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.

The Induction Dinner, Eva Lotta-Jansson and a Project on Club Central

Induction Dinner

A general view of the proceedings with MC Eddie de Vos in action

Many thanks to everyone for making the Induction Dinner such an enjoyable evening.  

A couple of people asked me about the Moroccan lamb and I am trying to get the recipe.  

Our New Paul Harris Fellows.  Shirley Eustace & Jane Lagaay

President Neville awarded the Jack Boswell Trophy jointly
to help during his year as President

The 100% Attendance Rotarians

AP Shirley Eustace hands over the reins to Liz Short

President Neville Howes hands over to Peter James-Smith who introduces the Board for 2016/17

This Week: Eva-Lotta Jansson 

Eva-Lotta has a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism and a post-graduate degree in photojournalism from the London College of Printing. She currently is a freelance photojournalist based in Johannesburg. 

She works with media and NGOs, often travelling to neighbouring African countries. She often produces multimedia packages, inclusive of writing  articles, shooting and editing videos.  Eva-Lotta is also a guest lecturer in photojournalism at the University of Pretoria, and enjoys doing community photo workshops with younger students as well.

She is particularly interested in environmental and feminist issues and how these and similar issues should be prioritised within a democracy.  I have a feeling she will talk about the acid water issue.

Club Central
Here's an example of the way that projects are advertised on the Club Central section of My Rotary.
This is just a nudge to try to get you to register on My Rotary.  Mike Lawrence is going to follow this up. Click on this LINK to do it.



PROVISION OF RELIEF MATERIALS

PROVISION AND DISTRIBUTION OF RELIEF MATERIALS BY IDP TO BOKO HARAM VICTIMS IN NIGERIA

THIS PROJECT SEEKS TO PROVIDE AND DISTRIBUTE RELIEF MATERIALS TO INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS BY BOKO HARAM IN THE NORTH EASTERN PART OF NIGERIA.
BOKO HARAM IS THE WORLD'S DEADLIEST INSURGENTS. WE SOLICIT FOR DONATIONS OF FOOD ITEMS, BEDDINGS, BLANKETS, EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS, TEMPORARY SHELTER CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS, CANOPIES, MEDICATIONS, HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT, WATER RESERVOIR. A FUND RAISING COMMITTEE IS SET UP TO COORDINATE THE AFFAIRS FOR IDP CAMPS AND SOURCE FOR FINANCES

English​▼

Project location

Nigeria

Project dates

Start: 01 July 2015
End:  16 April 2016

✓ This project is complete.

Project category

Community

Funding

Club Foundation

Project contacts

Mr. Mike Tyonongu Kohol, Abuja Metro| (contact)

Partners

Abuja Metro, Fed. Cap. Territory, Nigeria

Related Links

Discon 2016....and Polio

The Opening Ceremony...Flags & Exchange Students

I am just going to put pictures of Discon here.  All those who went have been asked to write reports on various aspects of Discon and those are posted on a special Discon Report Page to the left, so just click on that to see them.

A couple of reports have been sent to me but I don't have them.....possibly because of my computer glich....I will add them as soon as they arrive second time round.



Graca Machel gave the keynote speech at the opening and was presented with sapphire pin additions to her Paul Harris Fellowship.

Here she is congratulated and thanked by Josh Chimhanda, RI President's Personal Representative.

Dinner at the Carnivore.....Rotarians on the Braai

 Here we are dressed in black waiting to do our "Turn Back the Clock" turn

A Bit of a Dance....

Constructive work during one of the conference sessions

 The District Governor's Banquet.

Here we are, looking smarter than usual.

The highlight for us was Kevin Wolhuter receiving a Paul Harris for his contribution to District.
Congratulations, Kevin!  Kevin is the one wearing the trousers.

The Induction of our new DG, Grant Daly

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN TO END POLIO

Photo Credit: Khaula Jamil

From the July 2016 issue of The Rotarian

When was the last time there was polio in Europe? If you guessed 2002, the year the region was certified polio-free, you were wrong. The last time polio affected a child in Europe was last summer. In 2015, two Ukrainian children were diagnosed with paralytic polio, and, given the way the disease manifests itself, that means many more were likely infected and didn’t show symptoms. At least one Western news outlet deemed the outbreak “crazy” – but the reality is that no place on earth is safe from polio until the disease is eradicated everywhere.

