) is a civil society initiative in which MSF, in collaboration with other organisations, monitors availability of essential drugs in clinics across the country, engages with health authorities to monitor stock outs, and pushes for shortages to be resolved more quickly.  Published at the 7th SA AIDS Conference in Durban in July, the second SSP report revealed that one in four clinics surveyed experienced shortages of medicines, thereby confirming that drug stock outs are a threat to public health and could undermine the progress made in South Africa’s antiretroviral (ARV) programme, which is the largest in the world, reaching over 3 million patients.

Here's a little information about Peace Fellowships as we have a candidate.
PEACE FELLOWSHIPS

WHAT ARE ROTARY PEACE FELLOWSHIPS?

Each year, Rotary selects up to 100 individuals from around the world to receive fully funded academic fellowships at one of our peace centers. These fellowships cover tuition and fees, room and board, round-trip transportation, and all internship and field-study expenses. 

In just over a decade, the Rotary Peace Centers have trained more than 900 fellows for careers in peace building. Many of them go on to serve as leaders in national governments, NGOs, the military, law enforcement, and international organizations like the United Nations and World Bank.

Check out the Rotary Peace Map to see where our alumni are creating positive change.

Two types of peace fellowships are available.

MASTER'S DEGREE

We offer master’s degree fellowships at premier universities in fields related to peace and conflict prevention and resolution. Programs last 15 to 24 months and require a practical internship of two to three months during the academic break. Each year, we award up to 50 master’s degree fellowships at these institutions:

• Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA (fact sheet)
• International Christian University, Japan (fact sheet)
• University of Bradford, England (fact sheet)
• University of Queensland, Australia (fact sheet)
• Uppsala University, Sweden (fact sheet)

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT CERTIFICATE

For experienced professionals working in peace-related fields who want to enhance their professional skills, we offer a three-month program in peace and conflict prevention and resolution at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand (fact sheet). This program incorporates two to three weeks of field study. We award up to 50 certificates each year.

Students, Lee Roebeck, Cape "Port" & Rotary and Religious Values

Last Week

We had a now show situation with the same speaker for a second time.  David Bradshaw is going to cross her off in the Book of Life.

Lindelani Ntuli & Howard Johnston playing games

It didn't matter because we had two students from Alexandra who the Club had sponsored through Phutijataba who came to visit us and they were able to talk...and talk...and talk!

Warren Radebe brandishes his BA degree.

They were great fun to have as guests and it was all round a pleasant social meeting.

This Week
We have Lee Roebeck talking on the Power of Humility.  He's the Network Administrator at Unified Communications and is one of those motivational speakers.  It'll be interesting to hear a humble one!
He started something called the "Born to Lose Built to Win Academy"  This is what he has to say about himself:

Lee Roebeck, Founder of Born to Lose Built to Win Academy, is a speaker with a commanding presence and he has this rare ability to combine humorous stories with content that inspires, entertains and motivates all at the same time. Lee went from rock-bottom and bankrupt to someone making a significant impact and difference in the lives of those around him. You could say that he was Born to Lose, but through the study of Personal Development he has changed his story somewhat - for the better. His in-depth study of Personal Development has created this belief in him that every single human being has deep reservoirs of latent potential, and Lee has made it his life’s mission to awaken this latent potential in as many lives as he possibly can. Lee travelled to Boston in the United States, to receive his training at the “Harvard of Professional Speaking Schools” – The Bill Gove Speech Workshop. Other noteworthy graduates from this prestigious workshop include speakers like Bob Proctor, Mark Victor Hansen and Zig Ziglar. This very specialised training has earned Lee the designation of Certified Corporate Speaker with the International Association of Corporate Speakers (IACS).

We mustn't give him a hard time.

Port Tasting & Dinner
I sent out invitations to this yesterday. Please come back to me as soon as possible. The invitation from New Dawn was pure chance. I happened to walk into Cheese Gourmet just as they were planning it and asked if we would like to attend.

Axe Hill was started by the late Tony Mossop and wife Lyn, at a remote site on the outskirts of Calitzdorp in the Klein Karoo during 1993. Calitzdorp is a viticulture area situated in the Klein Karoo Wine Region. The area has been acclaimed for its fortified wines for a number of years and Calitzdorp is known as “the Port Capital of South Africa”. The unique micro-climate prevalent in the region is typically characterised by dry, arid conditions which add to the overall concentration of true Portuguese varietals. The name of the vineyard originates from the stone hand tools found on the farm and used by pre-historic man over a quarter of a million years ago.

Only one vintage is made each year from a blend of the traditional Portuguese varietals Touriga Nacional, Tinta Barroca and Souzão. The wine is matured in old 500 litre French oak barrels after hand sorting and foot crushing in lagares for maximum extraction of both flavours and colour. This method closely resembles traditional Portuguese port wine making techniques which have been in use for centuries.

A dry, white Port, is also produced. Chenin Blanc grapes are used in this drier style, fortified wine. The wine is barrel-aged by the fractional blending of old to young wine so that each bottling is a fusion of ages, with the average age gradually increasing over the years. Axe Hill Cape White has its origins with the first vintage in 2003 and will continue to grow in complexity with future releases.

New additions to the range include a Cape Ruby Port, a Shiraz and a very limited bottling of a unique Dry Red blend made from Portuguese varietals Touriga Nacional, Tinta Barroca and Souzão and a dash of Shiraz – Machado 2010 – which means Axe in Portuguese!

