Patrick Ache, a Social Meeting, Rotary Scout and on a Scooter across the Sahara

Last Week

Patrick's family sporting different national dress, Cameroon, Senegal & Ghana.

Patrick Ache gave us an interesting presentation on himself and what he does.  he's truly an international person with links to many African countries through his family, a law degree from the UK and a move into business and career counseling.  When I listen to talks like this I immediately start thinking about how he could best be used by Rotary...maybe I shouldn't!


A couple of his friends came to hear what he had to say, Thule Mdletshe and Ray Goodell from the Rotary Club of Morningside.  The real reason for their visit was to try and find out what he did for a living.





This Week
It's a purely social meeting with the usual selection of jokes and weird stories.....at least I hope we have some weird stories.  Visiting Rotarians be warned, it's not for the faint hearted.
Spell check doesn't like 'hearted' for some reason or other and would prefer heated, earthed or hearten...I think earthed would be the best alternative.

Rotary Scout

I wonder if any of you are following the progress of Rotary Scout in the Cape to Rio Race.  It's now Day 22 and they have been having electrical power problems as the sky has been overcast and there have been squalls so that solar power charging has been a bit low and they had to ration electrical use.

Ride a scooter across the Sahara

Ahmad Elzoghby 

Rotary Club of Alexandria Cosmopolitan, Egypt

Back in 2011, not many people were riding scooters here. But the car traffic where we lived in Alexandria was insane, so I and a few friends started to ride scooters as an alternative means of transportation.  

One day a friend recommended that we do a tour around Egypt, from where we live in Alexandria to Sharm el-Sheikh, which is 450 miles away. And I said, why not? A few days later, I thought, why not go from the very north of Egypt to the very eastern border, then go south and visit all the tourist sights? Egypt depends mainly on tourism, and at this time tourism was suffering because of the recent Egyptian revolution. So we thought we would do this to tell the world that Egypt is still a safe place to visit: We can tour the country on scooters and still be safe.

Interested in riding with Rotarians? Visit crossegyptchallenge.com or learn about the International Fellowship of Motorcycling Rotarians at http://www.ifmr.org/.

I spoke to my Rotary club and they were very excited. They gave me the go-ahead to put this together. Three months later on 1 July, at the beginning of the Rotary year, the Cross Egypt Challenge was born. In that first year, there were only 14 riders – from Egypt, the United States, and Mexico. In 2015, we had 75 riders from 12 countries.

We started in October from the Plaza of the Library of Alexandria. We rode to Cairo and Tahrir Square, where the revolution started. After Cairo, we rode east to Suez and crossed into the Sinai Peninsula. We saw the Sinai Mountains, the Red Sea, the canyons, amazing sights. You would be riding in the middle of nowhere and there would be a Bedouin walking with two camels, and you would wonder, where is this guy going, where is he coming from? Why is he walking in this heat?

Next we went by plane across the Red Sea to Hurghada, then through the Eastern Desert to Luxor. This is a very tough desert. It’s all rock formations and a huge mountain range. The farther south you go, the hotter it gets. During the day it’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The most difficult part is keeping yourself awake. People get tired easily in the heat, so their concentration is reduced.

From Luxor we rode on to Aswan and ended at the southern border of Egypt, at one of the Abu Simbel temples that were saved by the United Nations when the Aswan High Dam was constructed in the 1960s. 

There is always risk involved when you are on the road with two wheels. In 2015 we were very lucky and had zero accidents. But in some years we have had accidents. In the second year, we were riding in the Western Desert near the end of the trip. We had gone about 1,800 kilometers and I was behind the group trying to make arrangements with escort vehicles. After I finished, I was speeding to catch up with the group, and suddenly I saw the road was under construction. There was a 3-inch difference between the dirt and the asphalt. The last thing I remember was kissing the asphalt. I dislocated my collar bone; the injury is slightly visible even now. 

Everywhere we go, people stop us and talk to us. Egyptians are very friendly. They invite us to their house to drink coffee, to rest, to eat lunch. The best thing is that you get to see not only the tourist places. You’re diving into the culture. You’re diving into Egypt. 

Kathy Munro, Patrick Ache, Region 2 Rotary Paul Harris Fellowship Dinner and Rotary Scout

Last Week

We really had an exceptional talk by Professor Kathy Munro on the Sinking of the Mendi in February 1917.  It was much more than that because not only did she debunk the legend of the Mendi sinking but she expanded her talk to include a lot of information on the SA Native Labour Corps which I am sure was new to many of us.
It was a great start to the year and many thanks to Lyn Collocott for organising this interesting talk.


We also had a number of visitors from overseas.  David & Wendy Lloyd from the Rotary Club of Dorking in Surrey, England and Ralf Meyer from the Rotary Club of Frankfurt, Germany.
As you can see they are busy concentrating on the talk.



I was able to present them with a club banner at the end of the meeting.







 I am beginning to get a complex about these presentations as I never really thought I was that small!









This Week

Patrick Ache will be telling us about himself.

