The DG's Visit, Dr Hugo Tempelman and the Rotary Theme for 2020 - 21

Last Week
District Governor Maurice Stander made his official annual visit to the club.  These visits have become less and less complicated over the years thanks to information being available on the internet and this really does save a lot of time.

He concentrated on the issue of membership and pointed out that members bringing friends to a meeting who may have an interest in Rotary is very limited and generally hasn't worked.  As we are a relatively big club he suggested that we seriously consider starting a satellite club as we had enough members to provide support.

We were delighted to have our honorary member, Past District Governor  Peter Margolius join us for lunch.  Rotarian James Croswell also sneaked into the picture.


The Anns previously had a meeting with DGAnn Chrisna and some of them also joined us for lunch. 





This Week
Dr Hugo Tempelman will be telling us how  a Mobile Unit can bring Services to a Community.  This is  the most important aspect of our proposed Cervical Cancer Project, something that Dr Tempelman is particularly interested in.

Ndlovu Medical Trust was founded in 1994 by Dr. Hugo Tempelman and his wife Liesje. What started as a private primary health clinic, Ndlovu Medical Centre, has since expanded to a Non-Profit-Organisation employing more than 320 people and operating in two locations.

Ndlovu Care Group of South Africa provides innovative integrated Community Health- & Community Care services to the communities of Elandsdoorn & Bushbuckridge and its surrounding townships.

The Ndlovu Care Group developed an applicable and replicable Care Model for scaling up services in communities through:
- Local capacity building for sustained community development and improved standard of living in rural areas
- Information, awareness, and education on health related issues to promote behaviour change, early care seeking behaviour and prevent more HIV infections
- Affordable and integrated Primary Health Care (PHC), Malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS Care to promote personal wellbeing and community health in general
- Childcare Programs to address the needs and life skills of Orphans and other Vulnerable Children (OVC)
- Research, Monitoring & Evaluation to ensure evidence based interventions and improved outcomes
- Replicating the NCG Model within the public sector and other NGO’s to assist in the upliftment of health and community systems across Southern Africa.




Rotary International President-elect Holger Knaack is encouraging Rotarians to seize the many opportunities Rotary offers to enrich their lives and the communities they serve.

Knaack, a member of the Rotary Club of Herzogtum Lauenburg-Mölln, Germany, revealed the 2020-21 presidential theme, Rotary Opens Opportunities, to incoming district governors at the Rotary International Assembly in San Diego, California, USA, on 20 January.

Rotary isn’t just a club for people to join, but rather “an invitation to endless opportunities,” said Knaack, who becomes president on 1 July. He emphasized that Rotary creates pathways for members to improve their lives and the lives of those they help through service projects.

“We believe that our acts of service, big and small, create opportunities for people who need our help,” Knaack said. He added that Rotary creates leadership opportunities and gives members the chance to travel the world to put their service ideas into action and make lifelong connections. “Everything we do opens another opportunity for someone, somewhere,” said Knaack.

Changing for the future

Knaack also urged members to embrace change so Rotary can expand and thrive. Rather than setting a specific target for increasing the number of members, Knaack said he’s asking clubs and districts to think about how to grow in a sustainable and organic way. He wants clubs to focus on keeping current members engaged and adding new members who are the right fit for their club.

“We need to stop thinking of new members as people we can mark down as statistics and then forget about,” Knaack said. “Every new member changes us a little bit. That person brings a new perspective, new experiences. We need to embrace this constant renewal. We will grow stronger as we learn from new members.”

Knaack pointed to Rotary’s Action Plan as a compass that can guide clubs as they evolve. He recommended that every club have a strategic plan meeting at least once a year. At that meeting, clubs should ask where they want to be in five years and how they can bring more value to their members.

Knaack also wants to see more women in leadership roles and see Rotaractors play an integral role in how new clubs are formed and run. He encouraged district leaders to create new club models and rethink what it means to be in Rotary, and allow young people to be the architects of these new clubs.

“We have to be open to new approaches, and creating unique clubs for younger people is just part of the solution,” said Knaack. “Let Rotaractors decide what kind of Rotary experience works best for them. These young people are bright, energetic, and they get things done.”

In stressing the need for Rotary members to embrace change, Knaack noted that time won’t slow down for Rotary: “We will not let rapid change defeat us. We will capture this moment to grow Rotary, making it stronger, more adaptable, and even more aligned with our core values.”

A Social Meeting, Good Luck Masego, the District Governor's Visit and Vocational Training Teams

Last Week

It was a social meeting and a most enjoyable one....the President was away....








Our long-term Rotary Exchange Student, Masego Matiko, also left for Thailand last week and was seen off at OR Tambo by Ann Hope-Bailie and Sybille Essmann as well as Terry Cannon, District Youth Exchange Chair.









