Cyber Security, a Container for Baragwanath, Health Care for the Underserved and how Rotary helped a Person with Mental Health Issues.

Last Week

I seem to be missing Rotary a lot these last few weeks just through circumstances but Cyber Security was the issue and Adrian, son of Richard Tonkin being the speaker.  Many thanks to Ann Hope-Baillie for taking notes:

"The browsers that I recommend are Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge. I suggest that you switch on two factor authentication for your 
Google account to make it much, much more secure. Ditch those old web mail sevices like MWeb and Telkom as soon as is possible.

I would like to stress the point that your Online banking passwords should always be unique and not used anywhere else. It's a good idea to learn what your bank recommends regarding online safety and try incorporate the suggested practices.

I use NordVPN as my VPN service provider, although there are a few other good ones you could try, such as TunnelBear or Express VPN. Tom's Guide has an updated list and I trust their opinions. You should select a provider that can secure your mobile devices as well."

Never enter personal information in an email message when you don’t know the recipient.

Never enter personal information on a website provided as a link in an email message.

Never include personal information in an Internet forum, discussion group, or newsgroup message.

Never use the same password for all your electronic business.

Never divulge personal information to others over an instant message connection.

Never buy from an online store that doesn’t offer a secure, encrypted connection when you’re prompted for your personal information and credit card number.

Never download a file from a site you don’t trust.

Never allow a stranger to connect to your PC.

Lots of NEVERS!!! It is all about your name and contact details and your passwords!!!

The container refurbishment is on the way for the Baragwanath Palliative Care Unit...here's the team who are getting it done.

This Week

Dr Agatha Banga is going to talk about "The evolving role of technology in reaching the medically underserved – where is Rotary?"

Banga is a pediatric surgeon who works at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital. Her day starts in the hospital wards at 5:00 am where she visits her patients and leaves instructions for the day. She then does a handover meeting with consultants, registrars and medical offices to discuss the progress of patients overnight, theatre cases, and any emergency cases.

Banga is usually in theatre by 8:00 am almost every single day. On the days she is not operating, she attends to over 100 patients at the clinic. The Zimabawean native splits her time treating patients at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, and until recently, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital. 

“Surgery is not anything like Grey’s Anatomy, it’s more like a rollercoaster ride. You need to be more attentive, like essential things you need to do for patients such as take blood and do drips. Those are the things that ensure that your patients are ready for theatre and that your patients will do well after theatre,” Banga said.

Much like the Grey’s Anatomy character Meredith Grey, Banga makes her own scrub caps herself which she wears when operating on patients. She added, “It’s my way of being myself in the job that I have”.

As a medical student, Banga wanted to specialise as a paediatrician. She then took time off from clinical medicine and studied public health at the University of Cape Town as a Mandela Rhodes Scholar in 2015.

“At that time, I realised I discovered that surgery is a public health intervention and I looked at how many paediatricians are out there versus paediatric surgeons. Children are not little adults, and we actually need paediatric surgeons and not general surgeons to manage children,” Banga said.

A Fresh Start

At this year’s Rotary International Convention in Hamburg, Germany, Chris Wells won over a general session audience with a combination of high-energy showmanship and a serious message about mental health, drawn from his experience. A few years after graduating from college in 2011, Wells found himself depressed. “I’d felt a bit crap for months and months and months,” remembers Wells, now 29. “I was bored, negative all the time, stuck, not really doing anything. It was getting scary.”

Then two things happened that would change his life. First, a friend persuaded him to see a psychiatrist. Second, another friend introduced him to Jim Davies, a member of the Rotary Club of Market Harborough, who encouraged Wells to get involved with Rotary and suggested starting a Rotaract club. “I had no idea what to expect, but I was willing to try anything to not feel like this anymore,” Wells says.

Wells dived right into Rotary, helping found the Rotaract Club of Market Harborough in 2015. Soon the new Market Harborough Rotaractors were participating in a canned-food drive for local food banks, holding regular pub quiz fundraisers, and creating a support group for young stroke patients.

