Alkis Doucakis, Rotary Family Health Days, our Senior Youth Leadership Course and Mobile Phones

Last Week

Alkis Doucakis gave us a very interesting talk that explored the Linksfield Ridge and Orange Grove with references to Gandhi from time to time.  He showed us many old photographs of the area including one of Lord Roberts sitting in his study at the Orange Grove Hotel with a small girl in the background.
Alkis had actually interviewed the small girls daughter as part of his research.

This is a a painting taken from the photograph, modified for dramatic effect and changed to an etching.

Last week was also the time of Rotary Family Health Days.  I put the pictures on our Facebook page last week but here they are again.


Here is the link to the Joburg City Website that refers to Rotary Family Health Day

https://joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12049&catid=88&Itemid=266

Many thanks to Les Short for spotting this.


Also last weekend was our Senior Youth Leadership Course in the Magaliesberg.  Here are the Sunday Braai Team.

 Rotary Foundation Seminar
I think that there were about 24 at the Seminar including two from the new embryo club, Sarah Tabane and Malusi Msani.  Unfortunately I didn't think to take a photograph of them.  They both sid how much they had enjoyed it and commented on how friendly and welcoming everyone was.
Something that the club must bare in mind for the future.  Clubs will not be allowed to apply for Global or District Grants if no-one has attended a Foundation Seminar.  Obviously Mike Lamb and I were there but nobody else from the club was so it's important to be aware of that.

Rotary Leadership Institute Courses Saturday 11th November
You will all have received an email from District about these courses and a link to an application form.  All new and potential Rotarians should really make the effort to attend Part 1.  If you are not yet inducted as a member then you obviously would not have received the form.  Just speak to me about it and I will send you one.  It is not just about our club it's also about meeting people from other clubs and finding out what they think and do.


This Week

Our speaker is Robin Binckes.  He currently conducts history experiential tours to overseas visitors as well as leading South African Companies. In addition he is deeply involved in Alexandra township, being a Trustee of Khayalethu Hostel and Project Managing an HIV/AIDS Orphans initiative for Investec Bank, as well as a pre-school Nursery “Ba-amagaleng” for 48 HIV/AIDS orphans. Having lived through and having participated in the Apartheid era, he is now a dedicated South African, committed to building a better future for all.

Robin has a career which spans Marketing, Public Relations, Food Retailing and Tourism.

He owned and managed his own Public Relations & Marketing Consultancy for 15 years and played a leading role in breaking the sports boycott during the period of sports isolation. He consulted on all aspects of communication both locally and internationally to diverse clients which included South African Cricket Union, South African Tennis Union, Transvaal Cricket, Benson & Hedges Cricket, John Player Knock-Out (Football), Yellow Pages, OK Bazaars (1929) Pty Ltd, Londolozi Resorts, Food Corporation, Transkei Development Corporation, Transkei Hotels, South African Navy, South African Breweries, Barlows Ltd, South African Formula One and Motor Cycle Grand Prix as well as South African Motor Racing and the Department of Sport. Fulfilling these roles frequently required simultaneous management of projects in Europe and Australia and New Zealand.

In addition he, and colleague Lee Irvine, created and managed a unique sporting event. The Datsun Double Wicket Cricket International, featuring teams from around the world during the sports boycott. This was followed by the “Southern Sun International” - the first International Hot Air Balloon Race ever to be staged in the Southern Hemisphere.

He, and his company was successful in re-branding the “Gillette Cup” cricket tournament to the “Datsun Shield” and managed this event for a number of years.

After being sent to Australia to examine limited overs cricket, worked as a consultant to United Tobacco Company in the development and management of “Benson & Hedges Series Cricket” the first night cricket tournament in South Africa. He was also responsible for a campaign which “Saved the South African Formula One Grand Prix” for which he was commended by the then Minister of Sport, F.W.de Klerk.

His passion for this country is contagious and through his experiential programmes he paints a picture of how everyone can play a role in building for the future. Using our history as his source he tells stories which illustrate the strength and resilience of the people and the leaders from our diverse cultures, enabling delegates to understand and identify with the struggles which have taken place in this country since 1615.