This Week
It's the District Governor's visit.  The DG Ann, Chrisna, will meet with our Anns before hand and will address us during the meeting.

He has asked for our financial statements for last year as well as our year planner.  These, plus our updates on My Rotary, should give him everything he needs to know where our activities are concerned....if they don't we will hear about it!

As every voluntary organisation seems to be increasingly bureaucratic it's a relief that Rotary is attempting to cut down on it.

Please make every effort to attend on Friday.  Some of the Anns will be there as well.

Leading a Vocational Training Team

Ron Smith PDG District 7430

1. What led you to form a vocational training team?

As an incoming district governor in 2006, I met Francis “Tusu” Tusubira of the Rotary Club of Kampala-North, Uganda, which led to us working together on many grants. A few years later, Rotary rolled out vocational training teams (VTTs) — groups of professionals who travel to another country to teach and learn from others within their field. Tusu put me in contact with some folks in the medical school at Makerere University in Kampala, and we realized there was a need to reduce mortality associated with childbirth. At the time, my son was in medical school at Drexel University in Philadelphia, which is a leader in distance education. So we decided to form a team there to put together a training program for midwives in Uganda and to put the whole system online at local health centers.

2. How did you get started?

First I took a trip on my own to Uganda in 2013 and met with the head of the obstetrics department at Makerere. We visited some health centers and identified infrastructural needs. We then built a combined humanitarian/VTT global grant, with half going toward funding computers and infrastructure, and half toward sending a U.S. team to Uganda and bringing a Ugandan team to the United States. We felt strongly that this two-way VTT would help us build a stronger partnership with the medical professionals in Uganda.

3. What are the responsibilities of a VTT leader?

As a Rotarian, your job is to put together a team that is supported by organizations that have the depth and the interest to provide training. Our first team from Drexel was made up of a computer engineer, a library scientist, three midwives, an obstetrician, and a pediatrician. My priority was to train them about Rotary and introduce them to issues in Uganda. On the trip, I would hold morning meetings to make sure everyone on the team was on the same page, and I would get them to Rotary club meetings so that they were visible in the country. I was also the liaison to the host club, Kampala-North, which coordinated visits to the health centers and made additional arrangements.

4. How do VTTs compare with other grant-supported projects you’ve done?

VTTs take more time. But they give you a bigger reward in the end. We didn’t want to just drop off computers. The first team from Drexel provided training to Ugandan midwives and learned about what future training would be required. I think we learned more than we taught. The team members then got certified in specific training methods used in limited-resource countries. Ultimately, we want to turn midwives into trainers so they can teach others. We’re also creating infrastructure that can support telemedicine. With a VTT, you also develop professional relationships between skilled individuals on both sides. The level of interpersonal engagement can’t be duplicated in another type of activity; the team members are not just colleagues but friends. Through these relationships, Drexel and Makerere universities have now signed agreements that will sustain this effort well beyond our project.

5. What advice do you have for Rotarians interested in leading a vocational training team?

You need a great team and good partners. It’s taken a lot of work, but all through it, we’ve had consistent partners. Make sure your vision is your partner’s vision. That’s a key thing. You also need to adapt. Every VTT has obstacles, but you’ll have a much better experience if you can adapt quickly to situations. Let things develop organically; don’t be married to your plan. You can be married to your vision, but not to your plan.

Social Meeting, PETS, Dean Rohrs & Makerere University Peace Centre

Last Week:  It was a social meeting, really but I wasn't there so I can't comment!

This Week:  It will be a Social Meeting because it's really the first week when many people are back in the old routine...the schools are back this Wednesday.

PETS: The President Elect Training is early this year, the first weekend in February which happens to be the 1st & 2nd.  Invitations have been sent out to clubs.  We usually have more than one person from the club go...we can't have a lonely president for next year.

International News

Dean Rohrs

Rotary Club of Langley Central, British Columbia; past RI vice president

In December 1967, I was completing my nurse’s training at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. At that time, Christiaan Barnard was leading a team that hoped to perform the first successful human heart transplant at that hospital. There was a race between teams, because it was such a huge medical achievement. I was on “backup rotation” one night when I was called into the OR. It was just a coincidence that I happened to be on duty.

You have to understand, with a surgery like that, the room is crowded with people: the surgeons, their assistants, the anesthetists, the folks operating the heart-lung machine that keeps the patient alive. My job was just to do whatever needed to be done. I counted the cotton swabs used during the surgery, to make sure none were left in the patient. I fetched water. The surgeons would lean toward me and say, “Please mop my brow,” because they were perspiring.

In the moment, you understand that you’re doing something most unusual, but you’re so involved with the process that you’re just making sure you’re watching and filling in wherever you can. I knew the man receiving the heart and his family; he had been on the ward for a long time and he was clearly dying. He would have been gone in 24 or 48 hours. And here was this young woman who had been in a car accident and donated her heart.

