Hi All,

Thanks to all who attend our meeting last Wednesday.

A special welcome to prospective member Tebao Awerika, from the Pacific nation of Kiribati.

In many ways it was  special meeting that really gave our Club a purpose  and a new found enthusiasm to expand our Club’s membership. 

Thanks to Guest Speaker Ruth Barber, a member of our Club who spoke about the work she does in her community in Wagga Wagga, NSW. 

Ruth’s history and involvement in Rotary and Community service is listed below:

• Attended RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) in 1970
• Chartered a Griffith Rotaract (Rotary Club for young adults) in 1971. Started with 30 member grew to 70 members
• Ruth’s husband Bruce joined Rotary in 1980. Bruce was D9700 District Governor 2004-5. His father D9700 District Governor 1973-74.
• Chartered a breakfast club – Griffith Avanti
• Chairman of D9700 District Conference in 2009 – Griffith
• Moved to Wagga Wagga, joined Wagga Wagga Rotary Club
• Worked with Dr Alok Sharma on RAWCS project “Darkness to Light”. (Travelling to India to assist Dr Sharma with eye surgery)
• Established Darkness to Light – Riverina.
• Working with Vision impaired in Wagga Wagga
• Oz Harvest in Wagga Wagga, Ruth and Bruce both involved. (collect food from Woolworths, Coles etc and distributes to the needy in Wagga Wagga)
• Assists at Ronald McDonald House. (stays overnight assisting patients and families at Wagga Base Hospital)
• Assists at Language Café at Wagga Regional Library (working with refugees with language and other needs)
• Assist at Kurrajong Waratah (organisation in Wagga Wagga assisting those with special needs) Participates in Quality Assurance Interviews to assess needs are being delivered to the clients.
• Assists with “Girls at the Centre”. This program, “Girls at the Centre” was establish by The Smith Family to assist the Indigenous students to develop good behaviour and good attendance at school. The Centre is based at Mt Austin High School, Wagga Wagga. Mt Austin has a high indigenous population. Ruth assists with breakfast on Wednesday to ensure one good breakfast a week. It is a privilege to attend. After school activities are held to keep the girls engaged and helps them stay at school. Smith Family provide “Life Coaches” who Ruth comments are excellent role models. After 12 months of good behaviour and good attendance the girls are rewarded with excursions and special functions. One of the attendees of this program is now School Captain and has excelled in sport and has great ambitions for further progress.

Thank you Ruth for a great presentation. We could all follow her example and make our own communities a better place for all.

 

Meet 6 champions of peace

Honorees will be recognized at Rotary Day at the United Nations in November

The honorees, which were announced on International Peace Day, are all involved in projects that address underlying causes of conflict, including poverty, inequality, ethnic tension, lack of access to education, or unequal distribution of resources. 

The six Champions of Peace are:

• 

  Jean Best, a member of the Rotary Club of Kirkcudbright, Scotland —Best leads a peace project that is designed to teach teenagers conflict resolution skills they can use to create peace-related service projects in their schools and communities. Best worked with peace fellows at the University of Bradford to create the curriculum. She has also worked with local Rotary members and peace fellows to set up peace hubs in Australia, England, Mexico, Scotland, and the U.S. 

  Best became a Paul Harris Fellow for contribution to developing peace strategies.

   

  
  Ann Frisch, a member of the Rotary Club of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, USA — Frisch believes unarmed civilians can protect people in violent conflicts. She collaborated with Rotary members in Thailand to establish the Southern Thailand Peace Process training program in 2015 in Bankok, Hat Yai, and Pattani in southern Thailand. The group brought together electrical and irrigation authorities, Red Cross staff, a Buddhist monk, and a Catholic nun to this border region to train civilians to build so-called safe zones. These are areas in which families, teachers, and local officials do not have to confront military forces every day. 

  Frisch, a UN delegate to Geneva, co-wrote the first manual on unarmed civilian protection, which was endorsed by the UN. Her training in a civilian-based peace process is administered by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, the department that trains all UN personnel. 

   

  

  Safina Rahman, a member of the Rotary Club of Dhaka Mahanagar, Bangladesh — Rahman is an important advocate for women’s rights in the workplace in Bangladesh. As a garment factory owner, she was the first to offer health insurance and maternity leave for her female employees. She worked with the Rotarian Action Group for Peace to organize the first international peace conference in Bangladesh. A policymaker for the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, she champions workplace safety and workers’ rights and promotes girls’ education and women’s rights. 

  Rahman is chair of two schools that provide basic education, vocational training, conflict prevention, and health and hygiene classes. 

   

• Alejandro Reyes Lozano, a member of the Rotary Club of Bogotá Capital, Colombia — Reyes Lozano, an attorney, was appointed by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to assist with negotiations and set terms and conditions to end the 50-year conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

  Reyes Lozano’s Rotary Club, Bogotá Capital, worked with Mediators Beyond Borders International to train 27 women from six Latin American countries to develop skills in peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and mediation to deal with conflicts in their communities. The project also developed an international network of women peace builders.

   

• Kiran Singh Sirah, a graduate of the Rotary Peace Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — Sirah is president of the International Storytelling Center in Tennessee, USA, which uses storytelling as a path to building peace. The organization seeks to inspire and empower people everywhere to tell their stories, listen to the stories of others, and use storytelling to create positive change. 

  Kiran, the son of Ugandan refugees, created “Telling Stories That Matter,” a free guide for educators, peace builders, students, volunteers, and business leaders. The resource is now used in 18 countries.

