RAWCS Project 20-2023-24 sponsored by E-Club Serving Humanity
We are looking for your help to support YOSA (Youth Opportunities South Africa) a charity close to the heart of many Qantas Cabin and Flight crew.
The YOSA charity was founded by Astonishment Marupisa and like most non-profit organizations, YOSA needs financial support. Unlike many other charities, we can personally vouch for exactly where any funding to YOSA goes as this is validated to the point where a Qantas Pilot and former cabin crew sit on the advisory board but if you want to learn more just take a look thorough our website.
The Rotary Foundation transforms your gifts into service projects that change lives both close to home and around the world.
The Rotary Foundation helps Rotary members to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace by improving health, providing quality education, improving the environment, and alleviating poverty.
To support our Foundation by donation please click on the button below:
In Australia, Rotarians Against Malaria observe Malaria Awareness Day on 30 April each year, in conjunction with World Malaria Day on 25 April, to raise awareness of the global burden of malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that puts half the world at risk and kills a child every two minutes.
In 2018, these investments saved almost 600,000 lives and prevented nearly 100 million malaria cases compared to 2000 levels. Globally, in 2018, an estimated 1,109 deaths occurred daily as a result of malaria infections. Of 1,109 deaths, an estimated 67% were children under five years.
The global theme for World Malaria Day, ‘Zero Malaria Starts with Me’, emphasizes everyone’s power and responsibility – no matter where they live – to ensure no one dies from a mosquito bite.
Rotary is closely monitoring the pandemic of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus, and continuously assessing the potential impact on Rotary operations, events, and members.
Your health and safety are always our top priorities.
In the near term, Rotary International recommends that districts and Rotary and Rotaract clubs meet virtually, cancel, or postpone meetings and events following the advice of national and local health officials.
Rotary encourages members and their families to take precautions to protect themselves from contracting the virus by: washing your hands often and thoroughly, putting distance between yourself and others if COVID-19 is spreading in your community, and staying home if you are sick.
I am moved to make this post after reading an article on the number of refugees leaving Venezuela and the situation in Turkey and Europe with a huge number of Syrian refugees. Please read the article on Venezuela. https://www.rotary.org/en/exodus-venezuela
I find this an encouraging move by Rotary in a World that seems to have more conflict and challenging situations than ever before. Peace initiatives within our communities are needed now more than ever.
Rotarians, Rotary Peace Fellows, Rotaractors, and Rotary Scholars participate in a Positive Peace workshop.
By Chris Offer, Rotary Club of Ladner, Delta, British Columbia, Canada, and chair of the Peace Major Gifts Initiative
Ispent three days in Ontario, California, USA, in January with a group of passionate peacebuilders learning to be Rotary Positive Peace Activators.
The goal of the three-day training was to develop a worldwide network of peacebuilders to support Rotarians and Rotaractors in fostering Positive Peace in their communities. By 2024, Rotary will train 150 new Positive Peace Activators in six global regions, prepared to educate, coach, and accompany Rotarians in at least 1,000 presentations and/or workshops, and act as consultants on projects locally and globally.
The training is the next step in a growing list of Rotary peace initiatives that I believe are pushing Rotary to a tipping point. Our peace programs will begin rapidly expanding and will change Rotary forever as we go from being advocates for peace to something grander: active and effective peacebuilders.
In 2017, Rotary and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) formed a strategic partnership. This alliance builds on IEP’s research into Positive Peace – the attitudes, institutions, and structures that shape peaceful societies – as well as Rotary’s grassroots work in communities globally.
In addition to our partnership with IEP, Rotary’s Peace Centers are expanding, Rotary Peace Fellows are taking on diverse roles, there is an online peace academy, and clubs and districts are increasing their reach with a variety of peace projects. Major positive peace projects occurred in 2019 in Mexico and Colombia.
The 25 activators who participated in the training with me were Rotarians, peace fellows, Rotaractors, and Rotary Global Scholars. We were trained on the IEP positive peace model and on facilitating meetings. We focused on skills that will enable us to lead education programs with Rotary-affiliated groups.
Rotary seeks to create the conditions for Positive Peace by funding and implementing thousands of local and international peace projects. The Rotary Positive Peace Activators will take a lead as advisors to assist clubs and districts.