These talks are technically called 'My Job' talks and everyone is supposed to give one when they join.  I have always wondered what that meant if the person was either retired or too rich to have to work.  Anyway Patrick will no doubt talk about what he does.





Rotary Region 2 Paul Harris Fellowship Dinner
This will be on Saturday 4th February at Bryanston Country Club and is for Paul Harris Fellows and partners.  It is the region's Rotary Foundation Centenary Celebration and is not a fund raising event. The dinner is R240 per head and as I am organising the food I will definitely include the Moroccan Lamb that we had at the Induction Dinner.  The region will be sending an invitation to all Clubs.

The Rotary Scout
The Rotary Scout is currently taking part in the Cape to Rio Race and you may be interested in following her progress and reading the rather entertaining blog that gets written up every day.http://www.rotaryscout.co.za/blog/  There is also a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/JMLRotaryScout/  I am in the Rotary Africa photo below ......ha ha!  Neville Coxon who sadly died a couple of years ago was the Assistant Area Commissioner Water Activities for Cape Western at the time and practically fitted it out single-handedly over the 7 years and raised the money as well.

JML Rotary Scout is a 39’ modified Tosca cruising yacht (a “sugar scoop” was later added to her stern to increase her length from 36’ to 39’), owned by the South African Scout Association. The yacht was donated by the Rotary Club of Bellville as a bare hull to the Sea Scout Base at Sandvlei, Lakeside in 1987 and fitted out over a number of years, finally being launched in 1994.

She was designed by built by Angelo Lavranos who has a huge portfolio of designs to his credit, covering many different concepts. It is always interesting to look at his designs, because they conform to no particular dogma and are all based on very good thinking and experience. Including mini-racers, super-maxis, medium cruisers, cats, houseboats and powerboats – he has done them all. In addition to the Tosca 36, Lavranos also designed the highly successful L36 and Atlantis 36 of the same length – all three quite different but equally good forms of a medium-sized performance cruiser.

To Quote Lavranos himself: “Seeing the success of the L36, Fred Scholtz asked me to design the Tosca 36, (design 0103) as a production boat, to be cheaper to put together than the L36. Center cockpit rather than aft cockpit. She has a higher volume than the L36, with her beamier, firm bilged, full sterned hull, less ballest, smaller rig, less displacement. Less of an “all rounder” in performance than the L36. More wetted surface and slower in light airs, but faster reaching in a breeze. The original boats were simple & light. Two circumnavigated. Unfortunately as time went on the boats got more elaborate, aft cabin walkthrough, bigger engine, more tankage, bigger rig, stern platform etc.”

Dynamically – Toscas sail well. They held some good passage times on the Governors cup – Cape Town to St Helena – a nice long downwind reach – and are clearly able to survive fierce weather. One did get laid over in a sudden squall under full rig in Hout Bay’s “Thunder Alley” one day – spreaders in the water – she popped right back up without changing direction and kept going . . .

Being light and beamy, and roundish, they are good trade-wind cruisers, and very comfortable. They also manage upwind quite well except in gale-force conditions. Reaching would be the preferred point of sail and they actually do quite well round the cans in moderate conditions.

JML Rotary Scout is managed by a group of dedicated volunteers, mainly Scout Moms and Dads. Nobody is paid. The yacht falls under the control of Sea Scout Base Parent’s Advisory Committee.

Happy New Year! Prof Kathy Munro & Ban Ki-Moon retires as UN Secretary General.

This Week

Our guest speaker is Professor Katherine Munro who is Honorary Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits. Her retirement is hardly 'retirement' as she has become heavily involved in researching and writing about aspects of our heritage. I remember particularly an interesting article by her on the relationship between Ghandi and Hermann Kallenbach here in Johannesburg.  She wrote the article after visiting the unveiling of a statue of them both in Lithuania where-as here, Kallenbach is sadly all but forgotten.

She will be talking to us about the Sinking of the Mendi almost exactly 100 years ago, on the 21st February, 2017, with the loss of 616 South Africans of the South African Native Labour Corps, 607 of them black troops.

Ken Burgess
I have received an email from Joan Burgess following the letter I sent with the Club's condolences on Ken's death.

To: The Rotary Club of Rosebank.

A very big thank you to all for the beautiful flowers and the letter of condolences which you sent to me and my family on the occasion of Ken’s passing.  Our years with Rosebank Rotary were a time when great friendships were forged and I treasure the contacts which have been maintained over the years and the kindness and support at this time.

With Best Wishes

Joan Burgess 

James Croswell forwarded this email from Mukesh Patel, President of the Rotary Club of Hatfield.

Hello James 

Happy New Year.  Best of wishes to you and family.

Watching the test match all morning reminded myself and Sujata the happy memories of Newland.

Pass our regards to Charlotte , Shirley, Mike,  PJS  and all .

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017 will be full of joy.