The club also held a night of comedy and music to raise money for a young man who had been accepted to a prestigious course at the National Youth Theatre in London but who couldn’t afford the fees. “I was like, ‘Right, we’ll have a Christmas concert in the middle of June, just to confuse everyone,’” Wells says cheerfully. “We raised more than enough money.”

The Market Harborough Rotaractors’ enthusiasm has proved contagious: Several new Rotaract clubs have been formed in the district.Meanwhile, with continuing professional help, Wells’ mental health has improved. “As soon as I had a purpose that wasn’t my own, life was a bit easier,” he says. As he said in his speech at the convention: “Rotary isn’t the cure for depression, and people suffering from it shouldn’t feel shy about seeking out medical and professional help. … But for me, Rotaract truly aided in filling in some of those dark and empty spaces inside.”

White Informal Settlements, the Springboks, the Spar Collection and a Canada/South Africa Link

Last Week
I wasn't at the meeting so many thanks to David Bradshaw.

President Jean with Leon & Wilma Cronje of DieBoere Gemeenskap Transvaal

Wilma explained that the person who normally does the presentations for them is currently in Zimbabwe but she will do her best.

They are providing assistance to poor white communities in the East and West Rand and Pretoria. Many of these communities  are situated on farms and they pay to stay there, in old sheds, old caravans and various

Les Short isn't sure that the Boks will win.

makeshift accommodation.

The Boere Gemeenskap Transvaal was officially established in 2015 but Leon & Wilma have been working to help street and homeless people since 2013.

There are no medical facilities in the White Squatter camps and  the lack of transport exacerbates the situation.

These people(they are currently assisting around a 1000 men, women & children) are desperate for food and clothing, they get no assistance from the Government. The BGT will happily collect goods that can be  donated to these poor people, be it food, clothes, toys etc.

Wilma stated that they are not racist at all ,they are just trying to help th, Cyber Security andeir Volk, who have been forgotten and neglected.

It was again collection time at Spar in Norwood.  I was on the Saturday 9:00 till 11:00 shift and it was very different to normal as most of the shoppers were wearing Springbok jerseys and buying chips or beer and obviously only had one thing on their mind which didn't include us.  Fortunately some people were generous...even some wearing Springbok jerseys...but we weren't as successful as last month.  Costa Qually followed us with the 11:00 shift...when we left the car

park was almost empty!

I took a selfie with Judy Powell and here are our two leopard helpers from W\Alexandra handing out leaflets....one amongst the flowers and the other in the street.

President Jean was more conventional with Mark Franklin, Pam Donaldson and Tutty Faber as wellas the two Leopards from Alexandra.

 This Week

The Tonkin Clan will be telling us after a recent experience in the club.about security on the Internet which is very appropriate.

Internet security is a branch of computer security specifically related to not only Internet, often involving browser security and the World Wide Web, but also network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules and measures to use against attacks over the Internet.^[1] The Internet represents an insecure channel for exchanging information, which leads to a high risk of intrusion or fraud, such as phishing, online viruses, trojans, worms and more.

Many methods are used to protect the transfer of data, including encryption and from-the-ground-up engineering. The current focus is on prevention as much as on real time protection against well known and new threats.

Thirteen Years ago Magdalen Leung made a promise to an orphan boy in South Africa

Magdalen Leung, foundation chair of the Rotary Club of Richmond Sunset (Vancouver, Canada – RID 5040) and a long-term Richmond resident, had been working in the village as a volunteer, helping with the school in Refilwe.

As she was about to leave, the students ran out of the classroom to hug her goodbye, but one little boy named Success approached her and asked, “Mrs Leung, are you gonna come back, or you will never see us again, just like other people did?”

The memory of that question still stings.

“So I made a promise to these kids,” Leung said, choking back tears. “I told them I would return to the village each year as long as you need me.”

Leung has kept that promise. Every year she has returned, bringing supplies and other volunteers with her.

In March 2013, she took a group of Hugh Boyd students to help build a school, work with the orphans and develop a greater appreciation of what it means to be of service to your community.

Since her initial visit, some of the young students have grown into well-educated individuals with a range of opportunities.