Ukraine had fully vaccinated only 50 percent of its children against polio, and low immunization rates are a recipe for an outbreak. In this case, a rare mutation in the weakened strain used in the oral polio vaccine was able to spread because so many children had not been vaccinated. To stop it from progressing, the country needed to administer 5 million to 6 million vaccines through an emergency program. But as recently as March, Ukraine’s ability to do so remained in question.

Finding the occasional case of polio outside Afghanistan and Pakistan, the only countries that have yet to eradicate it, is not unusual. In 2014, just before the World Cup brought travelers from all over the planet to Brazil, the country identified poliovirus in the sewage system at São Paulo’s Viracopos International Airport. Using genetic testing, officials traced its origin to Equatorial Guinea. Brazil’s regular vaccination efforts kept the disease from showing up beyond the airport doors.

Those are frustrating examples for the thousands of people around the world working to eradicate polio. The fight has come a long way, but it is far from over. And while many involved in the effort say we may detect the final naturally occurring case of polio this year, getting to that point – and ensuring that the disease remains gone – will continue to require money, hard work, and the support of Rotarians around the world.

FINDING POLIO

One of the most important aspects of the fight to eradicate polio is detecting where the disease is present. This continuous surveillance is complicated and costly. Ninety percent of people infected with the virus show no symptoms, and those who do usually have mild symptoms such as fever, fatigue, and headaches. Only one in every 200 cases of the illness results in paralysis, which means that for every child with signs of paralysis, several hundred are carrying the disease and may not show it.

But not every case of paralysis is caused by polio. Other viruses that can be responsible for the polio-like symptoms known as acute flaccid paralysis include Japanese encephalitis, West Nile, Guillain-Barré, and Zika. To determine if a patient has polio, doctors must collect a stool specimen and send it to a lab for testing.

To find the patients who don’t present symptoms or don’t make it to a clinic, Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) – the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – have set up environmental sampling in the areas that are most susceptible to the disease. Fifteen to 20 countries are still at high risk despite having eradicated the illness. Because the poliovirus is most easily detected, and most easily contracted, through stool, researchers take samples from sewage systems and, in places that don’t have sewer infrastructure, from rivers and open gutters.

GPEI has developed a network of 145 laboratories around the world that can identify the disease, and Rotary has played a leading role in supporting these facilities. But regular environmental surveillance is “logistically not so easy to do and it’s relatively expensive. It adds a considerable burden to the labs to process the sewage samples,” says Stephen Cochi, senior adviser to the director, Global Immunization Division, at the CDC. “It costs real money to keep that network operational, and this lab network is the most highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art infectious-disease network in the world. Rotarians should be proud of that – it’s the No. 1 network, bar none.”

As part of this system of labs, Rotary has helped fund smaller, more sophisticated local laboratories that are trying to keep track of the complicated genetic variations of the disease. These labs genetically test the poliovirus to follow how it changes as it spreads. All viruses mutate to confuse the human immune system, but the poliovirus is notorious for doing so at a rapid rate. This makes it easier to track the virus’s genetic changes, though the process, vital to the eradication effort, is expensive and will need continued funding. It was these specialized laboratories that allowed Brazilian authorities to trace the virus they found at their airport to Equatorial Guinea.

“Each virus has a fingerprint,” says Cochi, and that is an essential tool for monitoring how the virus is moving around the world.

Vigilance is key to successful surveillance, says Michel Zaffran, director of polio eradication at WHO. “We need to go and investigate a case of paralysis, take specimens, and analyze it. This level of vigilance needs to continue in all of the places that no longer have polio to make sure we are really without polio. This is a hidden cost to the program that people don’t realize is absolutely necessary to maintain.”

VACCINATE, VACCINATE, VACCINATE

The appearance of polio in Ukraine last year is a perfect example of why vaccination campaigns are essential – and not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Large-scale vaccinations are an enormous undertaking that require money as well as thousands of volunteers on the ground. And in places where the vaccination programs have been successful, the challenge is now to locate and vaccinate that small percentage of children who have been missed.