   

• Taylor (Stevenson) Cass Talbott, a graduate of the Rotary Peace Center at the International Christian University in Japan — Stevenson developed a global grant to improve sanitary conditions for waste collectors in Pune, India. Waste collectors together handle 20 tons of unwrapped sanitary waste every day. Stevenson collaborated with SWaCH, a waste-collector cooperative, to create the “Red Dot” campaign, which calls for people to wrap their sanitary waste in newspaper or bags and mark it with a red dot.

  This helps waste collectors identify sanitary waste and handle it accordingly. Stevenson developed all the educational imaging for the campaign. She also secured in-kind offerings of support, including free training space and campaign printing. She is also a Global Peace Index ambassador. 

Hi All,

We have arrived in Cape Town after a fabulous 3 weeks touring eastern South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho. A beautiful land of spectacular scenery and friendly people from both wealthy and poor means. We have had poor Wifi for the later half of our trip so I have been unable to post regularly. Hope that the meetings chaired by Marilyn have been going well.

Yesterday we toured Khayelitsha, an informal township near Cape Town Airport that houses 1.5 million residents in very poor housing. We were guided by a local who explained that the township was established during the apartheid era but since that era has grow much larger due to poor subsistance farmers moving here to try and find employment and make money to improve their families life. He explained that living conditions have improved marginally but communal water points are often far away and portable toilets have to be carried up to 1 kilometer or more to be emptied.

People in employment are able to pay for improved housing in these townships and some actually choose to build new homes if they are earning enough. There are some postive signs but the government is struggling to afford to supply the infrastructure required to improve the situation. Their biggest problem is that new subsistence farmers continue to move into the towns looking for wealth.

A huge problem continues to exist with HIV in these communities but good work is being done to educate and treat those who are HIV positive.

Today we drove past the Coolamon Clinic at Hout Bay that was built with funds provided by the fundraising efforts of DGE John Glassford’s trek to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the Rotary Clubs of Coolamon, Hout Bay, D9700 and a matching grant from the Rotary Foundation. It makes me proud to be a Rotarian when you see our work in action.

Hi All,

Our Wifi connections have been very limited this past few days with our visit to Kruger National Park, Imofolozi Game Reserve and the St. Lucia Estuary, iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

I am having trouble uloading photos for some unknown reason so sorry cannot show images this week.

We have been very fortunate to have seem multiple close encounters with all the big 5 and more. We have seem family groups of elephants, single lions and a group of three male lions right next to the road, at least 5 rhino’s in mating pairs, buffalo in singles and groups, hippopotami in family groups and a single leopard resting in a tree about 150 metres off the road.

The highlight for me was a walk in Kruger with just Carolyn and two rangers both armed with rifles. We saw a number of animals including a family of elphants about 100 metres from us, but we will never forget meeting up with a lone male buffalo who was drinking in a creek. He was just 10 metres in front on their own and can be very aggressive.

After our experiences here in Africa I have a greater understanding of the importance of DGE John Glassford’s initiative to form the Rotary Action Group for Endangered Species – https://www.endangeredrag.org/

Please have a look at their website and consider joining their worthwhile cause.

Hi All,

Please have a look at this new initiative by Rotary Clubs in Australia to eliminate Trachoma in Australia by 2020. I think we should support the program. Let us know how our Club should respond.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2302933639749043&id=184480288261066

We have completed a great week of skiing in Zermatt. It has been their best snow year for 18 years and the skiing was exceptional. The views are spectacular and a must for anyone interested in travelling. We are travelling in this comming week to Norfolk, England where I led a Rotary GSE team ten years ago. We are looking forward to renewing friendships formed back then. We will be attending the Rotary Club of Norwich St. Edmunds, D1080, next Tuesday hosted by PP Mark Little who hosted me on arrival ten years ago. Mark is an exceptional Rotarian. He established the Rotary Action Group – Rotarians Against Slavery after many years of submissions and dedicated lobbying. This action group is now being widely accepted by Rotarians around the world and great steps forward are being made in many countries as a result. I recommend looking at their website –

http://ragas.online

Hi All,

This week I have shared on Our Facebook site to he Rotary International President Elect Barry Rassin’s speach to the his DG’s last week.

Our Prexident Elect Marilyn Roberts has email all notifying the next Zoom meeting on Wednesday 31st January. Please contact her if you do not receive the email with the meeting link.

We leave today for Zermatt for another week of sking.

 

 

 

Greetings from La Tzoumaz, Switzerland

We arrived in Geneva and enjoyed a day exploring the old town and shopping area. On a tour of the International area we saw the various UN Headquarter buildings as well as many embassies and NGO headquarters such as Red Cross. A fascinating city but smaller than expected. It has a population of about 200,000 but each day another 200,000 travel from France to work in Geneva. The French border is only 10 klms from the centre of tbe city. 

We traveled by train along the beautiful shores of Lake Leman commonly called Lake Geneva by tourists to Riddes. Then by mini-bus to La Tzoumaz.

La Tzoumaz is a ski resort in the Swiss Alps, in the canton of Valais. It is part of the “Four Valleys” ski area, which consists of various ski resorts, including Verbier, Nendaz, Veysonnaz, La Tzoumaz, and Thyon.

We are here for one week of skiing and the snow is good.

Our Club President Elect Marilyn Roberts will be emailing all memberswith details of a meeting to be held on Zoom at the end of the month. Please give her support while I am enjoying my holiday.