“One boy from the village told me if I were not here, he would never have had the chance to learn how to read or write, and he might have ended up as a farmer for the rest of his life,” said Leung.

Even at her most busy times working as a realtor and raising a family, Leung has never thought about quitting volunteerism.

“What I do might be a drop in the ocean, but with more people joining the team, we can make a difference in their lives,” said Leung.

And if one charitable project isn’t enough, for the past five years Leung has been actively involved with Gift of Life Global, which raises money to fund surgeries for children with congenital heart disease in China.

Leung went to China last year to visit An Jing, a seven-year-old girl who needed heart surgery, but was shocked to learn the Rotary was still $5,000 short of what was needed to pay for the operation the girl urgently required.

Leung recalls telling the doctor, “Please go ahead.” She then borrowed some money from her husband, and luckily some friends chipped in for the donation.

Leung returned to the hospital two days later to check on An Jing, and the surgeon introduced her to the girl by explaining, “The lady flew from Canada to China to save your life.”

“The girl asked the surgeon, ‘could you please teach me how to say I love you and thank you in English,’ and then she said these words back to me,” Leung continued, “just by seeing the happiness in people’s eyes, how could I stop volunteering? ”

Today, Leung is one of 22 members of Rotary Club of Richmond Sunset who volunteers globally.

“The principle of the Rotary club is fostering world peace and understanding. You will become more tolerant, compassionate, caring, and plain loving towards one another by giving back to society,” said Leung.

Rotary Club of Richmond Sunset will celebrate its 20th anniversary on July 6 at Vancouver Airport Marriott Hotel.

The Quiz, James goes to Baragwanath, Die Boere Gemeenskap, Transvaal and a Book Drive in Barbados.

Last Week

It was a Business Meeting but I wasn't there.

it was also our Quiz in aid of PolioPlus and here's a report from David Bradshaw:

It was a great evening, the room was packed with 80 participants.

Quiz Master Larry Benjamin of Quizwizz Productions ran a fun and dynamic Quiz evening.The Quiz included colour picture quiz rounds,a music round,general knowledge and trivia or speed quiz round.

13 teams took part(14^th team paid but did not make it) and the three top teams were :-

1. Parkview Birdies(Ladies from the Golf Club).

Conundrums(this team included Sybille & Pam). Joint second with

       Hagis Chapels(Fourways Main Reef).

Monies are still coming in but we estimate at least R16K will have been raised for Polio Plus.

A  Raffle with some really wonderful prizes helped us exceed our target of R10K.

There was a real Buzz all night  and everyone had a great time.

Out of interest the breakdown of attendees were as follows:-

Rosebank Rotarians 11

Other Rotarians.       10

Anns.                             2

Non Rotarians.           57

Total.                           80

And a big thank you to the organising team, President Jean, Pam Donaldson, Sonja Hood, Sybille Essman ( who conceived at and put it all together) and David Bradshaw.

As President Jean said in her column,

James Croswell represented our Club at the graduation of spiritual counsellors at Baragwanath, where he met and made some very important contacts in Government. This project is ticking along well and again – a job well done by RC Rosebank.

This Week

We have a speaker, I imagine the chairman Leon Cronje, of the Boere Gemeenskap Transvaal, an organisation that supports people in informal settlements.  The original date for them coming to address us was cancelled at the last minute but my original comments bare repeating.

Nowhere on its website does the organisation mention that it only assists whites, presumably Afrikaans speaking whites but that is the impression that I have from the photographs.

Personally I have a problem with this which is exemplified by Transvaal in the name of an organisation that was only founded four years ago, 20 years after the province of that name ceased to exist.
Don't misunderstand me.  I am not saying that these unfortunate people shouldn't be helped. I know that there are approximately 56 informal settlements between the East Rand and Pretoria that house predominantly white people. I am just concerned that there could be an isolationist agenda.  I hope I am proved wrong.

Collections at Spar Norwood

Don't forget this weekend and if there is anyone else who can help please speak to Costa Qually.