The vaccine itself isn’t the biggest expense in a vaccination campaign (in fact, Rotary rarely funds vaccines). It’s the distribution of the vaccine – transportation and staffing, for example – that costs so much. In January, money donated by Rotarians covered the costs of a Cameroun vaccination campaign that involved 34,000 vaccinators and 21,000 rental cars, which volunteers used to canvass neighborhoods and travel from home to home administering the vaccine. Funds also went to more than 3,700 town criers and 45 radio spots in Chad, to more than 14,000 local guides and 500 clan leaders to ensure that the children of nomads were vaccinated in Ethiopia, and to provide training and support for 60,000 community volunteer vaccinators in Afghanistan.

“I think sometimes people don’t realize the scale of what these immunization campaigns are actually like,” says International PolioPlus Committee Chair Michael K. McGovern. “Rotary and its partners have administered 15 billion doses since 2000. We’ve immunized 2.5 billion kids. Repeatedly reaching the kids to raise their immunization levels is very personnel intensive.”

A vaccination campaign is almost mind-bogglingly complex. Rotarians’ contributions  pay for planning by technical experts, large-scale communication efforts to make people aware of the benefits of vaccinations and the dates of the campaign, and support for volunteers to go door to door in large cities as well as in remote areas that may not appear on any map. It sometimes includes overcoming local distrust of government or outsiders and negotiating complicated religious doctrine. And it means trying to understand the movements of nomadic populations or people pushed out of their homes because of unrest. Regardless of how they live their lives, each of these children must be vaccinated. GPEI has addressed some of these issues by setting up vaccination points in highly trafficked transit areas such as train stations or bus depots.

“In northern Nigeria, for example, when there’s unrest, the population tends to move out of dangerous areas,” says WHO’s Zaffran. “So we monitor carefully when a certain area is accessible and when it is not. If Boko Haram was present, we wouldn’t vaccinate, but the minute it was a more quiet situation we’d do a hit and run – a vaccinate and run. Go in for a short time and get out.”

GPEI creates detailed logistical blueprints for vaccination teams, which are constantly refined to ensure that every child is reached. In a process called social mapping, health care workers meet with residents of remote or conflict areas and ask them to draw their area, comparing it with maps and other data to try to find settlements that may have been missed. On top of the challenge of discovering previously unknown villages or the difficulty in ensuring that every house in a city has been visited by volunteers, there’s the complicated task of negotiating the religious or cultural beliefs that might prevent people from agreeing to be vaccinated. This is one of the areas in which Rotary has excelled, as local Rotarians have taken on the task of helping to vaccinate their neighbors.

According to Reza Hossaini, UNICEF’s chief of polio eradication efforts, vaccinators on the ground have developed relationships with local leaders to identify what local people want and need. These relationships have built enough trust to overcome the “hard-core resistance” that vaccinators have met with in the past. But this level of detail in understanding the psychological reasons that a community would be averse to vaccinating requires scientific, technological, and social skill as well as finding vaccinators who meet the specific needs of each community.

AFTER THE LAST CASE


Even if the last case of polio is identified this year, a huge amount of work will remain to ensure that it stays gone.

Vaccinations will continue and need to be funded. In the areas where polio still exists and many of the areas where it has recently been eradicated, the vaccines contain a weakened live version of the virus, which is much more effective than a killed virus at protecting communities from outbreaks, creating what is known as herd immunity. It’s also less expensive to manufacture and distribute and, because it is given orally, much easier to administer than the inactivated, injectable polio vaccine (IPV).

But, while vaccine with live virus has reduced polio by more than 99.9 percent, it carries a small risk. The weakened live virus inside a vaccine can, rarely, mutate back to a virulent form. Where vaccination coverage is low, it can reinfect populations, even in countries that have been certified polio-free, such as Ukraine. To prevent this, once the virus has been certified eradicated, all of the live-virus vaccine around the world will be destroyed and replaced with IPV, which does not contain the live virus. This vaccine will be distributed, and trained health care workers will perform injections, a process that has already begun. The polio-fighting community will still need to vaccinate hundreds of millions of children every year until the world is certified polio-free. By that time, polio vaccinations will have become part of routine immunization programs around the world.