Mukesh Patel

Equality and Diversity Officer
Rotary District 1260
m.patel@rotaryhatfield.uk
equal@rotary1260.org.uk
M:  07977 905942

H:01923 661737

THE ROTARIAN CONVERSATION WITH BAN KI-MOON

Illustration by Viktor Miller Gausa

One of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s earliest memories is of fleeing with his family into the mountains during the Korean War, his village burning behind him. His father and grandfather had to forage for food in the woods; his mother gave birth to his siblings away from anything remotely resembling a health facility. “I have known hunger,” he says. “I have known war, and I have known what it means to be forced to flee conflict.”

The soldiers who came to their rescue were flying the blue flag of the United Nations. The UN provided them with food and their schools with books. And the experience sowed in Ban a belief in the transformative power of global solidarity, a belief he has spent his career working to achieve. 

A meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy at the White House after winning an essay-writing contest as a teenager inspired Ban to become a diplomat. He entered Korea’s foreign service in 1970, serving roles including ambassador and minister of foreign affairs and trade before being elected UN secretary-general in 2006.

Ban made polio eradication a top priority of his second five-year term. In 2012, he chaired a polio summit on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly, securing strong commitment to eradication from all the heads of state where polio is endemic as well as ministers from key donor governments, Rotary, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He has included polio messages in his briefings, during visits to polio-priority countries, and in statements at multilateral events including the General Assembly, African Union, and Group of Eight summits, and has personally participated in polio vaccination campaigns.

In 2016, Ban addressed the Rotary International Convention in Seoul and donated his $100,000 honorarium to Rotary’s End Polio Now campaign. “The ‘wind in our sails’ is Rotary International,” he now tells The Rotarian. “Thanks to its advocacy, we have been able to come within striking distance of a polio-free world. I will always be grateful to its leaders and its many volunteers on the front lines of this effort. They are truly noble humanitarians.”

Ban is stepping down from his position at the United Nations after a decade that saw declines in poverty and achievements in public health. But it was also a rough period for the UN, with rising violent extremism and an unprecedented population of refugees. His successor, António Guterres, former prime minister of Portugal, begins 1 January. The Rotarian’s Diana Schoberg interviewed Ban about polio, his legacy, and how Rotary and the UN can work together. “I believe the world is moving in the right direction,” he says. “I am generally hopeful.”

THE ROTARIAN: A cornerstone of your legacy will be the Paris Agreement on climate change. How were you able to rally people together about this issue?

BAN: It has been a long, hard road, but it has paid off. I went against all of my advisers by raising climate change with then-U.S. President George W. Bush in my first visit to the White House during my third week in office in 2007. He was a bit surprised – but he came on board. At the meeting in Bali where we adopted the first road map leading to the Paris agreement, the United States gave its last-minute support. President Bush confided to me at a private farewell lunch in 2009 that the U.S. delegation leader had phoned him from Bali for advice and he told her to do what I wanted.

While the outcome of the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009 was not what we had expected, it was the start of a long road that led to the Paris Agreement. My vision to get to an agreement was based on one word: inclusion. The issue of climate is too important and too big for only governments to take on. We opened the doors of the United Nations to civil society and to the business sector. They, too, needed a seat at the table. Civil society has kept pressure on governments to act. Whether it’s the energy sector, the insurance industry, or transportation companies, they all have a role to play.

TR: What is your most unsung achievement at the UN?

BAN: I have made human rights a top priority, which is reflected across all areas of the United Nations. Human rights are integral to the Sustainable Development Goals [a set of 17 goals adopted in 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all within 15 years]. And after hearing “never again” over and over again in response to atrocity crimes, I created the Human Rights up Front initiative to prevent and respond to warning signs of looming atrocities.

I have also been proud to be the first secretary-general to speak out against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. And because I believe in leading by example, I backed up my words with full equality in terms of benefits. 

Sometimes in the world of diplomacy, “unsung” successes are destined to remain so. I have often employed quiet diplomacy, whether to ensure the release of an imprisoned journalist or convincing a leader to truly listen to the aspirations of his people. Quiet diplomacy is about letting the other party get the credit for doing the right thing. It’s not about me getting accolades.

TR: With the recent setback in polio eradication in Nigeria in mind, what is the key to ending polio?

BAN: Trust is essential. To earn and maintain trust, it is absolutely imperative that there be no politicization of polio eradication activities. Community and religious leaders are our best advocates in this effort.

The detection of wild poliovirus in Nigeria is a serious setback, but it is only a setback. The world has never been closer to eradicating polio, we have the tools and strategies that we know are effective in stopping the disease, and together we have reduced polio transmission to the lowest levels in history in just three countries worldwide. If we continue, with courage and determination, on our current trajectory, we will stop polio once and for all. Failure is not an option, and in the very near future, I believe we will deliver on Rotary’s promise of a polio-free world for all generations to come.

TR: What decision or course of action from your time as secretary-general would you change if you could?

BAN: I have made clear to the member states, and particularly to the members of the Security Council, that they work best when they are united. That is why I have felt so frustrated about the disunity in the Security Council when it comes to Syria. As I have argued, it shames us all that we as an international community have not been able to come together and halt this brutal war.  While that disunity has persisted, more than 300,000 people have died. I will keep working until my last day in office to resolve this horrific crisis, but I need the support of the member states – all of them.

