A Social Meeting, our Interactors, Lyn Collocott, 'Be the Inspiration'....what it means and a Rotary Award for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.

Last Week.



It was a very successful Social Meeting with a little bit of business thrown in.  It was so successful that I was quite surprised when the meeting came to an end because the time flew by.
I didn't take any pictures because most of us know what we look like and I am not good at remembering to do it.


Usually somebody whispers loudly "Take some pictures!"and I jump up like a startled rabbit.







Cesare Vidulich organised the Highlands North Boys' High School Interact Club Blanket Drive at the Norwood Mall.  Jean has already written about it but I just want to add that the Interactors are a credit to Rotary and their school because they such outstanding boys...and look at the result that politeness and smartness brings from the general public.
Many thanks to Joan Sainsbury for the photo.








This Week.
At the last minute Immediate Past President Lyn Collocott will be talking about herself.  It's also her birthday in less than a week's time so we should get cake at least.
It will be very interesting hearing about her checkered career.

Just look at this short 2 minute video from RI President Barry Rassin.  It really shows what we should be doing this Rotary Year.

In acknowledgment of his government’s efforts to achieve a polio-free world, Rotary today presented Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with its Polio Eradication Champion Award at its 109th annual international convention.

Justin Trudeau accepts Rotary's Polio Eradication Champion Award from RI President Ian H.S. Riseley.

Canada has been a champion in the fight to eradicate polio since 1986, when it became the first government to formally fund global polio immunization efforts. Canada has provided over CAD $750 million in support of a polio-free world, including a $100 million pledge to global eradication in 2017. Earlier this month, Canada, as host of the G7 summit, was joined by G7 leaders in affirming a commitment to polio eradication.

“Prime Minister Trudeau has committed Canada to remain a strong partner until polio is completely eradicated,” said Rotary International President Ian H.S. Riseley. “With the unwavering support of the Prime Minister and the Canadian government and their strong assistance with continued vaccination efforts, I’m confident we will rid the world of polio.”

Later this week, Rotary will announce nearly $50.12 million in support for global polio eradication efforts in countries where polio is a threat. Since 1988, Rotary has contributed more than $2.3 billion and countless volunteer hours in the fight to end polio, with Rotary clubs in Canada donating more than $66.6 million towards polio eradication. Rotary members throughout Canada travel regularly to polio-threatened countries to vaccinate children in mass immunization campaigns.

To help create awareness and support for the global effort to protect all children from polio, Rotary’s international convention will feature two virtual reality videos that will immerse viewers into the lives of those still impacted by the disease, and what it will take to eradicate it worldwide. Download the Rotary VR app in Google Play or the Apple App Store to view “I Dream of an Empty Ward." 

Polio eradication has been Rotary’s top priority since 1985. In 1988, Rotary became a leading partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, along with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and later, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Since the initiative launched, the incidence of polio has plummeted by more than 99.9 percent, from about 350,000 cases in 1988 to just 22 confirmed cases in two countries in 2017. 

About the Polio Eradication Champion Award: Rotary established the award in 1995 to honor individuals who have made significant contributions to the global eradication effort. Prime Minister Trudeau is the third Canadian Prime Minister to receive the award, joining Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper. Past recipients also include Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan; Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany; Xavier Bettel, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria; Nevin Mimica, European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development; and Ban Ki-moon, former UN secretary-general. 

Mandela 100, the DG Visits, a Quiz and Rotary Sponsored Reconstructive Surgery

Last Week

First of all, on the spur of the moment, we were asked to effectively 'be' the Mandela 100 Exhibition at Rosebank Mall from Wednesday to Sunday.  President Jean and Joan Sainsbury quickly cobbled something together which looked fine.
As you can see there were several artworks on display as well some produced by prisoners at Leeuwkop Prison and various artists contributed as part of the event.
They all spent more than 67 minutes as well.
So did the Rotarians who manned the stall.You could say that this was our Rotary Awareness Project to go on My Rotary.

Cesare Ludovich met a couple of Tanzanian Rotarians in the Rosebank Mall but they were unable to come to our meeting.