Once the final case of polio is recorded, it will take three years to ensure that the last case is, in fact, the final one. That means that if the final case is seen this year, all of these programs will continue to need funding and volunteers until 2019, at a price tag of $1.5 billion that will be funded by governments and donors such as Rotary. That’s in addition to the more than $1.5 billion Rotarians have contributed to the cause so far.

“We are so close. We’ve got a 99.9 percent reduction in polio. But we’re not there yet,” says John Sever, a vice chair of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee, who has been part of the eradication effort since the beginning. “Rotarians and others have to keep working. People will naturally say, ‘Well, it seems to be basically gone so let’s move on to other things,’ but the fact is it isn’t gone, and if we move on and don’t complete the job, we set ourselves up for having the disease come right back.”

“Rotary was there at the beginning,” McGovern says. “It would be unfortunate if Rotary isn’t there at the finish line. We’ve done too much, we’ve made too much progress to walk away before we finish.”

By Erin Biba

The Arts, Conservation, Social Meeting and the Rotary Year Ahead

Rotary Arts Festival
President Neville has said all that there is to say so I won't repeat it.  Instead, just to show that there is more to the Festival than looking at or buying paintings, here's one of the workshops in progress.

Last Week
Chris Piears, an Honorary Ranger of SA Parks spoke to us passionately about his interest in wildlife conservation and in particular the work he has done with the Big Five.  He intended focusing on Leopard conservation because, much to my surprise, leopards are much more endangered that I thought but downloading the video turned out to be a bit of a problem.

It didn't matter at all because he had many interesting and entertaining things to say as you can see the by the level of concentration on the faces of visiting DG Nominee Jankees Sligcher and President Neville.

What was particularly interesting and unusual was that both of his sons have followed him into the business of conservation.


Marianne Soal was inducted as a member of our club the week before but she successfully ran away before she could be photographed.  This week we nailed her to the floor so here she is with President Neville.

This Week
It will be more of a Social Meeting than a Business Meeting as 10 of us are away at Discon.

This Coming Year
You will have noticed, I hope, that I have put on a couple of items for July and the DG's Visit at the beginning of August.

On Friday 15th July  we have been invited to join New Dawn for a Dinner and Port Tasting at Cheese Gourmet in Linden.  This is what Jo Dick of Cheese Gourmet has to say:

I have managed to organize Mike Neebe from Axe Hill to do 3 port tasting as well as a white and red wine. We did this pairing recently and it was very successful. We will match five cheeses with these varietals.

I would like to suggest we do the port/wine and cheese tasting as the starter, a "cheats" cassoulet made with Peter James-Smith's Toulouse sausages and an Eaton Mess as a dessert.

Date 15/7/16 at 18h30 for 19h00 start
R250 per head
Mike will have some wine and port for sale on the evening
We will send round a circular at the beginning of July after this busy month has come to an end.

Club Assembly Saturday 30th July 9,00 to 12,00 Wanderers
This is a very important meeting as you, as club members, must tell the Board what you expect of us for the coming Rotary year.
I have asked the various Directors to make a Powerpoint presentation of their possible plans for the year for you to discuss and decide what we should go ahead with, scrap or anything else that you would like us to look at.  This meeting will set the tone for the year and we will have a similar one at the end of January.
We will have lunch at Chariots afterwards so please invite your partners to come and join us.

DG's Visit Friday 5th August
DG Grant Daly will be visiting us for the morning of the 5th culminating in our usual lunch.  We are the only club he will visit.  We have already begun to sort out the details and please do your best to attend.  It's early in the year but that has distinct advantages as we will be able to talk about our plans without having to show whether they are a success or not!  No doubt there will be a meeting with the Anns but he hasn't even been inducted as DG yet and we will hear in due course.

RAVINDRAN MOVES AUDIENCE WITH PERSONAL STORY

RI President K.R. Ravindran shares a personal story of triumph over polio at the closing session of the 107th Rotary convention.

Photo Credit: SJ Cho

RI President K.R. Ravindran closed the convention in Korea on Wednesday, 1 June, with a poignant story about his mother's fight to survive polio at age 30.

When Ravindran was 11 years old in his native Sri Lanka, his mother awoke one day feeling weak and short of breath. Sitting down to rest, she found herself unable to move. The polio virus had quickly invaded her nervous system, resulting in paralysis.