TR: UN peacekeepers played a role in introducing cholera to Haiti after the devastating earthquake in that country in 2010. The epidemic has since killed 10,000 people and sickened 800,000. What can the UN do to restore trust?

BAN: It is clear that the United Nations has a moral responsibility to the victims of the cholera epidemic and for supporting Haiti in overcoming the epidemic and building sound water, sanitation, and health systems. During my own visit to the country, I made it clear that I deeply regret the terrible suffering the people of Haiti have endured as a result of the cholera epidemic.

I am working to develop a package that would provide material assistance and support to those Haitians most directly affected by cholera. These efforts must include, as a central focus, the victims of the disease and their families. The United Nations also intends to intensify its support to reduce, and ultimately end, the transmission of cholera, improve access to care and treatment, and address the longer-term issues of water, sanitation, and health systems in Haiti.

TR: The UN’s recent Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 are more numerous and seem more detailed than the Millennium Development Goals – 17 goals with multiple subpoints for each. What was the thinking behind that, and how can the UN and partners keep so many goals in focus?

BAN: I have heard the criticism that we have too many goals and they may be unwieldy.

These new goals matter because they will be the yardstick that everything between now and 2030 is judged against. These goals are far more than aspirations. They provide a guide for action in the key areas where countries will have to invest in order to move forward.

Moreover, the goals, including their subpoints, were not imposed by the United Nations bureaucrats like some forced agenda. The 17 SDGs are the product of long and detailed consultations by member states as well as the broader civil society through online portals and local meetings. We may have a big number, but the goals are a true reflection of what the world has been asking for.

TR: We are seeing globalism being rejected in many pockets. Nations are becoming less stable, and tribalism or religious sectarianism is gaining some appeal. What can the UN offer to counter these trends?

BAN: This has been a period of multiple challenges – from the financial crisis to the uprisings in the Middle East, from the rise of violent extremism to renewed geopolitical competition in Europe and Asia.

In times of uncertainty, we do see a rise of politicians who prey on people’s fear, especially when it comes to the rising number of refugees and migrants. We must reject the dangerous political math that says you add votes by dividing people, and we need to stand against bigotry and xenophobia in all its forms. The United Nations has just launched a campaign against this poison. It is designed to foster communities of inclusion and mutual respect – and we call it, simply, “Together.”

This time of uncertainty has also witnessed a rise in violent extremism. While it’s of course critical to counter this extremism, we must also work hard to prevent it. I recently put together the UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, which places heavy emphasis on human rights. Experience with counterterrorism measures has underscored the need to avoid stoking the fires we are trying to extinguish. To this end, civil society organizations, like Rotary, have an important part to play by promoting inclusion and dialogue between communities.

TR: What advice can you offer Rotary leaders on working with people in a diverse, multicultural, global organization?

BAN: I’m not sure that I can offer any advice to Rotary leaders. Your organization is older than the United Nations and, arguably, you have a broader representation than we do. When I had the privilege to address your members recently in Korea, I think I counted more flags in the hall than we have at the United Nations!

Since you are asking, I will share some thoughts. Every day that I have worked at the United Nations, I have combined my efforts with people from every part of the world, and that has shown me the value of having as broad a range of viewpoints as possible when dealing with the world’s problems. I found that I gain much from listening to people from cultures other than mine who approach problems and solutions differently. That intellectual diversity, whether in the UN or any other organization, is to be cherished and nourished. We all have much to gain from listening to others. No one culture holds the keys to all the solutions.

TR: How can Rotary and the UN make the most of our partnership?

BAN: Rotary and other similarly engaged civil society organizations represent the best that the world has to offer. You understand the need to get involved and participate positively in the lives of your communities and the world around us.

We now have a global agenda to build a better, more equitable, more sustainable world. I would encourage Rotary International to embrace the Sustainable Development Goals and find within them areas where we could, as partners, replicate the success of the polio eradication campaign. 

A Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

The Christmas Lunch

ARCH KLUMPH’S HOMETOWN RAISES OVER $2 MILLION THROUGH CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

Associate Conductor Brett Mitchell leads The Cleveland Orchestra at the benefit concert in Severance Hall, which was completed in 1931 and has been called one of the world’s most beautiful concert halls.

Rotary members in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, celebrated 100 years of The Rotary Foundation on 23 October with a banquet and a concert by The Cleveland Orchestra that have so far raised more than $2.1 million for the Foundation's next century of good work.

Arch Klumph, a Cleveland Rotarian, planted the seed for The Rotary Foundation in 1917, with his idea of having an endowment fund dedicated to "doing good in the world." Today's District 6630 leaders thought that a concert was a fitting way to honor Klumph and mark the centennial because of Klumph's love of music. Klumph performed in several predecessors of The Cleveland Orchestra.

"We felt very strongly that here in the home of Arch Klumph we needed to take stock of what the Foundation has accomplished this past 100 years. It's almost impossible to quantify," says Mike Johns, an event organizer and past RI director. "If you look at where we are and where we are going, we've just scratched the surface on what we can do."