Friday lunch saw District Governor Charles Deiner's Official Visit.  He was accompanied by the DG Ann, Colleen Deiner and PDG Ann Janet Callard.  There is a report on the Anns' meeting on the Anns' Page so just click on that for the full details.

This is the Official Photo with President Jean Bernardo, DG Charles Deiner & DGA Colleen Deiner

Apparently they were very impressed with the pizza and the price we pay for our weekly meeting!

On the right is another price, Mr Price - our AG David Price..
I am sure he has to suffer that a lot.





President Jean mentioned in her weekly column how the DG emphasised the importance of everyone registering with My Rotary.  I am just repeating that because I know the President Jean wants to aim for a Presidential Citation this year and there is absolutely no reason why we shouldn't achieve one.
The major reason for not complying will be because My Rotary is not up to date.  This is not just because individual members are not registered but because all our projects have to be on there as well as many other aspects of the what we do.  I am sure President Jean has this in hand but she can't do it on her own.

This Week
It's billed as a Social Meeting but I think it's likely to be more of a Business Meeting and a DG's Visit report back.

Quiz Invitation
The Rotary Club of Johannesburg is organising a quiz on Friday 2nd November with Johannesburg New Dawn & Northcliff and we have been asked if we would like to join them.
The Board has said yes and I am sure that our club's wide range of knowledgable members will ensure victory.

Rotary Leadership Institute Courses

The Institute is organising the following courses and we do have new members who should make an effort to go.  Old ones too, of course.  It's a bit like the sign outside a church.  "New Souls made Old Souls mended."
Where: Fourways Min Reef Rotary Club
When:  Part 1: Saturday 13th October
             Part 2: Saturday 10th November
             Part 3: Saturday 1st December



And here is something we could look at.

Since 1993, Rotarians in Chile and the United States have teamed up to provide life-altering reconstructive surgeries

The team includes surgeons, nurses, an anesthesiologist, and a speech pathologist, as well as Rotaractors and Rotarians who handle logistics and translation.

Ricardo Román was shopping with his wife at a department store in Chile in 2012 when a woman in her early 20s approached him. He didn’t recognize her, he confesses through an interpreter, but there were two good reasons: He had last seen her more than a decade earlier – and her smile had changed drastically.

Román, a member of the Rotary Club of Reñaca, Chile, is the national coordinator of a  program that has helped thousands of children in Chile with cleft lips, cleft palates, and other birth defects – including this stranger who now wanted to give Román a hug.

“She told me, ‘This is my Rotarian smile,’” he recalls, his voice full of emotion. “It was a very gratifying moment.”

The project got its start in 1993 when San Francisco (California) Rotarians, led by Peter Lagarias and Angelo Capozzi, sponsored a medical mission that performed reconstructive surgeries in Chile. That was the beginning of Rotaplast, a program that evolved into a nonprofit organization that has since sent teams to 26 countries.

In 2004, Rotarians in Chile assumed leadership of the program in their country. Over the years, Chilean doctors became more involved and eventually the program expanded to include breast reconstruction for cancer patients.

“It’s a great commentary on Rotary that you’ve got people in a Spanish-speaking country and people in an English-speaking country working together to get things accomplished,” says James Lehman, a plastic surgeon who joined the Rotary Club of Fairlawn, Ohio, USA, after working with Rotarians in Chile.

In February, Lehman and a team of U.S. surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses visited Iquique, a Pacific port city and tourist hot spot about 80 miles south of Chile’s northern border. With financial help from the nearby Collahuasi copper mine, local Rotarians coordinate and pay for the medical team’s food, lodging, and in-country transportation. (Visiting doctors pay for their flights between the United States and Chile; an Ohio-based nonprofit funds the travel of some support staff.)

More than 250 potential patients lined up early on a Saturday morning outside Ernesto Torres Galdames Hospital to try to get a spot on the team’s schedule. They had come from all over Chile, including a family who had traveled from Concepción, 1,400 miles to the south. About 600 children are born each year in Chile with cleft lips and palates, and though the government established eight centers to treat those abnormalities, the long wait list means corrective surgery can lie years in the future. “The demand exceeds the supply of people to take care of the patients,” Lehman explains.

