Business Meeting, #bear, Our Vocational Service Awards, AG David Price & Plastic

Last Week
It was a Business Meeting and President Jean has reported on much of what was said in her column.  I do wonder what she means about the President's Chain being overhauled.  Is she referring to Jerry?  Perhaps there is some secret chaining chez Jean & Jerry?  Maybe a large ball is being attached and it will be worn round the ankle in future.  No doubt all will be revealed.

It was a pleasure to see Alan Banister as a visitor again and we had another 'visitor, Andrew Chinnah of Amnesty International.  Here's the local Amnesty branch with the new Secretary General, Kumi Naidoo - the first South African to hold that position.

It was great to have Mimi van Deventer with us as she does so much for our Interact Club at Highlands North Boys' High

Mimi van Deventer

President Jean & # bear....the one on the right.

President Jean introduced us to a bear provisionally called # 
I am sure that #bear will become permanent.  The one advantage is that he will increase our membership and lower our average age significantly.  Also the cost of feeding him is negligible.  Our thanks to Jeannette Horner for bringing him into the world.

Spot the Deliberate Mistake

Vocational Service Awards

It's that time of year again.  Please forward CV's and a proper motivation for candidates to me by the 30th September.

The candidate must have never had any recognition for what they do and be highly unlikely to be noticed.  Please make sure that the potential awardee is unaware of  your application.  In the past we have had applications for people who do their job well, for example you expect a nurse to be a good nurse so we wouldn't give someone an award for that.  However we do look at people who, through their work, assist the community beyond the call of duty so we would consider the nurse who does volunteer nursing without pay to assist her community. We also take a broad view of Vocation. attendant..

I will send out an email mid-month as a reminder.

This Week

Our new Assistant Governor, David Price, is going to tell us about himself.  I must admit I know nothing about him other than that  he used to belong to Kyalami and has now joined the new Rotary Club Fourways/Main Reef.

GLOBAL WARNING

 According to live statistics website http://www.theworldcounts.com , five trillion plastic bags are produced every year. That’s 160,000 a second! Put one after another, they would go around the world seven times every hour and cover an area twice the size of France. Following last month’s ban of singleuse plastic bags by major supermarket chains across Australia, the Rotary Club of Cromwell, NZ, has joined the cause, banning the use of plastic bags at its annual book sale and offering Rotary-branded reusable bags as an alternative. The New Zealand Government is also considering banning the bag, after a 65,000 strong petition was handed over to Parliament earlier this year.

 PLASTIC BAGS have been in the headlines recently following their phase out by major supermarket chains across Australia as of July 1. This follows a number of state bans put in place over previous years, with South Australia taking the lead in 2009.

Prior to the ban, Australians used four billion plastic bags every year – around 10 million a day. It’s estimated 150 million end up as litter. Even if used again, for example as a bin liner, it is estimated non-biodegradable plastic bags take 500 to 1000 years to decompose – and even then, it is into microscopic granules of plastic. The environmental impacts are severe. Plastic bags are often mistaken for food by turtles, fish and other marine life, leading to a slow death by starvation or suffocation. Humans, too, are facing dangers as a result of plastic proliferation. Research conducted in Sydney Harbour found plastics in the nanoparticles of fish flesh among those species caught for human consumption. This means BAN THE BAG plastics are working their way up the food chain and onto our plates. The Rotary Club of Cromwell recently joined the cause by ceasing to provide plastic bags at their annual book sale, which offers up thousands of books to raise funds for club projects. As an alternative, the club commissioned hundreds of reusable cotton bags for book buyers who didn’t have a bag of their own. It is hoped they will see many years of use after they carried their purchases home.

The book sale itself is also in the spirit of reuse. Rather than being tossed away, books find new appreciative homes – and potentially another home after that, when readers donate them back once they have finished with them. “We recognised that if the environment is to be improved, we have to do something proactive,” sale co-convener Denis McEntyre said. Everyone agrees removing short-term use plastic bags from the equation is just one step in solving our global plastic problem – but it’s certainly a start.  

A Social Meeting, a Business Meeting and a Rotary Club in British Columbia

Last Week

It was a Social Meeting and fun with quite a few visitors.  Mike Lamb brought his brother David who is a member of the Rotary Club of Hua Hin in Thailand.

David presented a banner to President Jean so that adds to our far-flung banner collection.








Two other visitors were Ronald Daintree from the Rotary Club of Knights Pendragon and Past District Governor Jankees Sligcher who we thought just liked visiting us but he really wanted to talk about Membership which is his portfolio at District this year.