His presentations are balanced and fair to all sectors of the community. Because of the use of himself as one of the “privileged, who enjoyed the fruits of apartheid, without doing anything to change the system”, his personal narratives are revealing, honest and at the same time shocking.

Recent Projects and Achievements

• Appointed to History sub-committee of Freedom Park.
• Public Speaking engagements for diverse corporate clients.
• Guest speaker on marketing and communications.
• Appointment to committee of Alexandra NOAH.
• Project Manages an initiative in Alexandra for Investec providing support to 223 HIV/AIDS orphans.
• Trustee of the Zulu Hostel “Khayalethu” in Alexandra.
• Speaker on Leadership and South African hero’s.
• Winner of Guide of the Year “For his contribution towards the development of Tourism in Gauteng.”
• Consulted to members of Slovo family and Universal Studios including actor Tim Robbins on Death Squads and Vlakplaas.
• Consulted to Designers of Freedom Park.

Mobile phones and simple text messaging may be the keys to victory in the world’s largest public health initiative: the eradication of polio. 

As the disease retreats from the global stage, thriving in only a few remote areas in three countries, it’s up to health workers to deliver vaccines and share information with speed and accuracy. 

Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are strengthening the lines of communication by giving cellphones to health workers in Pakistan and Nigeria, where a single text message could save a life. 

In Pakistan, Rotary has been working to replace traditional paper-based reporting of maternal and child health information, including polio immunization data, with mobile phone and e-monitoring technology.

Community health workers across the nation have received more than 800 phones through a partnership with Rotary, the Pakistani government; Telenor, the country’s second-largest telecommunications provider; and Eycon, a data monitoring and evaluation specialist. Organizers plan to distribute a total of 5,000 cellphones by the end of 2018. 

Health workers can use the phones to send data via text message to a central server. If they see a potential polio case, they can immediately alert officials at Pakistan’s National Emergency Operations Center. They also can note any children who didn’t receive the vaccine or parental refusals – and record successful immunizations. In Pakistan, the polio eradication effort aims to reach the nation’s 35 million children under age five.

The result is a collection of real-time information that officials can easily monitor and assess, says Michel Thieren, regional emergency director of the World Health Organization’s Health Emergency Program. 

“Cellphone technology signals tremendous progress in the polio eradication program,” says Thieren, who has directed polio-related initiatives for WHO in Pakistan. “The data we collect needs to have such a granular level of detail. With real-time information that can be recorded and transcribed immediately, you can increase accuracy and validity.

“This gives governments and polio eradication leaders an advantage in the decisions we need to make operationally and tactically to eliminate polio,” Thieren says.

Beyond polio

Health workers also are using mobile phones to monitor a multitude of maternal and child health factors. 

Pakistan’s child mortality rate ranks among the highest in the world, according to UNICEF, with 81 deaths under age five per 1,000 live births. 

But mobile technology can help reduce those deaths, says Asher Ali, project manager for Rotary’s Pakistan PolioPlus Committee. 

“Our health workers, including community midwives, are tracking pregnant mothers,” Ali says. “When a child is born, they can input and maintain complete health records, not just for polio, but for other vaccines and basic health care and hygiene needs.”

They also can monitor infectious diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and influenza-like illnesses, as well as child malnutrition and maternal health concerns. 

“If there is a problem with the baby or the mother, we can send information to the government health departments immediately, so they can solve the issue quickly and adjust their strategies,” Ali says. 

Cellphones also facilitate follow-up visits with families, because health workers can send appointment reminders over text message. 

Proliferation of phones

Mobile phone use worldwide has spiked recently, with about 7 billion subscribers globally, 89 percent of them in developing countries, says WHO. Even people living on less than $1 a day often have access to phones and text messaging, according to WHO. Cellphones are used more than any other technology in the developing world. 

Rotary and other nonprofit organizations are leveraging this fact to boost a variety of health initiatives. 