The banquet inducted four couples into the Arch Klumph Society for giving $250,000 or more to the Foundation over their lifetimes: Geoff and Kim Goll, Rotary Club of Salem, Ohio; Frank H. and Nancy Lyon Porter, Rotary Club of Cleveland, Ohio; Edna and Martin Sutter, Rotary Club of Fort Bonifacio Global City, Makati City, Philippines; and Norman R. and Marjory A. Veliquette, Rotary Club of Elk Rapids, Michigan, USA.

The Porters, who were inducted posthumously, contributed $500,000 toward polio eradication, Rotary's top priority. The Golls have also directed $200,000 of their contributions to PolioPlus.

Johns says the event was designed to educate the community about The Rotary Foundation. Videos interspersed between musical pieces highlighted Rotary's work and the fight to end polio.

"We had a lot of people there who didn't know what Rotary was, and they made a great discovery," he says. "I think Rotary members around the world should really reach out to the public this year and show them what our Foundation does."

Rainbows & Smiles, the Makro Collection, the Christmas Lunch and Rotary Scholars.

Last Week

Bonita Suckling came to talk to us about Rainbows and Smiles, her NPO that cares for children who are cancer sufferers and their parents.  What was the most interesting aspect of her work was that all the NGO's dealing with Child Cancer all co-operate with each other and meet on a regular basis because they all have a different focus.
I suggested to her that she put in a proposal to us to see if we are able to assist in any way.

On the right is Bonita's assistant, Nadia and on the left a visiting Rotarian from the DRC, Christelle Zalia.




The Makro Collection

Saturday and Sunday saw Rosebank Rotarians collecting foodstuffs outside and inside Makro Woodmead for the Alexander Community Centre, the Candlight Club and the SA Vroue Federasie.  Here's just a small sample of what was collected.  Many thanks, John Symons, for organising the whole thing and all those who took part for giving up your time.

This Week
It's our Christmas Lunch at Parkview Golf Club and the last official meeting of the year other than social meetings in Chariots on the 23rd and the 30th December with our next official meeting on the 6th January which maybe some kind of Epiphany for all of us.
There will be a Ramble next week.

SEVEN DECADES OF SERVICE BEGAN IN A DORM ROOM

Students from Kishiwada, Japan, visit San Francisco as part of an exchange initiated by Renán Domínguez - the only surviving member of the first class of Rotary scholars - when he was president of the Rotary Club of South San Francisco in 1992.

In January 1946, just months after the end of World War II, The Rotary Foundation embarked on a mission to help heal the wounds from the conflict. The Foundation decided to nurture an understanding of other nations and cultures by providing scholarships to promising graduate students. The inaugural class began its year of postgraduate study abroad in the fall of 1947. That class was funded through donations to a memorial fund set up to honor Rotary founder Paul Harris, who had died earlier in the year. They were the first of more than 42,000 collegians to be granted scholarships by the Foundation over the following seven decades.

The only surviving member of the 1947-48 class of scholars is Renán Domínguez, who had been nudged by his father, a charter member of the Rotary Club of Mérida, Mexico, to apply for the program as he was finishing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He studied engineering, though he was confounded by American football and the size – and furnishings – of dorm rooms. “Every-body wonders how we can sleep on hammocks without falling off, and I wonder how everybody here manages not to fall out of the beds, which are less safe,” he mused to The Rotarian in a March 1948 article.

A sprightly 90, Domínguez now resides with his wife, Teresita, in Concord, Calif., driving an hour each way to attend meetings of the Rotary Club of South San Francisco. In 2013 the club began a scholarship bearing his name to help cover expenses for a high school exchange with the Rotary Club of Kishiwada in Japan. “He’ll latch on to a need and he’ll push it along,” says John Henry Fullen of his club’s senior member. “He does it in a friendly, firm, and kind way. He’s part of the lifeblood of the club.”

As a structural engineer, Domínguez worked with architects to design buildings so they don’t fall down, especially critical in the earthquake-prone Bay Area. Besides work on Rotary Plaza, a 180-plus-unit complex created and still managed by the club for low-income seniors, another crown in his career was consulting on the construction of the auditorium at the Marin County Civic Center, an enduringly futuristic Frank Lloyd Wright project. Solid footings, he says, provide the support for fanciful flourishes in concrete and steel, but service to others – as embodied by Rotary – is an undergirding of a great life. He shared his memories of his Rotary scholarship year at Illinois with The Rotarian.

THE ROTARIAN: What impressions did you have of the people you met?

DOMÍNGUEZ: What struck me was the friendliness of the people. I joined a couple of groups and I was accepted without any friction. My peers understood that I had a little problem with English, and the teachers would help me practice. Most people that I got acquainted with were very friendly to me. I remember a couple of middle-aged people, a husband and wife that almost took me in like a nephew, even a son; they would invite me to their place and would help me with English. I appreciated that very much.

TR: What was the highlight of your scholarship year?

