Lyn Collocott, a Prize for Dini, a Talk on Ireland and Treat Violence as if it is a Disease.

Last Week


Past President Lyn Collocott gave us a talk on her early life in what was then called Natal and how she became involved with the Rotary Club of Centurion and subsequently became President.
It was interesting and light hearted despite the fierce Maths Teacher face in this photograph.






As it was in her year as president, we have her again presenting the prize to artist Dini Condy for the highest sales at the Rotary Art Festival, R44 000.   The prize is a weekend for two at the Hyde Park Hotel......presumably with the Rotarian of your choice. 

Also in the picture is Rotarian Joan Sainsbury, the power behind the Art Festival.






And yet another picture.  This time President Jean Bernardo with visiting Rotarian Moustapha Kamal from Dakar, Senegal.

This Week
Our speaker is Fred Klinkenberg, Regional Director Sub Saharan Africa for Enterprise Ireland.

Our priority is the achievement of export sales growth from Irish-owned companies. All our services are geared toward helping Irish companies win international sales.

Our range of services is extensive, from funding, to making introductions in key international markets.

• Funding supports - a range of supports, for start-ups, expansion plans, and R&D business plans.
• Export assistance - including the provision of in-market services, local market information and the facilities of our international office network.
• Supports to develop competitiveness - helping companies to become leaner to make them more competitive in international markets.
• Incentives to stimulate in-company R&D – new product, service and process development to ensure sustainability, and growth through the evolution of products and services.
• Assistance with R&D collaboration - with research institutions, to develop and bring to market new technologies, products or processes.
• Connections and introductions to customers overseas - we provide access to a global network of contacts - from heads of government to end customers.

Many of our clients tell us that while the funding they received from Enterprise Ireland was helpful, the non-financial assistance, like introductions to experts, buyers and potential customers, was most valuable.

An epidemiologist who helped stem the spread of cholera and AIDS in Africa, Gary Slutkin has a new – and successful – strategy to stop the contagion of violence: Treat it like a disease

Twenty-three years ago, Gary Slutkin moved to Chicago to take a break. A doctor trained in infectious diseases, he had spent his career battling tuberculosis in San Francisco and cholera in refugee camps across Africa. Working with the World Health Organization, he played a key role in reversing the AIDS epidemic in Uganda. But he had also spent more than a decade surrounded by suffering and death. “I was exhausted,” he says. 

In 1995, when he was 44, Slutkin left Africa and his job with WHO and moved back to the United States to recharge. Yet the headlines kept him from winding down: Violence dominated the news. “All across the country, I saw that violence was an issue in the same way that cholera or diarrheal disease had been an issue in Bangladesh or AIDS was in Uganda,” he says. So he began to research violence the same way he had investigated the causes and patterns of disease as an epidemiologist.

Last September, Slutkin discussed his findings while speaking about “Peace in the Age of Uncertainty,” the first installment in a three-part Pathways to Peace Series sponsored by Rotary International and the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.

 “Looking at violence,” he explained, “we can see through maps and charts and graphs that it behaves exactly like all other epidemic issues.” And like other contagions, violence tended to cluster, with one event leading to another. “How does that happen?” he asked. “It’s because of exposure. That was the insight I came to years ago. What was the greatest predictor of violence? The answer: a preceding act of violence.” What’s more, he insisted, if violence is predictable, it can be “interrupted.”

With that in mind, Slutkin began investigating new ways to treat violence. He started an initiative originally called the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention; in 2000, it implemented its first program – CeaseFire – in a violence-plagued Chicago neighborhood. Known since 2012 as Cure Violence, it’s based at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Slutkin is a professor at the School of Public Health. 

The Cure Violence model employs three components used to reverse any epidemic: interrupt transmission; reduce risk; change community norms. Cure Violence outreach workers prevent violence by counseling people exposed to violence in their home or community. These “violence interrupters” work with high-risk individuals to discourage them from acting out violently.

Where implemented, the Cure Violence model typically reduces violence by 41 to 73 percent in the first year. In 2011, a film called The Interrupters documented the success of the program, and today its impact is felt worldwide. “We have a global effort to reduce violence through partnerships in multiple regions, in particular Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East,” as well as in 25 U.S. cities, Slutkin says.

 “Public health has been responsible for some of the greatest accomplishments in human history,” he says. “It’s gotten rid of multiple diseases like plague and leprosy and smallpox. Polio is on its way out. Violence is next.”

Slutkin spoke with contributing editor Vanessa Glavinskas about his pioneering methodology, behavior change, ineffective punitive remedies, and ways Rotarians can lend a hand in the fight to cure violence.

Q: How does the Cure Violence model work?

A: All epidemics are managed from the inside out. They’re not managed by outside forces; they’re managed from the inside. The health sector guides and trains in the specific methods for how to detect, how to interrupt, how to persuade, how to change behavior, how to document work, and how to change local strategies when things aren’t working. Epidemics are managed through a partnership between community groups, health departments, and other services. It works over and over again.

Managing disease is something Rotarians are familiar with because of polio eradication. To vaccinate children, health workers go door to door in the communities and talk to parents about the importance of the vaccine. The most important thing that these health workers have is trust. 

Cholera was managed this way when I was working in Somalia. We used Vietnamese and Cambodian outreach workers to reach Vietnamese and Cambodian tuberculosis patients and their families. This is the way it really works. But the U.S. is in a punitive mode about a lot of things that are health problems.