Meet the winemaker:
Mike Neebe is the winemaker at Axe Hill. He started making wine at Axe Hill in 2008, facing a daunting challenge to maintain Axe Hill standards. Mike spent a harvest at RAMOS PINTO in Portugal in 2010 honing his port and winemaking skills. He lives in Johannesburg commuting to Calitzdorp frequently – in his other life Mike runs a pub, The Bohemian - "catering for the real life bohemians among us..."

His favourite wine from the cellar:
Mike’s current favourite wine at Axe Hill is undoubtedly the new blend Machado 2010 – which has been described as the “vinous equivalent of sheepskin slippers…” one of a kind, a bold, food-friendly wine made in a classical style.

I sometimes wonder if Rotary isn't a religious substitute......and I think this interesting article answers the question.

Rotary and the dilemma of religious values

by noronwe

by John Borst, Past President Rotary Club of Dryden

When I first joined Rotary my club held a Friday evening, all day Saturday educational workshop. We covered a lot of topics, but one comment has stuck with me to this day; probably, it wasn’t meant to have such an impact.

The trainer was discussing the role of Rotary in her life and said that “Rotary was her religion”. I was taken aback but I figured she was speaking figuratively to make the point about how important it was in her life.

Yet it seems to me that there is in fact, at the very least, a quasi-religious nature to the organization. Although Rotary professes to be secular, its guiding principles and ethical beliefs are grounded in all of the World’s great religions.

This takes two forms.

The first is the fervor with which some members support the organization. This manifests itself, particularly when someone is critical of some aspects of how Rotary is managed or the nature of one of its many programs.

Some members are so wedded to all aspects of how the organization is managed that it is too much like heresy to even suggest changes to the Manual of Procedures.

The furor over the change in the logo is another example of how symbols exert a strong pull on a person’s identity much as they do with religions and are to be tinkered with at considerable risk.

There is also a somewhat proselytizing nature to many of the key programs such as PolioPlus or the Peace Scholars program . Even such habits as the President’s annual theme appear inviolate to change.
The second form is more important and finds expression in the very mission and principles of Rotary itself. And in many ways, this for secularists and non-believers this is a far more serious issue.

When Rotary was formed American Society was overwhelmingly Christian. When Paul Harris argued that religion and politics should be banned from discussion for the good of fellowship, division was over the different denominations of Christianity not between different religions as it might be today.

This issue is addressed by the Rotary Global History Fellowship which states:

“One of the more interesting things about Rotary history is to follow the thinking of Rotary leaders as they work to balance guiding principles that do not always agree. Rotary was originally conceived as a service organization that brought business people and professionals together to improve their community through club actions and through a shared commitment to ethical conduct in all aspects of their lives. All community leaders who adhered to these values were welcome, regardless of their religion. To create a harmonious environment for the fellowship that held clubs together, Rotary discouraged religious and political positions. However, the commitment to ethical conduct is essentially a commitment to the golden rule, which is a nearly universal religious principle. Consequently, in 1935, Paul Harris worried that the golden rule probably needed to be abandoned by Rotary to avoid religious overtones, but doing so would deny a core value of Rotary. The solution was the Four-Way Test, which is nothing more than a more detailed articulation of how to follow the golden rule.

The retention of the Golden Rule as a summation of the hopes and ambitions of Rotary has recently met with serious opposition from different quarters. It is not that any appreciable number lack faith in the Golden Rule as a guide in the affairs of men. The objection most frequently heard is that it has so long been identified with religious movements that its adoption by Rotary affords reasonable grounds for the assumption by the uninitiated that Rotary is in fact a religion. It being the case that Rotarians do not consider Rotary a religion, it is probable that the use of the Golden Rule in Rotary literature will be abandoned.
 (Paul Harris, This Rotarian Age, page 91)

Actually it goes beyond high ethical standards and the golden rule. Many if not most clubs say a version of Rotary grace which recognizes the existence of a deity beyond ourselves. This surprises me because I suspect there are many members who do not believe in a God or an after-life.

Even Rotary’s motto “Service Above Self” is imbued with religious principle, a principle common to all of the World’s major religions. I understand that during the discussion on the design of the new branding of Rotary thought was given to revising and updating of this motto too.

Sometimes however, an individual comment demonstrates just how fine the line between Rotary and religion may be.

In a post on a woman as president this response appeared at LinkedIn:

“A masculine privilege is be Rotary President in a honest couple with his wife, in name of the family & the harmonic unity of a legally union to be both one in God law & civil rights.” (The writer belonged to a club in Peru.)

To me it demonstrates the degree to which a very religiously conservative person can find within Rotary an organization she believes to be fully compatible with her religious faith.

One example might be the preference or is it practice within Rotary at both the District, Director and Presidential levels of showing the District Governor, Director and the President with his or her spouse. It is just a little thing but it does send a message that marriage, and family are the ethical norm to be expected within Rotary.

Interestingly, when one visits Christian churches in much of Europe, Canada, and even South America one finds a growing abundance of grey hair and dwindling number of young members not dissimilar to Rotary itself.

I expect this dilemma is not going to go away anytime soon. There is however, need for a review of Rotarian practices. Some through long time use may no longer be questioned, but which, if reflected upon for their hidden religious meaning, may be in need of reconsideration.