DOMÍNGUEZ: My fondest recollection was the time I spent at the United Nations. Prior to finishing the school year, I received a note from Rotary International suggesting that I could also participate in an internship with the United Nations at Lake Success, N.Y. I was an assistant in the water supply segment of the UN, where they were studying the dams around the world.

There were around 50 interns; they came from Egypt, Italy, Argentina, India, and elsewhere. We would have parties and get-togethers. We were able to have conversations about what was happening around the world. It was a very intriguing time.

TR: How did your scholarship influence the rest of your life?

DOMÍNGUEZ: What I got from that experience is a feeling of worldwide fellowship. I could not think of anything against any culture. I met people from many countries and I had no animosity toward anyone, and none of them had any animosity toward me. 

When I returned to Mérida in 1948, my father asked me to become a Rotarian. Then when my family moved to Decatur, Ill., in 1955, I joined the Rotary Club of Decatur right away, until we moved to California in 1957.

My father was a pillar of Rotary, so Rotary’s principles were always there for me. The Four-Way Test and the purpose of Rotary influenced my professional career. It brought me success. The Rotary scholarship was the final inspiration in me becoming a life-long Rotarian. 

TR: Can you offer any secrets for a long life?

DOMÍNGUEZ: We keep a positive attitude. We have been studying with doctors and nutritionists that teach what the body needs to stay healthy. And the other secret is being involved in community and family. Most people prefer to die before 90. No, I want to live as long as I can to do things to benefit as many people as I can.

Answers: 1. White Christmas 2. Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire 3. All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth 4. O Holy Night 5. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear 6. O Come, All Ye Faithful 7. Away in a Manger 8. Deck the Hall 9. Little Drummer Boy 10. We Three Kings 11. Silent Night 12. God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen 

The AGM, Our Global Grant Project, Rainbows & Smiles and the Importance of Recycling.

The AGM
Wanderers seemed to be bursting at the seams, parking was a problem and we were put in a room upstairs.  Despite these difficulties we managed to achieve a quorum and hold the meeting!  The minutes will be circulated in due course but will only be approved in a year's time.  There was quite a bit of discussion on lunch as there were insufficient sandwich orders for anyone to have any!  We also had a visitor, Nick Bell of the Rotary Club of Holt in Norfolk.  He, myself and David Bradshaw had lunch in the bar afterwards.  We all had lamb chops....and they were fantastic!  You really wouldn't think that they came out of the same kitchen as our lunches.....I should have photographed them.

Baragwanath Palliative Care Project

Donation of syringe drivers from Hatfield Rotary Club and pack of bed linen from Rosebank Rotary Anns.

On Monday 21st November our visitors from the Rotary Club of Hatfield went to Baragwanath to see our joint RI Global Grant  Project in action.  They visited the Renal Unit as well as visiting a patient in his own home.  Thanks to the project he is able to be at home rather than take up a hospital bed.

President Mukesh Patel, Rotary Club of Hatfield, Magdalina Selepe who sewed the sheets, Dr Mpho Ratshikana-Moloko, PP Frank Taylor (Hatfield) and  Project Leader James Croswell Rotary Club of Rosebank, Johannesburg.

“LIVING AND DYING IN PAIN: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO HAPPEN”

This year’s World Palliative Care theme is : ‘Living and Dying in Pain: It doesn’t have to happen’
.

South Africa has a high number of chronically ill patients either suffering from severe pain or dying a painful death due to the lack of appropriate pain management programmes.  Hatfield Rotary Club has assisted in creating a pain-free journey for many patients at  Chris Hani Baragwanth Hospital through the provision of 73 palliative syringe drivers donated (valued at R1.4 million) which control pain and other distressing symptoms of terminally ill patients. 
These programmed injection devices provide relief by delivering a prescribed quantity of medicine over time to critically ill patients, without the need for constant nursing attention. Rotarian Marianne Soal of Rosebank ensured that the syringe drivers were fully serviced.

This Week
Our speaker is Bonita Suckling of Rainbows & Smiles.
We are a small NPO that was started in 2008 by Bonita Suckling after her own son, Jed Brady Thomas, was diagnosed with brain cancer at age 3. She saw what families go through while in treatment and realised there was a need that she could fulfil since she had lived the journey herself.

Sadly Jed passed away on 11 July 2011 after a brave 3 year fight (he was initially given 6 months). We assist families that are fighting childhood (0 to 16 years) cancer with emotional and financial support. We will pay medical bills, buy food vouchers, pay for petrol money, etc as when cancer strikes usually the mother cannot work any longer as the child requires 24/7 care. We also spoil kids while in treatment and support mom’s after a child has passed. We do also have a programme where we spoil the ‘forgotten’ siblings as when a child has cancer understandably the parents attention is usually focused on the sick child.

The organisation is run by 6 ladies from their homes - only Bonni does this fulltime, the rest of us have fulltime jobs so we squeeze in what we can at night and on the weekends! We have a great Facebook page and we are on Twitter too.