The Grameen Foundation conducts a “mobile midwife” program that sends daily texts and weekly voice mails to expectant mothers, offering advice during pregnancy and the first year of the child’s life. UNICEF provides similar support to mothers, with a focus on nutrition throughout pregnancy and the first two years of a child’s life. 

Mobile phones also are helping in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. The British nonprofit Absolute Return for Kids uses text messages to remind patients about medications and upcoming appointments. 

The Ugandan health ministry’s mTrac program, a mobile text messaging data collection network run in conjunction with UNICEF and other organizations, has a broader focus. Nearly 30,000 workers at 3,700 health centers submit weekly reports through their phones and receive surveys, alerts, and other communications. Questions go out to health workers about medical supply levels, conditions in clinics, and other critical issues.

Members of the Rotaract Club of The Caduceus, India, collaborated with the Jana Swasthya Project in 2015 to screen more than 8,000 people for oral health conditions, hypertension, and diabetes during Kumbh Mela, one of the world’s largest Hindu festivals. The project established a digital disease-surveillance system to study epidemiological trends, replacing a paper-based data-tracking process and allowing officials to access live data with a few clicks. 

In 2016, after Nigeria saw its first polio cases in almost two years, Rotary and WHO officials rushed to replace traditional reporting with a cell-based system in the northern state of Borno, where the new cases were identified. The mobile phone initiative has since expanded to more than 11 states. 

“Traditional paper reporting was misleading our program. The information we were getting was not entirely accurate. This gave us the sense that we were doing better than we actually were,” says Boniface Igomu, program coordinator of Rotary’s Nigeria PolioPlus Committee. “With cellphones, we’re identifying problem areas quickly and acting accordingly.”

The country has yet to see a polio case this year. 

Nigeria is also using cell-based mapping technology to identify areas that polio immunization teams have missed. Health workers test stool samples from children arriving from remote areas and log reports of acute flaccid paralysis. This effort started in Borno but has expanded to three additional states, Igomu says. 

After more than 1,000 people died earlier this year in Nigeria from meningitis, the country used the same digital tools in emergency vaccination campaigns, he adds.

“Mobile technologies are the type of innovations that can fill in the gaps of our program and finally help us end polio for good,” Igomu says. “Their uses have never been more important than now.”

Business Meeting, In the Footsteps of Gandhi and International Women's Day

Last Week

It was a business meeting which turned out to be interesting as there are a number of new potential projects and members in the pipeline.







This Week
First a Rotary Family Health Day appeal from David Bradshaw:

A final appeal for helpers this Tuesday,Wednesday or Thursday.

We have had a couple of drop outs for Wednesday at Turffontein and a late request for help from New Dawn.

Please if you can offer 3 or 4 hours please let me know. David@Travelvision.co.za

Our Speaker this week is Alkis Doucakis who returns to speak to us about Gandhi in Johannesburg.  His book "In the Footsteps of Gandhi" was published in 2015.  It is an excellent and well worthwhile book, if you can find a copy because it details Gandhi's relationship with the architect Hermann Kallenbach and the development of the suburbs around Norwood up to Linksfield Ridge. 

We were expecting this to be the subject of his talk last time when he spoke about Linear B and he was asked to come back to talk on this subject.

This coming weekend sees our annual Senior Youth Leadership Course in the Magaliesberg.  Jean Bernardo is appealing for more people to go out on teh Sunday to assist with preparing salads etc for the braai....see her latest email.

What motivates everyday women to do extraordinary things — to positively change the lives of people halfway around the world while inspiring so many people at home?

Three Rotary members answered that question at a celebration of International Women’s Day hosted by the World Bank at its Washington, D.C., headquarters 8 March. 

Speaking to an audience of more than 300, with thousands listening to the live-stream, Razia Jan, Deborah Walters, and Ann Lee Hussey told their personal stories and explained what inspired them to build a girls school in Afghanistan, assist people living in a Guatemala City garbage dump, and lead more than 24 teams to immunise children in Africa and Asia.