This is our peace tipping point.
The WorldSupport Rotary’s work in building peace through your generous gift (select the Endowment-Rotary Peace Centers from the donate menu)
We have all seen the disastrous fires that have erupted, taking lives as well as destroying hundreds of homes and properties across Australia.
Rotary is looking to provide support for families in need. To this end several Rotary Districts and Clubs have established projects which are ready and able to accept donations from you. All of those projects can apply for funds from this appeal. Click to DONATE
The article published in “The Rotarian”, January 2020 tells a story of what Rotary and Rotarians can do to assist those who need assistance: Service above Self
Ski into the heart of Rotary
Guido Franceschetti Rotary Club of Rome International
The only way to survive was to relax every single muscle and then forget about the body. The pain remained, but I learned to contemplate it objectively, almost like a spectator. After my surgeries, I had to lie completely still, my shattered pelvis held together with plates and screws. I could only use one hand; the other shoulder was broken. Fractured vertebrae and ribs added to the pain.
I was skiing with friends in Val d’Isère, France, when the accident happened. The first two days were glorious: good snow, ideal conditions. On the third day, a dense fog rolled in, so we decided to take an easier route down and stop for the day. The runs were smooth and deserted. I was ahead, so I cut right and looked behind me to see if I could catch a glimpse of anyone. I cut left and looked back again. Where were they?
When I faced forward again, a signpost was directly in front of me. I tried an emergency maneuver to avoid it, but it didn’t work. With the little control I had left, I tried dodging it from the side. But it was too late — I hit the post hard.
My friend Bernard found me first. I was in so much pain and very cold. He put his windbreaker over me and called for help. It was too foggy for a helicopter to airlift me off the mountain, so the emergency response team hoisted me onto a toboggan to sled down to a cable car that took me the rest of the way to a waiting ambulance. My injuries were too complicated for the two closest hospitals to treat, so I was transferred to a university hospital in Grenoble for surgery.
My wife, Daniela, was in Rome at the time. She rushed to France, but by the time she got to Grenoble, I had already been taken into surgery. The operation was expected to be very long, so the staff advised her to return to the hotel. I hate to think of how she must have felt, upset and alone in a foreign place with my situation uncertain.
Back at the hotel, Daniela noticed the Rotary logo; the doorman told her that the Rotary Club of Grenoble-Belledonne met there. In fact, their meeting was about to start. Daniela is also a Rotarian, and the timing felt like a blessing. She needed to spend a few hours among friendly faces, even if they were strangers. She decided to attend.
The club members welcomed her warmly, and when she told them about my accident, they showed us what it means to be a part of Rotary. The topic of the meeting shifted from club business to how to help Daniela. One member offered her daughter’s apartment, which was temporarily unoccupied. Another gave Daniela a ride back to the hospital. When she told me everything later, I was very touched. I could tell that Daniela had gained strength to deal with her fears for my health knowing that she could count on friends, even ones she had just met, to help her.
In the following days, while I underwent more operations, the Grenoble Rotarians helped Daniela settle in. They solved the bureaucratic problems that arose when she filled out the paperwork to authorize my stay in France. After two weeks in the hospital, I was transferred to a rehabilitation clinic in the mountains outside Grenoble. My doctors thought it best that I stay nearby, rather than return to Rome, during rehabilitation so they could monitor my progress and intervene if needed.
I spent four months recovering in France. For much of that time, I was completely immobilized. I was well cared for, and Daniela was able to travel back and forth from Rome to see me, but I was still in a foreign place without any family nearby. The rehabilitation clinic was beautiful, but the road to reach it was winding, long, and not very convenient from Grenoble. Yet the Rotarians never left me wanting for company. Their visits brought me a little bit of the outside world, and for that, I was so grateful. After any of them visited, Daniela would, of course, receive an update.
When I finally started to move around in a wheelchair, I asked my doctor for permission to attend the Grenoble-Belledonne club meeting. Through tears, I thanked them for taking care of me and my family.
It’s now been almost 12 years since my accident. I have healed, and our friendship with many members of the Grenoble club endures. I have always believed that the most extraordinary aspect of Rotary is the potential for friendship all over the world. I’m lucky to have lived a very touching example of that.