What’s a library without books? An empty room — until members of the Rotaract Club of Barbados get involved, that is.

In 2018, the Rotaractors learned that the library at Luther Thorne Memorial Primary School, which was next door to the space in Bridgetown where the club met at the time, had no books at all. The club launched its Once Upon a Time project to replenish the library with books and to raise awareness of the importance of literacy. “We wanted to show kids the practical aspects of literacy in the real world,” says club member Mario Boyce.

The club’s goal was to collect 150 to 200 books appropriate for children ages five to 11. With the support of the school’s administration, teachers, and local businesses, the club far exceeded that goal, collecting more than 1,100 books. Of those, 925 went into the Thorne library, some excess books the library couldn’t take were donated to another primary school, and some books for more mature readers were donated to a shelter for abused women. “Even after we closed the drive, people were still giving us books, which was fantastic,” says Boyce.

The CEOs of a local bank and of a radio station, both of whom are Rotarians, supported the effort. The bank and other businesses served as drop-off locations for books, and the radio station recorded and regularly aired a jingle publicizing the book drive.

The club also held a spelling bee, one round of which was a Jeopardy!-style quiz that included a category about Rotary and Rotaract. “We wanted to educate people about Rotaract and Interact,” Boyce says. The spelling bee was not initially part of the project but was added to engage students and to emphasize the benefits of literacy. “We were flexible enough to modify our original plan,” he adds.

The project, which won a Rotaract Outstanding Project Award, will continue in the coming year, as the club members paint the library and furnish it with shelving.

In Barbados, difficult economic conditions mean that many families have trouble making ends meet. The Rotaractors also plan to provide two students with everything they need for the school year, including uniforms, shoes, books, and food for breakfast and lunch. “This is not only going to help the children; it’s going to help the parents and relieve them of some of their stress,” Boyce says.

“Our theme is to go the extra mile this year,” he says. “We want to do it with more impactful projects.”— Annemarie Mannion

Boniswe Mdingi, a Business Meeting & Six Interesting Rotary Awardees

Last Week


Boniswe Mdingi spoke to us about contracting polio as a child and what it meant to her both as a child and as an adult.
I couldn't trace her NPO on the internet and it's not affiliated to Disability Pride which is an international organisation but I did see that her Limited Company says it does garden services and a whole lot of other things but there is no website. 
I think that someone, maybe our club, should  look into this and help her register her NGO and assist with the governance etc as I am sure she needs it and it will then open doors for the future.

Left, Wesley Maraire, upper right, Anne Padmore , lower right Oda Maraire

We also had a number of visitors, Wesley & Oda Maraire from Zimbabwe and Anne Padmore   whose company is providing the transport for the container that we are converting for Baragwanath Palliative Care. 
y
This Week
It's a Business Meeting and our Fund Raising Quiz for PolioPlus is on Wednesday.  Congratulations to Sybille and her team as it's obviously going to be a great success.

Six humanitarians who are members of the family of Rotary are being honored as People of Action: Connectors Beyond Borders during the 2019 Rotary Day at the United Nations, which focuses this year on the global refugee crisis.

The annual event, being held at the UN’s headquarters in New York, USA, on 9 November this year, celebrates the vision for peace that Rotary and the UN share. Through Rotary’s long history with the UN, its members have helped people affected by war, famine, and disaster.

Today, the number of refugees worldwide is the highest it has been since World War II. The six honorees — five Rotary members and a Rotary Peace Fellow — are all people of action who have found community-based solutions to the refugee crisis.

Bernd Fischer

Club: Rotary Club of Berlin, Germany

Project: Integration of refugee women into German society

Description: Fischer, a retired diplomat, is coordinating Rotary clubs in Europe and the U.S. on a grant project to integrate 240 refugee women into German society by helping them overcome cultural and language differences that hinder their participation in daily life. The project has already trained 100 women with children and has provided mentoring in their own languages, job training and placement assistance, and child care when they need medical and psychological treatment.