Using four operating rooms – one for cleft lip or palate, one for ear reconstruction, one for breast reconstruction, and one for other issues – the team got to work. Patients were chosen based on need and on the complexity of the surgery. By the end of their stay, the surgeons and their staff had operated on 82 patients. In many cases, however, the complete reconstruction may take multiple surgeries, and some patients return several years in a row to complete the procedure.

But the final surgery doesn’t always signal an end to the relationship between a patient and Rotary. Román, who has coordinated the program since 2004, recalls an occasion involving the young woman he encountered in the department store. At Román’s invitation, she described her transformational cleft lip and palate surgeries at a Rotary district conference in Chile in 2012. Moved by her story, many in the crowd of 300 broke into tears, dazzled by her Rotarian smile.

EMAIL THIS PAGERicardo Román was shopping with his wife at a department store in Chile in 2012 when a woman in her early 20s approached him. He didn’t recognize her, he confesses through an interpreter, but there were two good reasons: He had last seen her more than a decade earlier – and her smile had changed drastically.

Jerry Bernardo, My Rotary, the DG's Visit and "Fake News"

Last Week
Jerry Bernardo gave us a talk about himself....the youngest of 10 children.
It was very interesting how his real interest is in designing engines and machinery for specific purposes starting with his father making him clean engine parts when he was very young. 
I often wonder how many people became mechanics and engineers because every weekend fathers had to work on the car.  Cars have become more sophisticated today and constant adjustment is neither necessary nor possible.
Jerry moved on into building and we at Rotary Rosebank are forever in his debt for his use of those skills for Rotary projects over the years.



My Rotary
Ann Hope-Bailie has sent every member instuctions on how to register on My Rotary.  Almost all of our members are registered but it is very important that we are all on there.  Mentors of new members please make sure that your new members are registered.  Rotary International is now completely geared to electronic communication and we have to not only be registered but also all our projects etc have to be on my Rotary.  This means that the District Governor is able to see what we are doing, what we hope to do and what the status of our membership is at anytime.

This Week
It's the District Governor's visit, an annual event. 
We are lucky be visited so early in the year  as Jean and her executive will have a separate meeting with him before lunch and will lay out our plans for the year.  He will never know if we have managed to achieve them or not!  
If the visit was at the end of the year it would be a different story!
Our District Governor is Charles Deiner who is an agricultural consultant specialising in animal production and egg quality.  He is a member of the Rotary Club of Middelburg.

School for skeptics   by Vanessa Glavinskas   

When the BBC offered a quiz titled “Can You Spot the Fake Stories?” I was confident that I would do well. With a master’s degree in journalism, I thought falling for “fake news” only happened to other people. But I was fooled four times on the seven-question quiz.  

I’m not the only one who has trouble with this. Even the digitally savvy generation now growing up has a difficult time distinguishing credible content from fake stories. In 2015, Stanford University launched an 18-month study of students in middle school, high school, and college across several states to find out how well they were able to evaluate the information they consume online. 

Nearly 8,000 students took part in the study, and the results showed that they were easily duped. Many middle schoolers couldn’t tell the difference between a news story and an ad. College students weren’t able to distinguish a mainstream source from a group promoting a certain point of view. Students often decided if something was credible just by how polished the website looked. The study highlighted a fundamental problem: Today’s students are struggling to differentiate fact from fiction online.

“We’re living in the most overwhelming information landscape in human history,” says Peter Adams, a senior vice president for the News Literacy Project, a nonprofit that aims to add information literacy to middle and high school classrooms across the United States. “It’s confusing because people are consuming information in an aggregated stream, and social media gives things uniformity. A post from a conspiracy theory blog looks the same as a post from the Washington Post.”

To help students learn how to evaluate and verify information, the News Literacy Project launched a virtual classroom called Checkology. One part of the web-based tool allows teachers to present students with news reports, tweets, and other social media posts. The students must determine whether they are credible by looking for a variety of “red flags.”

Jodi Mahoney found Checkology last summer while researching ways to educate her students about fake news. Now she uses it in her classroom, where she teaches students about technology, from email etiquette to basic coding.