She was placed in an iron lung at the hospital to enable her to breathe, and was told that her chances of walking, or even surviving without a ventilator, were slim. But most Sri Lankan hospitals were not equipped with ventilators in 1963.

Ravindran's grandfather, a Rotary member, hosted a club committee meeting in his living room the evening after his daughter was rushed to the hospital. Rather than simply offer consolation, his fellow members went to work, using their business acumen and professional connections to find a ventilator.

One of the members was a bank manager who called a government minister to facilitate a quick international transfer of funds. Another member, a manager at SwissAir, arranged to have a ventilator flown in. The next day, it arrived at the hospital.

"There was so much red tape at the time in Sri Lanka, but somehow, those Rotarians made it all fall away," Ravindran told the packed audience at the KINTEX Convention Center in Goyang city.

Ravindran's mother spent a year-and-a-half in a hospital bed, but her condition gradually improved. She eventually left the hospital walking -- with a walker, but upright, on her own two feet.

"Fifty-three years ago, my mother's life was perhaps one of the very first to be saved from polio by Rotarians," Ravindran said. "We have saved millions of lives since then.

"Tonight, I stand before you as her son, and your president, to say that soon -- perhaps not in years but in months -- Rotary will give a gift that will endure forever: a world without polio."

At the convention's general session the day before, Rebecca Martin, director of the Center for Global Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had described how close we are to polio eradication. Earlier that day, Rotary released an additional $35 million in grants to support global efforts to end the crippling disease.

This year's convention, one of the largest in Rotary history, attracted more than 43,000 attendees from over 150 countries. Ravindran, in his final speech to members as their president, emphasized what it really means to be a Rotarian.

"There are people on this planet whose lives are better now because you traversed this earth," he said. "And it doesn't matter if they know that or not. It doesn't matter if they even know your name or not. What really matters is that your work touched lives; that it left people healthier, happier, better than they were before."

LOOKING AHEAD TO NEXT YEAR

Following Ravindran's remarks, members of Ravindran's Rotary Club of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and RI President-elect John Germ's Rotary Club of Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, took the stage to exchange club banners, a tradition that unofficially marks the changing of the guard.

Germ told the audience that Rotary is about to begin the most progressive year in its history.

"You told us that we need to change and become more flexible so that Rotary service will be attractive to younger members, recent retirees, and working people," Germ said. "You spoke with clarity, and groundbreaking legislation was passed this year at the Council on Legislation.

"Clubs now have the opportunity to be who they want to be, but at the same time remain true to our core. I'm pleased to share with you that Rotarians all over the world are responding with great excitement."

Art Festival Again.....Peace, Conversations with the Big Five, Induction Dinner & Altruism.

It's Still Rotary Arts Festival Time

The Wednesday Press Launch
Here is chief judge of the Rotary Portrait Competition, Stefan Hundt, Curator of the Sanlam Art Collection and the other three judges.  Next, with Stefan and President Neville, is the winner, Cathy Verheul.  

Joan Sainsbury and President Neville also said their bit whilst we were plied with champagne by Moet et Chandon.

Here are the 5 Finalists' Paintings:

President Neville officially opens the Art Exhibition

The Thursday Opening

Most of the Club was at the opening which was a bit like a crowd attempting to get into a rugby stadium.  

The food vanished like melting snow, the wine flowed and a good time was had by all.  

What was more to the point, a lot of paintings were sold!

Friday

Some how or other we managed to fit in a Rotary Meeting as well and we had a fascinating talk by Jake Kurtzer, a former Rotary Peace Fellow who is currently consulting for the International Red Cross in Pretoria.  His presentation centred on what constituted "Peace", not only as an absence of conflict but also as  a positive influence on the World stage.

One of our prospective Peace Scholars, Cherrie Olivier, attended the talk.

This Week

Our speaker is Chris Piears with a talk entitled Conversations of the Big Five.



Chris is Human Resources Manager at Protea Technology and he was previously with Tsogo Sun.  He has a long-term interest in wildlife conservation.  He is an Honorary Ranger of SA National Parks and has very successfully negotiated a number of sponsorship deals on their behalf.