Because of the surgical draping and the number of people leaning over the patient, I had no sightline into the chest cavity. But I did see everything that went in and came out. I saw the needles the surgeons were using to sew tissue together and tie off the bleeders. I saw the suctioning and the cauterization. And I saw the new heart itself go in. It was very different back then in how they did harvesting, and far more dramatic. They had to carry the new heart from one surgical theater to the other. I saw it being brought into the OR and lifted into the patient. Of course there was drama, because you are putting something into somebody’s chest that could give life but came from somebody who gave life. When I saw the new heart itself, I don’t remember thinking anything other than, “Oh my God, that’s somebody’s heart.”

Our surgery wasn’t the first attempted heart transplant. There had been one earlier, but the patient didn’t survive the procedure. Our patient survived for 18 days and was able to talk to his family. It wasn’t his heart that gave out; he died of pneumonia, partly because the immunosuppressant drugs weren’t as effective back then. Still, because our patient survived, that surgery became international news. Nobody on that team could have anticipated how big the reaction would be. It was instantly a world-famous event.

I was only 25 when it all happened — that’s 50 years ago now, good grief! Sometimes I feel a little embarrassed when people make a big deal out of it, because I was so peripheral. But that surgery did shape the course of medical history. And I have to give Professor Barnard credit. He was not always an easy man to work with, but it took a lot of courage to do what he did, because many people said back then that you can’t touch the heart. It was culturally and religiously unacceptable. That surgery changed the way people thought about the heart, and it changed the way we treat heart disease to this day.

Dean, her husband Rhino, and their 3 children emigrated to Canada from South Africa 24 years ago. Dean grew up in Zambia and after marrying Rhino lived in Malawi, Namibia, and South Africa. Dean joined Rotary in South Africa in 1989. On arriving in Vancouver both Dean and Rhino joined the Rotary Club of West Vancouver and at present are members of the Rotary Club of Langley Central.

Dean has served on District and Zone committees; which have included:

• 17 years of Youth Exchange in both District 9300 and 5040
• District 5040 Group Study Exchange Chair
• Group Study Exchange Team Leader to New Zealand
• District Governor 2007/2008
• Regional Rotary International Membership Coordinator
• Rotary Coordinator Zone 24 West
• Pacific Northwest PETS Chair 2013
• Co-Chair for the 2011 Zone 24/32 Institute
• Rotary Foundation Alumni Coordinator for Zone 24 West 2012/2013
• Regional Rotary Foundation Coordinator 2014

She has been a panelist at the many International Conventions. Her best Rotary experience is leading teams of Rotarians, Rotaractors and Interactors to South Africa and seeing how this volunteer experience changes their lives.

Dean served a two year term as Rotary International Director from July 2016 to June 2018.  Dean was also selected to serve as Rotary International Vice President from July 2017 to June 2018.

Rotary establishes Peace Centre at Makerere University, Uganda.

KAMPALA, Uganda (9 January 2020) — From human rights violations to the impacts of climate change, Rotary and Makerere University are offering a postgraduate certificate program to peace and development leaders who are from or who have worked in Africa to address the underlying challenges to peace in the region.

The year-long program in Peacebuilding, Conflict Transformation and Development will emphasize issues and solutions that are of particular relevance throughout the African continent and beyond. Hands-on experience will complement coursework that addresses topics including human rights, governance, and the role of the media in conflict. Other studies will focus on refugees and migration, as well as resource and identity-based conflicts.

The program will incorporate the Positive Peace framework pioneered by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) as well as apply concepts grounded in mediation and negotiation, African philosophy, and indigenous mechanisms for conflict resolution. “For centuries, we have looked at peace as the absence of violence, without fully considering the other drivers in play,” said Olayinka Babalola, vice president, Rotary International Board of Directors. “Instead of merely examining the causes of war, Rotary Peace Fellows at Makerere University will explore the underpinnings of peace to achieve tangible measures of human wellbeing and progress.” The program is designed to accommodate working professionals with at least five years of proven experience in the areas of peace and development. There will be two cohorts a year each with 20 fellows, and the first class will begin in February 2021. The online application will be available in February 2020.

“Makerere University is situated at the heart of the Great Lakes region, which has experienced the most strife and the most conflicts in Africa,” said Barnabas Nawangwe, University vice chancellor. “We’ve had frequent experience with conflict, so we established our peace program more than 15 years ago to expand our expertise and augment our engagement in the area of conflict and peace. Partnering with an international organization like Rotary allows us to demonstrate on a global scale what we’ve been doing in our local environment. Based on our past rich experience, we can confront strife in populations all over the world.”