“What’s the best way to prevent yourself from spreading misinformation?” she asks a group of sixth-graders at Carl Von Linné Elementary School in Chicago. Eleven-year-old Michael raises his hand. “I think, first you double-check the site where you got it from,” he says. “Then look for clues to see if it’s credible.”

“Good. What kind of clues?” Mahoney encourages the students to start naming them. One student calls out that you want to avoid clickbait. “OK, what’s clickbait?” she asks. The room is quiet. “If you’re not sure, look it up. Let’s Google it.”

The class decides that clickbait is something “designed to get attention or arouse emotion.” The students have learned that’s a red flag because a strong emotional reaction can override your ability to critically evaluate information – a tendency often exploited by people trying to spread misinformation. Next, Mahoney asks them to log in to checkology.org to practice figuring out whether information is fact or fiction. 

“Go to module three,” Mahoney instructs. The students put on headphones and log in. A few minutes later, 12-year-old Guadalupe struggles to determine whether a sample Facebook post sharing an article headlined “CDC Issued a Warning – Don’t Get a Flu Shot This Year” is real. She ultimately decides it’s real because the post “gave a lot of facts about the flu” and included a source. She clicks “fact,” and Checkology corrects her. This post was fiction. 

“That lesson shows that just looking at it doesn’t give you what you need to know,” Adams explains. “If you don’t go upstream to another source, you can’t know if it’s true or not.” 

While the sixth-graders can’t always tell fact from falsehood, Mahoney says she appreciates that Checkology encourages students to be skeptical. “They are so comfortable using the internet that they don’t question it,” she says. She sees it at home too. “My [third-grade] daughter recently told me that the platypus wasn’t a real animal because of a YouTube video she saw.” 

After the class completes a module, Mahoney can create a spreadsheet to see how the students did. “The first week, they all scored very low,” she says. “The data showed me that I needed to be concerned.” At that point, her students couldn’t distinguish among types of media: News, entertainment, ads – they all seemed the same to them. After 13 weeks, she says, she’s starting to see students connect the dots, but emphasizes that they need to continue to practice. She adds, “This needs to be taught all the way through college.” 

Mahoney included a unit on fake news for her sixth-graders, because that’s when most of her students get a cellphone. “They start getting bombarded with content in fifth, sixth, or seventh grade,” she says. She also wants schools to put more emphasis on teaching news literacy. “We spend a lot of time lecturing kids on what not to do on the internet and how to be safe on the internet,” she says. “Now we need to teach them how to understand the content that’s out there.” 

Former teacher Michael Spikes agrees. When he taught media studies and news production to high school students in Washington, D.C., he would tell them, “You can’t be SpongeBob and just absorb. You have to be an active consumer of information.” His mantra: “Where is the evidence?”

If you want to see if you can recognise "Fake News" here's a little game you can try. http://factitious.augamestudio.com/#/  I didn't do so well myself (Peter)

Induction Photo's, a trip to Bloemfontein, Jerry Bernardo and Princess Ann

Induction Dinner
All the photo's I have received so far are on a 'Jean Bernardo's Induction Page' so just click on the link.

Don't forget to Book
I have booked 20 places for the 1st August at 19,30.  Come back to me as soon as possible as it is filling up and I want to see if I can increase the numbers if necesary.  peter@pjsfood.co.za

Last Week
Unfortunately I wasn't at last week's meeting as I was away in the wilds of Bloemfontein for the Inner Wheel District Conference.  It does give me the excuse to be a bit self-indulgent!

Some of the 'partners' listening to Fred's stories.

The Conference is always enjoyable as we partners are entertained whilst the women are conferencing.  We just have to appear for the meet and greet and the Induction of the new District Chairman...that's what she is called.  I imagine she is not a District Governor because that might cause a revolution amongst the ungovernable.
We were taken to Judge Fred Beckley's farm outside Bleomfontein to see his collection of classic cars, mainly Jaguars, and to be entertained.  I knew Fred well when he was on the board of PACOFS and I was with the SABC in Bloemfontein.  It was a great pleasure seeing him as well as many of our old friends in the Free State, many of whom are Rotarians or members of Inner Wheel.  It also means that we see people we see once a year from places as far away as Port Elizabeth and Botswana, relationships that go back a long way.
To get back to the cars.  I think there must have been about 40 in all and Fred regaled us with stories of how he had acquired them, who their owners were and a bit about the cars themselves...how Christine Keeler had ridden in the E-type but he didn't say who.......
There were some other cars from a Mini Cooper that he uses frequently to a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, an Austin Princess and an MG.  He had a Jaguar XJS that is about 40 years old but only has 370km on the clock but he doesn't drive it anywhere because of the importance of low mileage.