Razia Jan  

“I’m so inspired to see the faces of the children, what they’re learning, how to stand up for their rights, to have ambition ... to want to do things that may even be impossible — to have dreams,” said Jan, a member of the Rotary Club of Duxbury, Massachusetts, USA. 

An Afghan native now living in the United States, Jan has worked for decades to build connections between Afghans and Americans while improving the lives of young women and girls in Afghanistan.

Founder and director of the Zabuli Education Center, a school that serves more than 625 girls in Deh’Subz, Afghanistan, Jan said the first class of students graduated in 2015 and a women’s college will open soon. The girls school teaches math, English, science, and technology, along with practical skills to prepare them to achieve economic freedom within a challenging social environment.

Dr Deborah Walters

 Deborah Walters, a neuroscientist and member of the Rotary Club of Unity, Maine, USA, has served as a volunteer for Safe Passage (Camino Seguro), a nonprofit organisation that provides educational and social services to children and families who live in a Guatemala City garbage dump.

Walters, known as the “kayaking grandmother,” traveled from her home in Maine to Guatemala in a small kayak to raise awareness of the plight of the residents.

Ann Lee Hussey, a member of the Rotary Club of Portland Sunrise, Maine, has made the eradication of polio and the alleviation of suffering by polio survivors her life’s work.

Anne Lee Hussey

A polio survivor herself, she’s spent the past 14 years leading teams of Rotary volunteers to developing countries to immunise children during National Immunisation Days.

She often chooses to lead or participate in NIDs in places that don’t often see Westerners: Bangladesh, Chad, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and remote areas of Egypt and India. There, the need is greatest, and the publicity and goodwill that the trips foster are critical in communicating the urgency of the need for immunisations.

“These women exemplify what the World Bank is striving to attain every day with the twin goals of ending extreme poverty within a generation and boosting shared prosperity,” said Daniel Sellen, chair of the World Bank Group Staff Association. “They illustrate the power of women to change the world and improve people’s lives through innovative and impactful projects in education, economic development, and health.” 

Brooks Spector, Rotary Foundation Seminar, a Business Meeting and Polio Plus.

Last Week


Brooks Spector came to talk to us about America under Trump.
There was quite some confusion as to what he was going to talk about but he is very entertaining and informative so it was much enjoyed.
Unfortunately there was little time to ask questions otherwise we would probably have been there all afternoon.

We also had two visitors, Aggrey Karakunda from the Rotary Club of Kampala and Achilles Chiotis who was part of the great Greek contingent, mainly from the Embassy & Consulate, that flocked into our meeting a couple of weeks ago. Welcome back Achilles.

Aggrey Karakunda

Achilles Chiotis

And this is what Kampala looks like.....

Ken Stonestreet and I went to look at a possible International Project, the Greenacre Academy.  Obviously it is something that the committee has to discuss but I thought you would just like this picture of Ken getting to know the people there.

I have another photo where he is getting even closer and more personal but in the interests of decorum and the Club's reputation I decided not to publish.



Rotary Foundation Seminar
There is a Rotary Foundation Seminar in our part of the world, Randpark Golf Club, on Saturday morning 7th October. It finishes at 12,30 so it won't take up a whole day. Lyn has mentioned it in her letter.  The application forms only went out on Monday to be completed by the 30th September.  I had problems with trying to get the form through the web for somebody so if you are going and cannot submit via the website just print the form, scan it and send to gregst@global.co.za  Copy John Symons and he will pay as soon as we know how many and what the cost is.


Blanket Drive
Here are the final figures...

Charities. 

Phutaditjhba(Alex).    100 Blankets.

Bara(Palliative Care)    60 Blankets

.

Assemblies of God(Alex)30 Blankets.

Zandspruit(Thandani)20 Blankets.

S.A.P.S.                    30 Blankets.

St.Francis.                20 Blankets

Gracepoint.              10 Blankets.

Money Collected by Rosebank at Pic N Pay Bryanston, and paid to the Rotary Awareness Account R25,932.96.

