Carteret, NJ - Chartered June 12, 1963 - Club 5620
By Rotary International Do you have an idea or project that you want to share with the Rotary world? Consider leading a breakout session at the 2016 Rotary International Convention in Seoul.
Submit your proposal by 15 October to share your successes with projects, efforts to strengthen membership, partnerships, leadership development, and more. The proposal form is available in English, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. …read more
Source:: Rotary.org
By Rotary International When Gabriela Vessani was 12 years old, her mother took her to stay with friends in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, for the summer.
“I loved it, so when I heard about Rotary Youth Exchange, I knew that was something I wanted to do,” says Vessani, who is an Interactor from São Paulo.
This year, Vessani participated in the program. Hosted by the Rotary Club of Waterdown, Ontario, Canada, she stayed with four families, one of which included adopted children from different parts of the world.
“They had seven children, and it was crazy for me. But I loved it,” she says. “It was such a unique… …read more
Source:: Rotary.org
Rotary members, students, and teachers in front of the water purification system in San Miguel.
By Jon Kaufman
From 2 to 8 July, I led my club’s second H2OpenDoors expedition to central Mexico. The three-year-old Rotary project provides SunSpring water purification systems for poor villages and schools and allows the villages to sell the surplus water from the systems.
The project touches on several of Rotary’s areas of focus: providing clean water, building peace (by combating poverty), and educating youth.
We bring along a dozen or so students, as well as a few teachers, so they can see how a simple idea can become a project and benefit thousands of people. We hope the students return to their schools empowered to make a difference.
Presidential visit
Last year, we were able to visit with former Mexican President Vicente Fox, who pledged to partner with us on future efforts.
This year’s trip included 24 Rotary members, friends, family, students, and teachers. We installed a solar-powered SunSpring water purification system in San Miguel de Allende. The plant will bottle water into 10-liter reusable jugs and sell it to the public at a third the cost of other water. Even so, it will raise close to $200,000 a year …read more
Source:: Rotary International Blog
By Rotary International When Mariana Day moved in 1989 to the small beach town of Chacala, in Nayarit, Mexico, she noticed that the surrounding rural areas struggled to maintain schools. And most children weren’t able to go beyond an eighth-grade education. Day, who is a member of the Rotary Club of Bahía de Jaltemba-La Peñita, in Nayarit, had started a local scholarship program before she joined Rotary. Called Changing Lives, the program provided students with high school tuition, uniforms, school supplies, and transportation.
In addition, Rotary clubs from the United States and Mexico have been investing in the… …read more
Source:: Rotary.org
Students in Nepal use laptops provided by OLE Nepal. Photo by OLE Nepal
By Quentin Wodon
Rotary members come in many different styles. Most have a day job and engage in service work in their free time. Some go a step further: They make service work their day job!
Rabi Karmacharya belongs to the second group. In 2007, he founded Open Learning Exchange (OLE) Nepal. His organization is respected internationally as a pioneer in the integration of technology in the classroom. OLE Nepal has worked with Nepal’s Department of Education to make laptops available in schools. But much more importantly, it has also developed great digital learning materials for students, and trained teachers to use technology and digital libraries to enhance learning.
Measuring results
Providing laptops to schools is relatively easy. Making sure that the laptops and other resources, such as digital libraries, are used to improve classroom instruction and learning is not.
Rabi is up to the challenge. Before launching OLE Nepal, he worked in California as a design engineer and later co-founded one of the first successful software outsourcing companies in Nepal. And, yes, he is an active Rotarian, a member of the Rotary Club of Kathmandu Mid-Town.
Earlier this month, Rabi presented a seminar …read more
Source:: Rotary International Blog
Hannington Sebuliba works on an issue of his club’s bulletin.
By Hannington Sebuliba, Rotary Club of Kajjansi, Uganda
I joined Rotary in 2010 after spending five years covering Rotary events for our local newspaper. I used to see the way Rotary members were serving the disadvantaged in our community, and it left a mark on my heart.
One day, Rotarian Charles Baganja asked me to give a talk at the Rotary Club of Kajjansi, Uganda, on newspaper production, and I accepted the invite. After the talk, members of the club asked me to join. Ever since, I have not looked back. I have served as bulletin editor, director of public relations, and now membership director. Rotary has shaped my way of life.
Newsletter redesign
When I first joined, Baganja told me that the club lacked someone of my profession. But I couldn’t figure out how a broke person like me could be useful to Rotary. I was no longer an active journalist by then, and I had always thought Rotary was a club for rich people who had money to spare for bus shelters and water tanks and things.
But I began attending the weekly fellowship and was warmly welcomed. One of the members asked me …read more
Source:: Rotary International Blog
By Rotary International From the September 2015 issue of The Rotarian
Nearly 90 percent of the world’s polio cases last year occurred in Pakistan. But the country is making dramatic progress in its quest to eradicate the disease: Cases are down by almost 70 percent to date compared with 2014, owing partly to military interventions that year in Taliban-controlled North Waziristan, which have allowed vaccinators to reach hundreds of thousands of children who were previously inaccessible. Improved government leadership, the introduction of inactivated polio vaccine in high-risk districts, and vaccinations at transit… …read more
Source:: Rotary.org
By Rotary International From the September 2015 issue of The Rotarian
Before her family was forced into exile, before her mother was assassinated, before her father became president, Aseefa Bhutto Zardari was known for something simpler, but in some ways equally powerful: In 1994, she became the first child in Pakistan to receive the oral polio vaccine, as part of the country’s first National Immunization Day. Benazir Bhutto, then prime minister, gave the drops to her daughter herself, a compelling endorsement of the nascent campaign.
“I was a baby at the time, so I don’t remember it,” says Bhutto Zardari, now 22. “… …read more
Source:: Rotary.org
By Rotary International From the September 2015 issue of The Rotarian
When I was a college student in Wisconsin in the 1970s, those of us who worked at the 10-watt radio station hoped our signal would reach not only the 1,500 students on the Beloit College campus and the 35,000 residents of the town of Beloit but also the people in the cars and trucks passing by on the interstate 3 miles to the east – and possibly, late at night, the 150,000 who lived in the bustling metropolis of Rockford, Ill., 20 miles to the south.
Some of us hoped to get jobs in radio after we graduated, and there was even talk about starting… …read more
Source:: Rotary.org
By Rotary International From the September 2015 issue of The Rotarian
Chances are, you’ve heard of Psy and his signature song, “Gangnam Style.” He’s the Korean pop star with dark sunglasses and a distinctive galloping horse dance who was everywhere a few years ago, including on a This Close ad for End Polio Now.
But what you might not know is that Psy is merely the tip of the colossal iceberg known as K-pop, short for Korean pop. If you plan to attend the 2016 Rotary International Convention in Seoul from 28 May to 1 June, you won’t have to search for K-pop – you’ll hear it in the streets, in cafes, in taxis, and on… …read more
Source:: Rotary.org