Lucienne Heyworth

Rotary connection: Rotary Peace Fellow (Uppsala University, 2015-17)

Project: Education curriculum in times of emergency, focused on the Middle East

Description: Heyworth developed an “education in emergencies” curriculum to provide instructional materials that can be used in makeshift learning spaces to teach people displaced by conflict. Such spaces create critical safe places for entire communities, where families can fill other basic needs like food, hygiene, and health. Heyworth, who was a teacher before she developed her expertise in providing education in areas of conflict, has focused her work in the Middle East.

Ilge Karancak-Splane

Club: Rotary Club of Monterey Cannery Row, California, USA

Project: Education and integration project in Turkey for Syrian refugee children

Description: After visiting several refugee tent camps in Turkey, Karancak-Splane organized Rotary clubs to provide 1,000 pairs of children’s shoes and socks for families in the camps in 2017. Recognizing that the children also lacked access to schools, Karancak-Splane and her Rotary club launched a global grant project to help educate refugee children.

Hasina Rahman

Club: Rotary Club of Dhaka Mavericks, Bangladesh

Project: Nutrition services for Rohingya children in Bangladesh

Description: Rahman, assistant country director of Concern Worldwide, has mobilized Rotary clubs and partner agencies to raise funds for and construct an outpatient therapeutic center that provides lifesaving preventive care and nutrition services for children and pregnant women who have fled to the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmar. The center has screened more than 500,000 Rohingya children and helped more than 7,000 severely malnourished children. Staff members and volunteers have learned about feeding infants and young children, and refugee families have received information in their own language about breastfeeding and proper hygiene.

Ace Robin

Club: Rotary Club of Mataram Lombok, Mataram, Indonesia

Project: Disaster relief and housing for people displaced by earthquakes

Description: Robin has led her club’s and community’s efforts to provide assistance to people displaced by a series of earthquakes in the Lombok region of Indonesia during 2018. She served as the contact person for ShelterBox, aiding in the delivery of 915 units of temporary housing near Lombok. She and her fellow club members brought water, food, and other necessities to people who were displaced and distributed teaching materials, uniforms, shoes, and bags for students. Robin remains involved in the long-term recovery efforts.

Vanderlei Lima Santana

Club: Rotary Club of Boa Vista-Caçari, Roraima, Brazil

Project: Humanitarian aid to Venezuelan refugees

Description: Santana has led efforts to welcome and care for thousands of Venezuelan refugees arriving in northern Brazil because of desperate economic conditions in their country. Santana’s club has been working with the government and nonprofit organizations to coordinate the distribution of meals and vaccines to more than a thousand refugees who are living in streets or makeshift shelters in a plaza near the local bus station. They also provide professional development assistance and help the refugees find places to sleep.

Last Week Audiologist Varsha Sewerspad. This Week we focus on Disability in general and Polio in particular

Last Week


Audiologist Varsha Sewpersad spoke to us about hearing loss, hearing aids...even how to get wax out of our ears.  It provoked a lot of questions because her approach isn't merely empirical.  The gist of her address was that you listen with your brains not your ears because they just send messages to the brain. If your hearing deteriorates and you do nothing about it then your brain doesn't function in the way that it should because you become less able to communicate and less social.  This can mean that you could more likely be subject to such diseases as Alzheimers.

Here's another wheelchair donated by us to a refugee who is suffering from cancer and is unable to use his crutches anymore.  Behind the chair is Juanito De Dios, Chairman of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Kensington, Johannesburg.  Soon we'll be sending three wheelchairs to Linda Twala of Phutaditjaba in Alexandra.  Linda has been very helpful by sending the youth, known as Leopards, to collections at Spar Norwood...and often they are better collectors than we are!

President Jean mentioned Sybille on top of Mount Kinabalu.....she's the one on the right.

 This Week

Boniswe Mdingi,who had Polio as a child, will be talking to us about polio and Disability Pride.  This is quite a big organisation in the USA and I have a feeling that she is trying to get it off the ground here as I as find no trace of it locally.