The following paid money into the Rotary Awareness account for Rosebank but distributed blankets to their own charities.

Super Group. R72450   1035 Blankets.

Power Construction R1050   150 Blankets

K.E.S(Boikanyo) R4900.         70 Blankets.

Rivonia Catholic Church R18970.   271 Blankets.

Howarth Leviten Bonner R4600 .    65 Blankets.

Highland North Boys High R1400.  20 Blankets.

Rivonia Primary School R2800.   40 Blankets.

Gracepoint Methodist Church.R105,420.    1506 Blankets

Charities who received their blankets:-

Soweto Youth Centre.

Soweto Youth Centre(Adults).

Soweto Glenridge Park.

SANTU/HIV Aids

Lesedi Community.

Community in Lanseria & Lion Park(people with disabilities).

Meyerton Community Centre.

Mydo Mortella Youth Dev, Hammanskraal.

Johannesburg Park Station Mission.

Tosca(Alpha Inder A Tree Mission).

Community in Rivonoa/Sunninghill.

100 Main Road Community.

Cosmos City.

Disaster Mission & Social Development.

We were the highest purchasers of blankets in the District for the second year running!

This Week
It's a Business Meeting and promises to be quite a lively one!

And to get back to the Rotary Foundation it's important to see how much progress has been made with Polio Eradication.

At the Rotary International Convention in June, Rotary and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation renewed their long-standing support for ending polio in dramatic fashion: Rotary committed to raising $50 million per year over the next three years, with every dollar to be matched with two additional dollars from the Gates Foundation.

This expanded agreement will translate to up to $450 million for polio eradication activities.

Jay Wenger, director of the Gates Foundation’s polio eradication program, talks about his work as an epidemiologist and about why ending polio for good is so important.

I wanted to become a doctor ever since I was a little kid, but I originally thought I would become a country doctor – a general practitioner.

That notion changed when I had the opportunity to work at a mission hospital for a couple of months during medical school. One thing I saw during that experience was that you could deliver a lot of health care and prevent a huge amount of disease for a relatively small amount of money.  

Eventually, I became interested in infectious diseases. I liked the idea of focusing on something specific – that seemed more doable to me than knowing everything about everything, as it seemed a general practitioner needed to do. I went on to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where I received additional training in infectious disease epidemiology.

Epidemiology involves studying disease in an entire population – figuring out who gets sick, how it spreads, and how it can be prevented. It included working on outbreaks, which is like solving a disease mystery but needing to do it in a hurry.When I was at the CDC, we studied one outbreak where a dozen or so individuals in the same area wound up with the same skin infection. So I went to the affected area and started trying to figure out what these people had in common. It turned out they had all been patients at one particular clinic – that was one clue. When we looked further into the record, we found they had all had the same specific operation. In the end, we figured out that all the cases traced to a single bottle of fluid under one sink in that clinic, which had contaminated the equipment they were using. 

That’s a lot of what epidemiologists do: We track infectious diseases, try to figure out how they spread, and then, hopefully, figure out what to do to stop it.

I worked in a group at the CDC that focused on bacterial meningitis, which is an infection of the brain and spinal cord. A bacteria called Haemophilus influenzae Type B (Hib) was the most common cause, infecting up to 15,000 kids in the U.S. every year. This was when the Hib vaccine had just been developed. I got involved in monitoring how much disease was out there and how the vaccine was working, and it was really striking. We went from thousands upon thousands of cases per year to a couple of dozen as vaccine use spread to all kids across the country. 

Seeing the power of a vaccine program was a big part of what led me to get involved with polio eradication. 

I was born in 1955, which is the same year, incredibly, that the Salk vaccine for polio was licensed and introduced in the U.S. At that time, polio was the most feared infection in the country.

To understand the significance of the development of the polio vaccine, you have to understand how big the polio scare had been in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. When summer came around, parents were terrified that their children would get the disease and wind up paralyzed or even dead. When that first vaccine came out in 1955, it was hailed as a medical miracle. 