Dr Lynn Goedhals of Bloemfontein, new District Chairman, inducted by Jane Malinsky of Bedfordview

Next it was back to lunch and the Induction.  The Toast to Rotary International was proposed by Past District Chairman Ann Roberts from Pretoria and I proposed the toast to International Inner Wheel and then off to see friends, another night and back to Johannesburg on the Sunday.

This Week

Jerry & Jean Bernardo at the Induction Dinner

Jerry Bernardo is next in the series  of long-term members talking about themselves, how and why they became Rotarians etc.  These talks are always highly entertaining so we look forward to it.

Rotary members received a regal thank you from Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, for their work in fighting polio. 

Speaking to an enthusiastic and welcoming crowd on 24 June at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, The Princess Royal addressed attendees of the 2018 Rotary International Convention.  

Since 1970, The Princess Royal has served as president of Save the Children UK, an international nongovernmental organization that focuses on health, education, protection, and disaster relief for children. 

Save the Children began pilot programs of its own to combat polio in Africa in the early 1980s. It discovered the difficulties of delivering the vaccine where it was most needed, she said.

Enter Rotary. With its “astonishing global reach,” as The Princess Royal called it, its extensive understanding of cultures and languages, and its members’ “endearing habit of leaving (their) egos at the door,” the organization ingeniously overcame obstacles that baffled others. In doing so, Rotary, along with its partners, has brought polio nearly to full global eradication. 

For this, The Princess Royal said, she was grateful.

Her Royal Highness noted that, because of the logistical difficulty of getting 1.2 million Rotarians together in one place, she thought it best to take advantage of the organization’s annual convention to say, “Thank you for all the good work you do.”

The Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, the lieutenant governor of Ontario and the Crown’s representative in that Canadian province, introduced The Princess Royal as someone who “personifies the Rotarian model of Service Above Self. Her whole life has been dedicated to shining a light on people and organizations who go above and beyond.”

In addition to her work with Save the Children, Dowdeswell said, The Princess Royal serves as president or patron of more than 300 volunteer, nonprofit, and military organizations. She is chancellor at several universities, as well as a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter and, in recognition of her charity work in Scotland, the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle.

The Princess Royal is the second child and the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh. Dowdeswell noted that she is a proud wife, mother, and grandmother.

With the end of polio in sight, The Princess Royal wondered if Rotary had set its sights on another monumental global challenge. 

She advised Rotary members not to worry if it hasn’t. Given Rotary’s achievements and the respect it has earned at the highest levels of government around the world, she said, “You will not be short of suggestions of what to do next.”

Jean Bernardo's Induction as President, Griffin Shea, follow us on Twitter, an Invitation and a Rotary Day?

Social Media

As well as the Ramble we also have a Facebook page and now a Twitter Account  @JhbRotary.  

Here PP Lyn Collocott congratulates President Jean Bernardo straight after inducting her as our President for 2018/19.  Congratulations Jean.
The only worrying thing is that both of them are wearing black.  I can only put it down to the need to show off the Rotary bling......well I hope that's the reason.
When I receive the other photographs I will put them on a separate page rather than fill up this space.
It was a really pleasant evening and well run by Mike Lamb as MC.  The only real surprise was that we had Moroccan Lamb as one of the main courses and I distinctly remember President Jean saying "As long as we don't have Moroccan Lamb again."  I know it is universally popular with the club so maybe she bowed to the inevitable.
Rotary Ann Charlotte Croswell was made a Paul Harris Fellow for all the work she has done for the Club but most especially for the hard work she put in for the Bophelo Palliative Care Project.  Her husband, James, led the project but Charlotte stepped into the breach when he was away or extremely busy and without her support things would have been much more difficult.
Our new President Jean Bernardo was awarded a Sapphire Pin to her Paul Harris for her hard work with Youth over the years and for the many other things she does for Rotary....long overdue, I thought....
PJS received one for undetected crime.
Good Luck, Jean.  We are all looking forward to working with you over the next year.
We also welcomed Tracy Lavers as a new member of our club.