Every year, Rotary awards up to 130 fully funded scholarships for dedicated peace and development leaders from around the world to study at any of its seven peace centers programs. In just over 15 years, Rotary Peace Centers have trained over 1,300 individuals for careers in peacebuilding in more than 115 countries, and program alumni serve as leaders in both governmental and nongovernmental agencies, international organizations, and more. About Rotary: Rotary brings together a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to tackling the world’s most pressing humanitarian challenges. Rotary connects 1.2 million members of more than 35,000 Rotary clubs in over 200 countries and geographical areas. Their work improves lives at both the local and international levels, from those in need in their own communities to working toward a polio-free world. To learn more about Rotary Peace Centers programs and fellowships and to start an application, visit www.rotary.org/peace-fellowships. About Makerere University: Established in 1922 as a technical school, Makerere University is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Africa. It is composed of nine colleges offering programs for 35,000 undergraduates and 3,000 postgraduates. Its Department of Religion and Peace Studies, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, will host the Rotary Peace Centers program. To learn more, visit https://rpc.mak.ac.ug.

Back to Normal after the Holidays and some International News

It  says it all!

I trust that 2020 will be a good year for us all and our country.

I don't seem to have any pictures of the Christmas Lunch etc so if anyone has any please send them to me.  We are now half-way through the Rotary Year...an amazing thought as it has gone so quickly.

This Week
It's billed as the first formal meeting of the year and I gather it's mainly social....we have to try and recognise each other after the break!

Rotary International News
Every week I try to find something interesting that is happening in the world of Rotary outside our country.

Hungary

For the Rotary Club of Budapest-Center, support for children undergoing bone marrow transplants has become a long-term commitment. Since 2015, the club has donated equipment including an industrial clothes dryer, 11 computers, and funds toward reconstruction of Démétér House, which provides lodging for patients of Budapest’s Szent László Hospital and their relatives. The facility has been home to as many as 40 families a year. The young patients, on average, spend more than a month undergoing treatment. In tandem with the Démétér Foundation, the Budapest-Center Rotarians have also organized programs such as a Halloween party and an Easter egg hunt for the children.

In 2019, before taking on the presidency of the Rotary Club of Reynosa 76 in Reynosa, Mexico, Marcelo Méndez set aside some time for a road trip. “I knew when I got elected president that I wouldn’t have time, so I decided to do it before my term,” he says.

The trip he had in mind was on a grand scale. Over 34 days, he racked up more than 13,000 miles on his Triumph Tiger 800 XRx motorcycle, riding to Alaska and back.

He often traveled back roads rather than major highways. “For a motorcycle rider, the back roads are the best,” he says. “They don’t have a lot of traffic, like all the 18-wheelers. And the views are amazing.” He camped half the time and stayed in hotels the other half. And to help prepare for his term as president, he visited Rotary clubs along the way.

Before leaving home on 21 April, he researched clubs on his route to figure out which meetings he could make. “I wanted to see how their meetings are run,” he says. “I wanted to see how clubs do different things.” Méndez visited the Rotary clubs of Greater Southwest Lubbock, Texas; Santa Fe Centro, New Mexico; Salida Sunrise and Kremmling, Colorado; Anaconda and Missoula, Montana; and College in Fairbanks, Alaska. He showed up unannounced, but he always got a warm welcome. “As soon as I walked in the door at any meeting, they’d say, ‘Hey. You are welcome here. Have some lunch or breakfast and tell us about your club.’ It was amazing,” he recalls.

Gary Olson, who is now president of the Salida Sunrise club, says he was happy to have Méndez at his club’s meeting. “We always welcome visitors,” he says. “But it’s a rare day that we have an unexpected international guest. We were all impressed that he was taking the ride to Alaska, and I think more than a few of us were a little envious.”

At one club meeting, Méndez saw members placing donations in a glass jar and talking about their recent blessings. He has adopted that practice for his 22-member club: “I have a blessings donation jar now at our meetings. We’re going to fill that jar with moments of happiness.” The cash will be used to help someone in need.

Méndez also brought back the idea of partnering with another club to purchase chairs that convert to cots, which will be donated to two local hospitals. “When people are in the hospital, a lot of times their family members don’t have any place to rest,” he says. The planned project also includes buying two surgical delivery tables.

Olson says the Salida Sunrise club will consider working with the Reynosa club when it reviews its grant projects for 2020. “The fact that we can put a friendly Rotary face — someone we have personally met — to a suggested project is a huge plus every time,” he says.

Méndez’s biggest challenge was getting through a snowstorm in Wyoming, he recalls: “Roads were blocked, and I got lost.” He visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and saw a lot of wildlife: bison, bears, moose, elk, bighorn sheep. He crossed the Arctic Circle but didn’t stay long: “I took a few selfies and came back.”

With all that he learned and experienced, Méndez has started thinking about another road trip, this time to Argentina. “Then I will have traveled all through the Americas,” he says.