THE ROTARIAN CONVERSATION WITH ANNIE LEONARD

What did you throw away today? Have you thought about it since? Annie Leonard has. Leonard spent more than a decade thinking about your trash and following it around the world. She has toured landfills and testified to the U.S. Congress regarding international waste trafficking. That work, plus a dozen more years studying environmental issues, inspired her to create a series of films about the things we use every day, yet wouldn’t think worthy of a film: our stuff.  

Since The Story of Stuff launched online in 2007, it has been viewed more than 50 million times online and millions more times in classrooms, churches, and conferences. It has been on national TV in at least three countries and translated into dozens of languages. Leonard has been contacted by college students who decided to study environmental issues after seeing The Story of Stuff in high school, and she has heard from newlyweds who included a link to the film on their wedding invitations to explain why they did not want any gifts. “It launched years ago, and still almost every day I get email and Facebook messages from people all over the world,” Leonard says. “The metrics show that it is the most watched online environmental film to date.”

Leonard’s film and book (of the same name) launched a movement that has the public rethinking their consumption. It continues today at storyofstuff.org with a million members – and several more films, including The Story of Bottled Water, The Story of Electronics, The Story of Citizens United v. FEC, among others. Leonard is now the executive director of Greenpeace USA – the same organization that sent her around the world to track our trash nearly two decades ago. She spoke with contributing editor Vanessa Glavinskas from her San Francisco office.

THE ROTARIAN: How did you get started in this work?

LEONARD: I grew up in Seattle, which is a very environmentally aware place, and I spent a lot of time camping with my family in national and state parks. I loved being in the forest when I was a kid. At the time, I didn’t know about the critical role that forests play in maintaining our global climate. There was just something about being in the forest that made me feel peaceful and connected. But I went to college in New York City, where there is garbage everywhere. I became mesmerized with the amount of garbage I passed every day as I would walk home from my classes. There would be piles of garbage as high as me. So I started looking in the bags, and I saw that it was almost all paper – paper made from those forests that I loved and wanted to protect. Then I took a trip to the local landfill to see what was happening to this waste, and that experience changed my life. I would suggest Rotary clubs organize a trip to a landfill to see the other side of our consumer society. Most landfills offer public tours. It is a stunning thing to see. I saw food and books, furniture and clothes and stuffed animals. I was totally flabbergasted. I didn’t realize until that moment that we had built our entire economic model on this massive amount of waste.

TR: When did you begin following waste around the world?

LEONARD: First I finished college and went to graduate school, all in New York, and then I got a job at Greenpeace. I started in 1988. This was at a time when a lot of people in the United States were getting concerned about waste and demanding an end to incinerators and landfills. Greenpeace was advocating for a redesign of packaging and processes to reduce waste. But some companies really wanted to keep doing business as usual, so they started putting their waste on ships and sending it around the world and paying, or sometimes lying or tricking or sneaking, to dump it on Third World countries. I spent the next eight years traveling around the world tracking our waste. I saw our trash in places such as South Africa, Haiti, Indonesia, China, and India.

TR: What startled you most about what you saw?

LEONARD: How unnecessary it all is. I think people look at pollution and think, well, pollution is the price of progress. Or, well, I’m not going to stop driving, so what right do I have to say anything? But we could transition our entire economy to safe materials and clean energy within 10 to 20 years, depending upon which plan you look at.

TR: How could we achieve that in 10 to 20 years? What would be the key steps to make it happen?

LEONARD: One of the first steps is to demand government leadership. Right now, because of the way that our elections are financed and some recent Supreme Court decisions, big corporations are allowed enormous influence in our democracy. So one of the things that we have to do is reduce that influence. A second thing we need to do is start transitioning to clean energy. It’s not fair to tell individuals to stop driving, because the way our communities are set up, we have to drive. But what we can say to our government is we want to see every possible effort put into clean energy. Other countries are leaving us in the dust, and I think people don’t realize this. On clean energy, we are rapidly becoming the global laggards.

TR: Much of this is at the government level. Is there anything individuals can do?

LEONARD: Right now we are consuming more things than the planet can replenish each year. We have a voracious demand for cellphones and clothing and disposable silverware. We simply have to slow down the amount of stuff that we use, and there are lots of opportunities to do that in this country for most people. Not everybody; there are still kids who go to bed hungry every night and people who don’t have heat. Some people do need to consume more – but many of us need to consume less. It’s not about being a martyr, but about asking yourself if you could use your old one a bit longer or borrow something from a neighbor instead of buying it new.

TR: We’re approaching the holidays. This is prime time for people to consume things they don’t need. How do you handle the holidays?

LEONARD: There is so much pressure to blindly consume in the holidays, and the truth is no one loves going to a crowded mall and buying something for someone because you feel obligated. In my family, we each pull one name at Thanksgiving, and that is the only person you buy a present for, except for the children. You can buy presents for the little kids. When I buy only one adult present, I have time to think about it and really put my mind to it. We also have a $25 limit.

TR: You talk about the idea of planned obsolescence in The Story of Stuff and items like cellphones. Even if you don’t want a new phone, you have to buy one to get the latest features.