Even after I was born, the specter of polio haunted people. There were campaigns with the newer oral vaccine where drops of the vaccine would be put onto a sugar cube, which you would then eat. I can still remember getting those sugar cubes for polio as a kid.

Polio became a major example of a successful vaccine – driving down case counts from hundreds of thousands per year globally to zero in the U.S. and other wealthy countries. But polio remained a big threat in the developing world. 

The poliovirus affects a type of cell in the spinal column, and once these cells are killed, there’s no way for the brain to send messages to the muscles. The result is what’s called acute flaccid paralysis, or AFP, and that muscle doesn’t work anymore – it can’t flex or contract. The virus often affects an arm or leg, which tends to shrivel from disuse. If the disease affects the muscles of the chest or diaphragm, polio can be fatal, because the patient can’t breathe.

What makes it possible to get rid of the virus is that it can only reproduce in humans and that it can live in humans for only a few weeks to a month or so until the body gets rid of it. During that time, virus is excreted in the stool, but once outside the human body, it can survive for only a week or two. It has to find another person to infect in that time, or it dies off. So if you can break the chain of transmission – stop the virus from spreading from person to person by making enough people immune through the vaccine – you can actually drive the virus into extinction. But you have to get rid of the virus everywhere or it can come back, reinfecting places where it had been eliminated. 

This is why the World Health Assembly voted, in 1988, to eradicate polio. Rotary was incredibly important at that time. They took ownership of the mission from the beginning, and they assisted numerous countries in the early stages of this effort. 

I could see the impact they were making, and as an epidemiologist I was struck by the possibility that we could eliminate a disease from the face of the earth, if we were determined enough. 

In 2002, I had the opportunity to work with WHO in India. I directed the National Polio Surveillance Project. That’s where I got firsthand experience with how Rotary works within a country. 

A great deal of Rotary’s support resides in their fundraising, of course. With an effort like this, you need a consistent source of funding, and Rotary has made it clear that they want to see this through to the end. Their support has been unwavering.

But I think the most striking thing about working with Rotarians has been how they’ve energized the sense of commitment in each country. In the United States, they worked in every congressional district and in Washington, D.C., to promote the vaccination effort. In a place like India, I learned quickly that the support of the Rotarians is invaluable. For example, we initially faced challenges with political leaders – but regardless of who we were working with, we could always rely on a local Rotarian to connect with politicians and persuade them to support the polio program.

More broadly, Rotarians provided an instant sense of legitimacy and urgency. They were influential members of their communities, and people took notice when they advocated for polio eradication. 

Stopping polio in India was a tremendous feat. From dense cities like Mumbai to the most remote villages up in the mountains, we had to make sure every child was vaccinated. 

Most of my fieldwork was in the north, because that’s where we saw cases. As head of the surveillance program, I would go see children with polio. One time, traveling to a northern state called Uttar Pradesh, I went into a tiny single-room house, where a little girl was sitting on a mat bed with a limp leg.

Her leg had been paralyzed for a couple of months. There were things we could do, like make sure she got physical therapy and splints. But there was no way to cure her paralyzed limb. Her mom was looking at me expectantly, and I could tell what she was thinking: “Here’s this big doctor from the West and he’ll know what to do. He’ll know how to fix my child.” 

That feeling of helplessness, those moments when you’re actually seeing the victims – that’s my strongest motivator. They’re the driving force for the eradication program, because we can’t fix polio once it happens. But we can fix it before it happens.

In 2011, I took my position at the Gates Foundation. By that time, Rotary and the Gates Foundation were already huge partners, and Rotary had played a major role in getting the foundation involved in the polio eradication program several years previously.

About the same time, the last case of polio in India occurred, which energized the community to believe global eradication was really within reach. Rotary and the Gates Foundation responded by committing to a multiyear strategic plan for ending polio for good, alongside the other partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (WHO, CDC, UNICEF). 