Disability Pride is the idea that people with disabilities should be proud of their disabled identity The movement for disability pride has its roots in the pride awareness events of other minority communities, such as Black pride and LGBT pride. The United States' first Disability Pride Parade was held in Boston, MA in 1990. Disability pride parades have since spread to many locations across the U.S., including San Francisco,

 Philadelphia, Detroit, and Silicon Valley/Santa Clara County, and internationally, such as Norway, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. The Chicago Disability Pride Parade describes the goals in its mission statement:

To change the way people think about and define “disability”;

To break down and end the internalized shame among people with Disabilities; and
To promote the belief in society that Disability is a natural and beautiful part of human diversity in which people living with Disabilities can take pride.

Our new strategy to end polio

John Sever, International PolioPlus Committee Vice Chair

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s (GPEI’s) previous strategic plan was from 2013 to 2018. We achieved many important things: Wild poliovirus type 2 was declared eradicated in 2015; wild poliovirus type 3 was last seen in 2012, giving us high confidence that it’s no longer circulating; no wild poliovirus has been detected outside Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2016. But the clear factor in creating the new Polio Endgame Strategy 2019-2023 is that we have not yet achieved complete eradication.

The new plan has three goals. The first goal is eradication. Second, integration — collaboration with other public health actors beyond the GPEI to strengthen health systems to help achieve and sustain eradication. Then, certification and containment — we have to prove through surveillance that we have interrupted the transmission of the poliovirus, and we have to be able to show that the virus in laboratories either has been destroyed or is appropriately contained.

The GPEI’s five-year budget to execute this is $4.2 billion. Why does it cost so much?

Every year, we have to vaccinate more than 450 million children in up to 50 countries to prevent the spread of polio from the endemic areas. In addition to the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, we are immunizing children all over Africa and Asia. So we have to have a lot of people out there to help immunize, and that costs money. We have to have the vaccine, and that costs money. And we have to maintain and pay for sizable quantities of vaccine in case of an outbreak, and that costs money. Then we have to investigate about 100,000 cases of paralysis each year to rule out polio. We have to continue surveillance — looking for cases of polio to be sure we are not missing cases in certain areas. We need to test sewage samples in 34 countries to ensure that the poliovirus is not circulating undetected. And all of those things cost money. It’s a significant expense every year to maintain that level of performance.

What strategies are in this plan?

One key element is establishing a regional hub for Afghanistan and Pakistan to consolidate our efforts and increase technical support. We’re also focusing on mobile and hard-to-reach children — children who are crossing borders, riding on trains, and coming out of areas where our access has been restricted. We are developing rapid-response teams and surge capacity so if the virus is detected, our response can be swift and intense. We’re working with other actors such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to help strengthen immunization systems. And we’re delivering additional services such as clean water, nutrition, health, and sanitation, because often the local people say we’re always coming back to immunize against polio, but what about their other problems?

What can Rotarians do to ensure that the plan is successful?

The No. 1 thing is to continue to support the program. We have a $3.27 billion funding gap. We will need Rotarians to make direct donations as well as to advocate with their governments and other groups for their support so that we can continue to do all of the immunizations and surveillance we’ve been talking about. Rotarians in countries where active polio eradication efforts are underway need to continue helping with these efforts and immunizing children. They need to keep advocating with their governments to continue to support polio eradication.

A Springbok/Italy Meeting, Rotary Family Health Days, a Couple of Vegetables, Hearing Loss & Coping with it, and an Innovative Approach to Membership

Last Week
Our speaker cancelled at the last minute.  It seems that when ever I say quite a lot about our future speaker they always seem to cancel at the last minute.  Maybe I should say nothing about this week's speaker.

Some members of the club were delighted because it meant that the meeting could be suspended until the second half was completed.





And we had a visitor, Michael Mtenga.

What he thought of us I don't really know.  I have a feeling that he might think we are a sports club that disguises itself as a Rotary Club...



Rotary Family Health Days
We were able to help Kyalami and also Morningside at their venues.  I don't have any pictures of Morningside but here's Kyalami with David Bradshaw and President Jean on the right.

Jean waxed lyrical about spring onions and spinach/Swiss chard...don't forget you can eat the stalks separately, just braise them in chicken stock.