Noeleen Hunt was Richard Tonkin's guest.

So having had no photographs last week, this week you have a plethora of them!

This Week

It's a Business Meeting.  It should be an interesting one as now the new board has had time to give us an idea of its plans for the coming year.

Interclub Quiz  

Johannesburg Club has set the date at Wednesday 21st November.  They have already hinted that they are probably the cleverest club and most likely to win.

Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium, British Columbia  

 Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium members
Jack Carlson, from left, Shannon Kirkwood, and Lyn Stroshin.

We’re dangling 1,400 feet above a forested valley. It’s a sea of green: no cars, no buildings, just uninterrupted forest bordered by snowcapped mountains. It’s a breathtaking view, and to get it, we’ve boarded a gondola that glides between the peaks of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. The Peak 2 Peak gondola, the first lift to join two side-by-side mountains, holds two Guinness World Records, for height and for length between spans.

Whistler Blackcomb offers more skiable acres than any other resort in North America. The terrain is vast and varied – though much of it is steep – and the snow is reliable. Since its construction in the 1960s, the resort has attracted skiers and snowboarders from around the world; in 2010, it hosted the Winter Olympics. In the summer, more visitors arrive to hike, bike, kayak, fish, and rock climb. 

“This is our backyard,” says Shannon Kirkwood. 

Kirkwood is president of the Rotary Club of Whistler Millennium. The club was founded in 2000 when a few members of the Rotary Club of Whistler, which meets at 7:15 a.m., decided to start a lunch club. Kirkwood, one of 13 women in the 23-member club, says she joined for a sense of community in a town where not only the tourists but many of the residents are transient. Many live and work in Whistler for a season, then move on. Only about 12,000 people actually call Whistler home. 

Seasonal work brought club member Liz Peacock to Whistler from Newcastle, England, in 2010. Like many others, she and her husband planned to stay and work for a year. But Whistler felt like home. Peacock has put her degree in art history to work managing the art gallery at the Fairmont Hotel; her husband found work first as a chef and later as a carpenter. Their one-year-old son, Larry, is a bona fide Whistler native. He’s also a born Rotarian, regularly attending meetings with his mom. 

The club meets at the Pan Pacific Whistler Mountainside hotel at 12:15 p.m. Thursdays. Larry, who has just learned to walk, toddles down the hall toward the members as they arrive. Peacock patiently chases after him again and again. “He’s the greeter,” she says with a smile. 

Today, 10 people are on hand for a talk by Tom Smith, the District 5040 membership chair. He’s there to help them assess their club and offer ideas on increasing membership. He notes that the club has an impressive age range: There are as many members in their 30s as in their 70s. Given the club’s small size and baby Larry running around, the meeting feels almost like a family gathering. 

The setting is so idyllic, even the view from the conference room window is impressive. A visitor might wonder, what kind of service project could a luxury resort town like Whistler possibly need from Rotary?

Member Patrick McCurdy says one of the club’s most important projects is to help the town’s seasonal workers acclimate to a new and unfamiliar country. The club hosts a pancake breakfast every November, when new seasonal workers arrive, as part of the Whistler Community Services Society’s “Welcome Week.” Everyone gathers at the local fire station to learn about the area, their rights as tenants, local laws, and how to get help if needed. “Many seasonal workers are young people from other countries,” McCurdy says. “This might be their first time abroad.” The workshops help prepare them for life in Canada and give them tools to stay safe. 

Club members also work to keep the area beautiful, doing things like clearing underbrush to prevent forest fires. “We don’t have a lot of money, but we like to get our hands dirty,” says club member Mary Ann Collishaw. 

With the wonders of the natural world at their doorstep, club members make outdoor sports a part of daily life. A quick survey reveals that they enjoy everything from sailing to snowboarding. So it makes sense that their annual fundraiser is a 10-kilometer run/walk called the Brandywine Boogie. Kirkwood says that last year they raised about $6,000, which they used to sponsor a Youth Exchange student and to support a local cycling association that builds and maintains the trails used for the run. The club also supports the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards, and it recently sent three students to a weekend RYLA event. 

As members finish their lunch (either a Cobb salad or a ham and cheese sandwich), a piggy bank makes the rounds. This being Canada, the bank is actually in the shape of a bear. Each person adds a dollar or more and shares a bit of news. A visiting Rotarian, Roz, from Guernsey thanks the club for welcoming her. And member Jens Ronneberger highlights one of the simple joys of living here: “I went skiing on Monday,” he says.