In June 2013, Rotary announced that it would contribute $35 million per year to the effort for a five-year period, which the Gates Foundation would match 2-to-1. In June 2017, Rotary announced that it would increase that contribution to $50 million per year for the next three years, which the Gates Foundation again committed to match 2-to-1. 

What people need to realize is that with polio eradication, in contrast to many other public health programs, we can’t choose where to go. We have to go where the disease is. 

As of now, there are only three countries in the world where wild poliovirus may still circulate: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Those are incredibly challenging countries to work in, because they have much bigger issues to contend with than polio. 

We can’t forget about those places or deal with them later, because this would mean that we lose against polio – if the virus remains anywhere, it can spread back to those places we have already cleared out. We have to extend our efforts to the hardest places in the world, and to the least-reached kids in the world. 

The question I get most often is when we’ll be able to declare that polio is actually gone from the earth. I tell them that we’re pushing hard and nearly there. 

Last year at the end of July, there were 19 reported cases of polio worldwide. This year, there were only eight. However, the only way we can know that polio is really eradicated is if we record at least three years with no new cases, and I’m optimistic that we will meet this goal soon.

In my work as an epidemiologist, I’ve seen that it is possible to stop a disease as we did with smallpox. We didn’t just drive smallpox down to a small number of cases; we drove it down to nothing. 

If I were a more romantic type, I might allow myself to dream about the future of a polio-free world more often. But I’m a worker bee, and I like to keep my head down and focused on what work needs to be done to achieve that goal. 

What I try to think about – what Rotary and the Gates Foundation keep me focused on – is the human side of all this. I can still remember from my childhood how scared people were of polio. And I’ve seen firsthand in my fieldwork what polio does to its victims and their families.

That’s what keeps me working. 

Claudine Ribeiro, Brooks Spector and Sustainable Farming...how Rotary can help.

Last Week

Claudine Ribeiro talked to us about the work done by the Johannesburg Parent & Child Counselling Centre.  The amount of work they do is extraordinary and the number of schools that want to avail themselves of their services fast outstrips the resources, both financial and peoplewise.
What did surprise me was how dependent they are on volunteers which also creates problems as
many students who assist are not going to be around for very long.
It's an extremely worthwhile organisation that has been around since the 1940's.
Also visting us was an intern from the JPCCC, Emelda Ralf.



 Jean Bernardo would like to know how many are attending the braai at the Youth Leadership Course on Sunday 8th October.

This Week
Our speaker is Brooks Spector on The Next Election.

Spector settled in Johannesburg after a career as a US diplomat in Africa and East Asia. 
He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, been a consultant for an international NGO, run a theatre, and been a commentator for South African and international print/broadcast/online media, in addition to writing for The Daily Maverick from day one. He says he learned everything he needs to know about politics from ‘Casablanca.’
 Maybe he's cynical about some things, but a late Beethoven string quartet, John Coltrane’s music and a dish of Pad Thai will bring him close to tears.

Rotary, Heifer program helps farmers provide healthier food to people in their own communities

Joe Carr bends over to pluck a handful of smooth, dark-green leaves, using a pocketknife to prune weak spots before bundling them with a rubber band and dropping the bunch into an orange crate. 

Eight neat rows of vegetables line the ground under a tunnel of greenhouse plastic, supported by a series of steel hoops.

“I got a little bit of bok choy here. It’s a favorite of a lot of the customers. Generally, I can get about $2 a bunch,” Carr says. “These are totally organic, no chemicals whatsoever, totally healthy, leafy green, and all the vitamins that go with it.”

Volunteers from Rotary and Heifer International built the hoop house, also known as a high tunnel, to let Carr extend his growing season, getting an early start on crops like bok choy and tomatoes. 

Carr is one of 24 farmers scattered across central and southern Arkansas who are engaged in small-scale sustainable agriculture to grow organic produce, filling an increasing demand for locally grown food.

Heifer has been using the small-scale agriculture model for decades to alleviate hunger and fight poverty around the world. The approach has the added benefits of being environmentally friendly and offering healthier food options.