This Week
  Varsha Sewpersad returns to talk to us about Hearing Loss- a Practical Hands-on Training.

Varsha Sewpersad is the senior audiologist and practice owner at Speak Today, Hear Forever. Having worked within hospitals, specialised preschools, remedial schools, medico-legal teams and private practices in South Africa and Dubai. She specializes in hearing evaluation, hearing loss, tinnitus, auditory processing disorders and hearing rehabilitation. Varsha has gained extensive and valuable experience within the fields of speech therapy and audiology working from young children to geriatrics. With a great passion and desire to improve the quality of lives of individuals with hearing and/or communication difficulties, Varsha qualified with her Honours Degree in the Bachelor of Communication Pathology at the University of Pretoria and further went on to obtain her Master's Degree in Audiology at the University of Witwaterstrand.

Varsha is a published author and enjoys conducting research to increase her knowledge in the field. She has been awarded membership of the Golden Key International Honour Society and is part of an international guild for auditory processing disorders specialists.  Varsha is fervent in creating awareness on hearing loss and she therefore recommends that any person over the age of 50 should visit an audiologist annually as part of their overall health care plan as research shows that untreated hearing loss in individuals over the age of 60 have a 36% chance of developing Dementia/ Alzheimer’s disease.

'We hear with our brains and not our ears'

Rotary Club of Wiarton, Ontario

Chartered: 1938

Original membership: 18

Membership: 33

Club members at a Canada-themed trivia night.

Building bonds: In Wiarton, gateway to the bucolic Bruce Peninsula between Georgian Bay and Lake Huron in Ontario, a dedicated Rotary club shoulders an outsize responsibility. With fewer than three dozen members, the Rotary Club of Wiarton has installed playground equipment, benches, and a wooden boardwalk, all while supporting a robust Rotary Youth Exchange program, polio eradication, and projects in Africa and Mexico. It also stages several major annual events. How? By summoning the exponential force of friendship.

Club innovation: To involve more people in club meetings and events, the members came up with a creative solution. Wiarton’s Friends initiative, inaugurated in 2016, appeals to people who share Rotary’s values but cannot commit to full membership, allowing them to attend as many as 10 club meetings a year while helping at fundraisers and other projects. The goal of the program, which has nine participants, is to provide a path toward regular membership.

During an event for club presidents-elect at the 2018 Rotary International Convention in Toronto, Mike McMillan, then incoming president of the Wiarton club, stepped up to the microphone to raise the issue of how Rotary could expand its base. “We are in an area of generally blue-collar industries: tourism, retail, a national park,” McMillan recalls saying. “I asked, ‘How do we attract nonprofessionals, or rather professionals of a different sort?’ ” Other presidents-elect from all over the world told him that they faced a similar predicament. McMillan already had one possible solution.

Two years earlier, the Wiarton club had launched the Friends program to engage people in the community with limited time and money. “So many young people, in particular, can’t commit to a full-time membership,” says McMillan. “Particularly in an area like ours, to pay $80 a month for meals is beyond their budgets if they have young kids. It’s important to come up with other ways to keep people involved. Our community is small and not particularly wealthy.”

One go-to volunteer, Jimi Avon, a retired musician who spends winters in Mexico, draws energy from the drive of the Rotarians. “I’m ready to be at all these events. For me, it’s a positive thing,” Avon says of his status as a Friend. “At the level I’m at, I’m happy and I don’t have quite the responsibility.” Also among the Friends are a hospice manager, a woman who operates a landscaping business and garden shop with her Rotarian husband, and four retirees.

And for one Friend, the program has been a pathway back to membership. Richard Bouillon had left the club in 1996 because of demands of business and family life. He tested the waters again as a Friend. “I’m not sure if I should be called an ‘old new member’ or a ‘new old member.’ I spent a year as a Friend before rejoining the club in 2018,” Bouillon says. Now he is fully committed, having worked the Village Fair and traveled to Honduras to help build a school through a Rotary-sponsored project. But it might not have happened without a gentle reintroduction. “The Friends program was one of the things that brought me back,” he says.