LEONARD: It’s incredible. The average life of a cellphone right now is about 16 months. My mom had the same telephone my entire life, the same toaster. We know it’s possible to make stuff that lasts. I’ll give you a project idea to share with your members. All those old phones and tablets and computers, they call it e-waste, and it’s the fastest growing and most hazardous part of our municipal garbage stream. All of these phones and laptops have little bits of lead and cadmium and mercury and other toxic chemicals. People don’t know what to do with this stuff, so they often just store it in their garage. Or they put it in the garbage can or they give it to a recycler. The problem is a lot of recyclers send this stuff to Third World countries. The way to make sure that your recycler isn’t doing that is to make sure it is certified by e-Stewards (www.e-stewards.org), a program that follows strict standards of social and environmental responsibility. A great Rotary club project would be to host an e-waste recycling drive in your community and make sure it’s given to a recycler that is e-Steward certified to prevent it from getting in landfills, incinerators, or dumped overseas.

TR: Many people have good intentions. Yet, in reality, one person’s lifestyle change doesn’t solve the problem. How do you respond to that argument?

LEONARD: There’s another benefit to recycling, getting solar power, riding your bike – and that is how good it makes you feel to bring your values and your actions into alignment and demonstrate to other people that there is another way to live. It’s impossible to live eco-perfectly in today’s world. The better thing to do is get friends together and work to make changes so that it’s not so hard to live eco-perfectly. We have to change the context around us so that doing the right thing becomes the cheapest, easiest thing to do.

TR: What’s the most important eco-friendly thing you do in your day-to-day life?

LEONARD: I compost. Composting is important because all that organic material – your food scraps, your yard waste – if that goes into the regular garbage and into the landfill, it creates methane gas. So, composting your table scraps, which you can easily do in your backyard, does help to reduce greenhouse gases. The other thing is to advocate for a municipal composting program in your area. My city has compost pickup along with the garbage and recycling pickup. The city [of San Francisco] picks it up, composts it, and returns it to the soil.

TR: That makes it easy.

LEONARD: You know what gets people to recycle? Having a recycling program in their city. That’s it. It’s not nagging them all the time; it’s making it easy. So you could focus totally on your own individual actions and try to compost perfectly, even when it’s freezing cold. Or you could get a bunch of people together and write to the city and say we want a municipal composting program.

TR: Advocating for change is something Rotarians are very good at and have a lot of practice doing.

LEONARD: Also, Rotarians have a lot of credibility in the community. People know that they are good, upstanding, engaged citizens. So if you can bring that credibility that you have earned through decades of good work, if you can bring that to say we want our city to do more to promote solar energy, or we want our city to do more to combat waste, it would be an incredible asset.

TR: Rotarians support humanitarian projects all over the world. But given the dire ramifications of climate change, are other humanitarian efforts in vain?

LEONARD: I have two thoughts. One is that we all need to work on whatever excites us because we want to enjoy our lives. You have to find the right match between what the world needs and what your passion is. The other thing is that these things are all connected. Clean water and sanitation are absolutely connected to climate. So is basic education and literacy. Even your work in peace and conflict resolution; if you talk to military analysts today, they all say that one of the biggest sources of conflict looking forward is environmental – climate change, drought, wildfires, contaminated water. That forces migration and creates conflicts.

TR: Last year, a group of Rotarians formed an official environmental sustainability action group. Do you have any advice for them?

LEONARD: It’s important to remember to talk to people where they’re at. Often people who are concerned about the environment get so excited – and in our enthusiasm and urgency, we inadvertently push people away. Let me be clear, the data absolutely merit being urgent. But we have to remember that if we want people to join us in this work, we need to be inviting and inclusive. For example, some people will want to organize a protest at city hall, while other people would rather provide the child care for the people doing the protesting. Some people would rather do the scientific research. To build a movement, we have to welcome all kinds of people. Also, make sure it’s not all gloom and doom. It’s often hard with the environment – because so much of the information is so depressing – but many environmentalists have been gloom and doom for a long time, and people don’t want to work with us if we’re always like that.

TR: That’s an interesting point. You’ve worked in this area for decades. How do you stay enthusiastic?

LEONARD: When I go to a new place, I look for people doing something to promote a solution. There are chemists who are redesigning chemicals from the molecular level to design out the hazard. There are architects who are figuring out how to build buildings to be energy generators instead of consumers. Everywhere, there are people working on solutions, and that really feeds my hope that we will figure out how to have a sustainable, healthy, and fair society.

TR: Is there anything else you would like to tell Rotary members?

LEONARD: I know there are a lot of business leaders in Rotary. One of the greatest things they can do is join with other business leaders and CEOs to be a voice for positive change. There’s a great organization called the American Sustainable Business Council. It’s a group of businesses that realize that there is no business on a dead planet and that it’s in their interest to figure out how to run businesses in a healthy way. They’re doing all kinds of work to support the politicians who want to take action, such as Congress members who want to help transition to a clean energy economy. The American Sustainable Business Council provides a forum for businesspeople to learn and then take action together.