That mission dovetails with Rotary’s mission to grow local economies and improve health, so it’s not surprising the two groups have teamed up on a number of occasions in the past 30 years to improve communities by helping families escape poverty.

The connection has strengthened because several Heifer employees are members of the Rotary Club of Little Rock, Arkansas, USA, the city where Heifer has its headquarters.

“Our values line up very well,” says Ardyth Neill, a member of the Little Rock club and president of the Heifer Foundation. “With Rotary, it’s Service Above Self and helping to serve others. Heifer has been working with farmers to be accountable, pass on their gifts, train other farmers, and work together in community. It’s learning to share and care, basic things that work well together.”

Sustainability is the latest trend

Sustainable agriculture, a hot trend globally, refers to a method of growing or raising food without harming the environment, while providing fair treatment for workers and supporting local communities.

In the United States and other developed nations, a lot of food production is controlled by large industrial operations, which produce cheaper food by focusing on a single crop and using specialized equipment to cut labor costs.

But advocates of sustainable agriculture say those operations can also damage the environment by using commercial fertilizers, heavy pesticides, and other chemicals. 

The corporatization of farming has also contributed to the failure of smaller family farms, increasing the poverty rates in places like rural Arkansas. 

In addition, people become more detached from their food. 

Nationwide distribution networks have resulted in food deserts in urban areas, particularly in the U.S., England, and Australia, where poor neighborhoods have little access to fresh produce and instead rely on less nutritious fast foods and packaged products.

Small-scale sustainable agriculture, on the other hand, tends to benefit communities by keeping things local. The money you spend on food stays in your community and helps your neighbor. Farmers maximize land use by planting multiple crops that replenish the soil and reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides. If needed, organic fertilizers are used that improve a plant’s root system. 

And many nutritionists say fruits and vegetables grown closer to consumers’ homes keep more of their nutrients.

Consumers are increasingly aware of these health benefits, fueling the market for local produce.

“There’s a phenomenon going on, really nationwide, about people becoming more and more concerned and thoughtful about where their food comes from,” says Sharon Vogelpohl, a past president of the Little Rock Rotary club and a volunteer on the project. “I’m a mother of two. That’s something that I take very, very seriously.”Jordan Beard, another Rotarian involved in the project, says: “I think people see that they can change their habit around how they eat, and it can make a big difference in their life and health. It’s connected with the idea of a more active lifestyle.”

Farming around the world

The tools of small-scale sustainable agriculture look different around the world, but the principles are the same. Noel Mace, Heifer International’s program manager for Africa, explains that cooperatives play a crucial role in bringing together groups of farmers — many with both livestock and crops — and connecting them to markets.

“We are now developing more of a market-driven approach,” says Mace. “Historically, Heifer has spent a lot of time on how to bring poor farmers to a subsistence level where they can feed their families. But our mission is to end hunger and poverty, not to lessen it. Poverty is a big challenge without connecting to markets.”

How do we move you beyond a family-level production to participating with others in a market” that creates income and increases livelihood?

Heifer’s model also strives to increase women’s decision making and encourage groups to form common goals, because when a community faces poverty, everyone’s part in fighting it is crucial.

Africa has a strong dairy program, so much of Heifer’s work there flows out of milk. Tight groups of 15 to 20 farmers join with other groups in cooperatives that then have enough scale to access chilling plants and, ultimately, processing plants. The farmers then look to diversify further by using their milk co-op to sell avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, and other produce.

“If I am a consumer, I now can go to the co-op and buy milk, but also buy fresh fruits and greens, and I know it will have the same level of quality,” says Mace. “It’s really about marketing a brand, something I can rely on and know they will have when I go there.”

Mace believes the sustainable farming movement is driven internationally by a growing middle class that wants access to healthy food and can now pay for it.

“They don’t want the broiler chickens anymore with the huge breasts and giant legs. They want local poultry and are willing to pay two or three times more for it,” says Mace. “It creates a great opportunity for individuals to come together and produce poultry, vegetables, or fruits using sustainable methods and in a way this market wants.”