 Induction Dinner 24th June
Les Short is handling the bookings and I'm not sure what the numbers are at this stage.  It is important that you do book even if you don't pay at the same time.
We have worked on last year's attendance figures and we don't want to mislead Bryanston Country Club where numbers are concerned as it could be to our financial disadvantage.

ALTRUISM: INDIVIDUAL SERVING

Illustration by Dave Cutler

The sun rises on a new school day. In rural Ganguli, India, 450 students climb aboard school buses. Five years ago they couldn’t have gone to school because the distance from their village was too far to walk.

In San Agustín, Ecuador, students used to attend classes in the town morgue when it rained, because their school had no roof. Since 2012, hundreds of children there have learned to read and write in a real classroom.

Quietly orchestrating these and other projects was Vasanth Prabhu, a member of the Rotary Club of Central Chester County (Lionville), Pa. When he was growing up in India, education was not free, and he saw how hard his father worked to pay for schooling for eight children. Understanding how school can change a person’s life keeps Prabhu working to provide education to those with no access to it, he says.

“I feel that everyone is a diamond in the rough,” he says. “But it must be cut and polished to show its brilliance.” So instead of spending his money on luxuries, he is using it to bring out that brilliance.

There are three ways we can deal with enormous problems and our emotional responses to them. We can let them overcome us until we feel too paralyzed to act. We can bury our heads in the sand. Or we can act. And when we help others, we often find that we benefit as well.

“Taking action allows me to exercise passion,” Prabhu says, “to give it a good place to go.”

James Doty, director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, wrote Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart. “We’re adapted to recognize suffering and pain; for us to respond is hard-wired into our brain’s pleasure centers,” says Doty. “We receive oxytocin or dopamine bursts that result in increased blood flow to our reward centers. In short, we feel good when we help.”

Caring for others brings other benefits, too. “When we engage in activities that help, it also results in lowering our blood pressure and heart rate,” he notes. Research shows that it can help us live longer. And the good deeds we do can inspire others.

On the flip side, Doty says, “People can create mistrust or fear by implying that another group is threatening our safety. When that happens, fear or anxiety makes us want to withdraw into our own group and not care for others. Hormones are released that are detrimental to long-term health. But generally speaking, most people will be kind and compassionate to other people.”

For years, Peggy Callahan has told stories that are hard to hear. A documentary producer covering social justice issues, she’s also a co-founder of two nonprofits working to help people who are enslaved or caught in human trafficking. But perhaps paradoxically, her difficult work brings her happiness, and, thanks to neuroscience research, she understands why. “When you do an act of good, you get a neurotransmitter ‘drop’ in your brain that makes you happy,” she says. And there’s a multiplier effect: “Someone who witnesses that act also experiences that, and remembering that act makes it happen all over again.” She wondered how she could leverage that.

The result was Anonymous Good, a virtual community and website where people post stories or photos of acts of kindness they’ve carried out, observed, or received. For each act posted, website sponsors make a donation to feed the hungry, free people who are enslaved, plant a tree for cleaner air, or dig a well for clean water.

“One act of good is much more than simply one act of good,” says Callahan. “It’s part of a much bigger force.”

Like Prabhu and Callahan, P.J. Maddox – a member of the Rotary Club of Dunn Loring-Merrifield, Va. – has felt the joy of tackling issues that seem too big to face. Rotary projects she has supported include funding a nurse-led clinic in war-ravaged rural Nicaragua. She has also mentored and made a Youth Exchange trip possible for a student otherwise unable to participate because of hardships at home.

“Some problems are so complicated and huge, it could be easy to say, ‘Why bother?’” Maddox says. “But in addition to Rotary’s power of collective talents to make something happen, I realized that the outcome of these projects wouldn’t have been what they were if I wasn’t there. I realized that a single human being can change the world.”

As the sun sets around the globe – as students in India head back home on the school bus, as pupils in Ecuador close their books for the day, and as people in many places are well-fed, free, and happy – the world looks a little different. Because one individual extended a hand, there are people newly ready to change the world tomorrow.

Carol Hart Metzker is the author of Facing the Monster: How One Person Can Fight Child Slavery and a member of the E-Club of One World D5240.