A Cobb Salad? It is an American garden salad typically made with chopped salad greens, tomato, crisp bacon, boiled, grilled or roasted chicken breast, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, chives, Roquefort cheese, and red-wine vinaigrette.  It's served as a main course but it is Summer in Canada now.

Youth Protection Policy... We must comply, The RI President for 2020/21

Last Week
It turned out to be a Social Meeting as the Irish speaker with the non-Irish name cancelled at the last minute.

This Week
It's billed as a Social Meeting which probably means that we will end up with a surprise speaker.




This doesn't give me much to say on the Ramble about our meetings.  Instead let's be aware of how we must comply with the Children's Act 38 of 2005.









Children's Act 38 of 2005
This act brought the South African requirements for working with minors in line with those of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. 
In summary the rights and responsibility of the child are:

•  I have the right not to be hurt. 
•  I have the right to be protected from physical, sexual and emotional harm. 
•  I have the right to speak and to be taken seriously, and I have the responsibility to tell the truth. 
•  I have the right to be treated equally no matter my race, gender, language or religion, and I have the responsibility to treat others equally. 
•  I have the right to privacy, and the responsibility to respect the privacy of others. 
•  I have the right to be protected from cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, and I should not use substances that will harm me. 
•  I have the right to proper care and the responsibility to be the best person that I can 

The whole object of the act and its amendments is child protection against all forms of abuse from sexual through to cyber abuse much of which is not applicable to us but what is necessary is that anyone who does work with minors has to comply with the act.
Interact is an obvious case in point so any Rotarian who has oversight of an Interact Club must comply with the act as well as everyone who is involved with our Youth Leadership Course or hosts a Youth Exchange student.  Basically it is anyone working with young people.

What is necessary?
a)  Anyone working with minors has to sign an affidavit that states effectively that they have not had any criminal conviction to the Children's Act 38 0f 2005, the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act 32 of 2007 or involving children in South Africa or another country.
b)  In accordance with The Children’s Act 38 of 2005 all people working with minors ne ed to be vetted against the National Child Protection Register.

This is something that our club has to comply with and it is something the Youth Committee is no doubt working on.  I asked the District Governor what were the protocols for reporting aand handling Child Abuse.  He said that they do exist but I cannot find anything at District level though obviously Rotary International does have protocols and some districts have their own.  Hopefully the District will publish protocols and also a set form that will include the necessary affidavit for any Rotarian working with young people.

I am sure that many of us are aware that there have been problems in the past and it's a good thing that we are becoming compliant with international norms.

Sushil Kumar Gupta, of the Rotary Club of Delhi Midwest, Delhi, India, is the selection of the Nominating Committee for President of Rotary International for 2020-21. He will be declared the president-nominee on 1 October if no challenging candidates have been suggested.

Gupta wants to increase Rotary’s humanitarian impact as well as the diversity of its membership.

“As individuals, we can only do so much,” Gupta said in a statement. “But when 1.2 million Rotarians work together, there is no limit to what we can achieve, and in the process, we can truly change the world.”

Gupta has been a Rotarian since 1977 and has served Rotary as district governor, training leader, and resource group adviser, and as a member, vice chair, or chair of several committees.

He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by the IIS University, Jaipur, in recognition of his contributions to water conservation.

He has also received the coveted Padma Shri Award, the fourth-highest civilian award in India, conferred by the president of India for distinguished service to tourism and social work.

Gupta has also received the Distinguished Service Award from The Rotary Foundation for his support of its humanitarian and educational programs. He and his wife, Vinita, are Major Donors to The Rotary Foundation and members of the Arch Klumph Society.

Gupta is chair and managing director of Asian Hotels (West) Ltd., and owner of Hyatt Regency Mumbai and JW Marriott Hotel New Delhi Aerocity. He has served as president of the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India and on the board of directors of Tourism Finance Corporation of India Ltd. He is the president of Experience India Society, a public-private partnership between the tourism industry and the government of India that promotes India as a tourist destination. He is also vice chair of the Himalayan Environment Trust and serves on the board of Operation Eyesight Universal in India.

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

Last Week


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






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

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






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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: How does the Cure Violence model work?

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

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

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

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

Last Week.



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


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







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








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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last Week

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

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






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

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

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

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





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

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

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

Rotary Leadership Institute Courses

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



And here is something we could look at.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

School for skeptics   by Vanessa Glavinskas   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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