This Week
Our speaker is Griffin Shea, an American journalist who settled in Johannesburg and introduces us to the world of Underground Booksellers.

"Bridge Books is a unique bookstore in downtown Johannesburg. We believe in supporting African writers and in finding as many ways of getting books into the hands of as many readers as possible.

So we work with other booksellers across downtown Johannesburg, acting as a go-between for publishers in South Africa and smaller retailers who might not have access to new books. Check out our blog page for maps on how to find sellers on the street and stories about some of the vendors.

At our store in City Central, the new space at 85 Commissioner Street (corner Harrison), anyone can walk in and buy new and second-hand books, with an emphasis on African writers but with international titles too.

We're also busy setting up the African Book Trust, a non-profit that gives African books to libraries and schools across South Africa. If you're a librarian, school teacher, or community group and you'd like to see how you can get books (for free, we'll even send them to you), please get in touch. If you're a reader and you'd like to know how to get our books through your local library, we can help with that too.

We also hosting book events, writing workshops and other fun stuff for word nerds like us. ."

Invitation

The following invitation was sent to our Facebook page by the Rotary Club of Morningside.

Escape the winter blues for an evening and join us for "A Good Laugh" with Joe Parker and the Rotary Club of Morningside at Montecasino. 

 
Joe Parker, and guests Dan Frigolette (USA), Martin Jonas, and Kedibone Mulaudzi.
 
Show info:
Date:                    10th July
Doors open:         18:00
Show:                   19:30
Price:                    R160 
 
 
Benefiting:
Social Development Projects: Diepsloot Cricket Club and Rotary, Youth and Professional Development. 

Why and how to host a Rotary Day

In an effort to increase membership and highlight Rotary’s inspiring work, RI President Barry Rassin is urging clubs and districts to organize fun, informal community events called Rotary Days.

"Rotary Days events will offer you the chance to have an impact in your community, build long-term partnerships, increase interest in membership, and improve Rotary’s image," Rassin said.

Any club, big or small, can host a Rotary Day. Neighboring clubs can pool their resources and co-host an event, and entire districts can come together for a large-scale Rotary Day.

Tips for planning a Rotary Day:

• Consider including a hands-on service project as part of the event to let visitors see for themselves how Rotary benefits the community.
• Feature guests that appeal to a non-Rotary audience. Consider young leaders, inspirational speakers, celebrities, musicians, or other public figures.
• If the event will offer food, keep it simple — for example, a self-service buffet rather than a formal, sit-down meal.
• Advocate on local issues related to Rotary’s areas of focus by calling attention to challenges that affect people in your area.
• If you charge admission, keep prices low. Ask local businesses to sponsor your event.
• Welcome families and make the event enjoyable for them.
• Present Rotary as an appealing opportunity for potential members to make new friends, exchange ideas, and take action to improve their community and the world. Avoid using Rotary jargon or referring to club traditions.
• Highlight the work of local Rotarians, Rotaractors, Interactors, Rotary Community Corps members, and other community members who do extraordinary humanitarian work.
• Recognize non-Rotary community members who demonstrate Rotary’s service ideals.
• Sponsor an event with a partner organization to show that, by working together, we make a deeper and more lasting impact on communities.
• Ask local news media to cover the event.
• Collect participants’ contact information, and invite them to future club events.
• Partner with local civic groups, service organizations or local businesses.

During and after your event, post photos and videos with the hashtag #RotaryDay to social media. We’ll collect photos of Rotary Day events around the world and show them at the 2019 Rotary International Convention in Hamburg, Germany. Some may also appear in Rotary media throughout the year.

"Imagine the collective impact we can have if all 35,000 Rotary, 10,000 Rotaract, and 22,000 Interact clubs engage their neighbors, friends, young people, and organizations," Rassin said.