Weekly Rotary Foundation Thoughts January 2012
At the end of each month I will email you a Rotary Foundation newsletter and a set of Weekly Foundation Thoughts to cover the ensuing month.
The following preamble is for your information and doesn't need to be printed in your bulletin HOWEVER it is recommended you publish, each week, the weekly Rotary Foundation Thoughts. These weekly Thoughts have been amended to reflect Australian and D9680 examples and are designed to coincide with Rotary Foundation activities to support what you might be promoting in your weekly club meetings.
Educating Rotarians about the work of The Rotary Foundation is one of the most effective tools for gaining and broadening support of our Annual Programs Fund and the Every Rotarian, Every Year effort. The Weekly Rotary Foundation Thought is designed to inform our members of the many ways in which we impact the world - there's always something new and exciting going on in Rotary.
The club president can begin the tradition by opening each meeting with a brief moment on The Rotary Foundation, but consider rotating ownership of the weekly reading among club members. In fact, didn't Paul Harris have a similar idea about rotating?
It is recommended that you publish each week’s Thought in your Bulletin.
Below is a summary January’s schedule of Rotary Foundation Thoughts and each week follows this summary, please don't print this summary as it has no relevance:
This months’ Rotary Foundation Thoughts will be about:
January 25. What Ambassadorial Scholars can achieve
26. Bequest Society
27. Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies Program alumni
28. A matching grant that has helped turn waste into profit for Philippine coconut farmers
25) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought is about what Ambassadorial Scholars can achieve.
Probably Australia’s most famous Ambassadorial Scholar is Sir William Deane AC. He was a Justice of the High Court and Australia’s 22nd Governor General. Locally many Ambassadorial Scholars have gone to achieve impressive careers, including Professor Dominic Dwyer sponsored by Mosman club. He was a GSE Team Member to India in 1986 and then as an Ambassadorial Scholar studied Infectious Diseases in 1989 at the Institute Pasteurs in Paris.
Today he is a medical virologist and infectious diseases physician, and is Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Laboratory Services, at Westmead Hospital He has a clinical and research interest in viral diseases and antiviral drug resistance of public health importance, and runs a clinical trials unit in antiviral drugs and vaccines. He assists State and National governments in planning for pandemic influenza and emerging infections, and is actively involved in outbreak investigations.
He has undertaken various overseas projects, including with the World Health Organization during the SARS outbreak in Beijing, with the Australian Government in Vietnam for avian influenza and the Maldives for tsunami relief, with the University of Sydney in Malaysia and the Sudan for HIV, and for public health regulatory bodies in New Zealand and Hong Kong.
He is a member of the WHO Global Outbreak Alert Response Network, and the Sydney Institute for Emerging Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity at Sydney University.
.
26) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought is about becoming a Bequest Society member and leaving your legacy through The Rotary Foundation.
This is best expressed through a quote from the founder of The Rotary Foundation and Past RI President, Arch C. Klumph
"...There are tens of thousands of Rotarians who will look upon this opportunity (building the Rotary Foundation as a real privilege)...Then there are other men who are seeking ways and means of leaving some part of their wealth where it may do the greatest good for humanity. What better equipped organisation or institution than Rotary International can be found to be entrusted with such funds?"
Join with fellow Rotarians past and present who have left their legacy by remembering the foundation in their estate plans.
27) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought highlights the cooperation between two
Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies Program alumni.
The first encounters between two classmates in the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies program were anything but cordial. From July through September 2006, Raveendra Pathiranage and Thevananth Thevanayagam participated in the program’s inaugural session at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. For weeks, they argued about the long-standing conflict in their native Sri Lanka.
“But we talked about our problems and gradually understood each other,” says Thevanayagam, program manager for the Tamil Refugees Rehabilitation Organization in Sri Lanka, who was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Jaffna, Northern Province. The agency provides food, shelter, rehabilitation, and other assistance to displaced Tamil refugees.
“We erased the hard feelings and went on to What can we do to solve the problem? What can we contribute?” says Pathiranage, senior state counsel in the attorney general’s office in Sri Lanka, who was sponsored by District 3220.
He was especially moved by Thevanayagam’s stories of children who had been orphaned or couldn’t go to school. In November, when conflict forced the main road into the Jaffna peninsula to close, Pathiranage asked, “Theva, can I do anything?”
Thevanayagam explained that the region was barely surviving on twice-monthly dry rations and many people, including his two young children and the rest of his family, were suffering from Chikungunya, a disease that causes high fevers, rashes, and joint pain. Pathiranage used some of his personal connections to get a month’s supply of dry milk and medicine to Thevanayagam for his family.
In June, the two men traveled together to the first Rotary World Peace Symposium in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, held just before the 2007 RI Convention, to see their former classmates.
“The link between myself and Theva will be very important in the future to discuss the peace-related issues [in Sri Lanka],” says Pathiranage, who sees a direct connection between what he learned in the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies program and his work.
At the D9680 Conference in Wollongong we will have Emma Leslie as a speaker and Emma is on the faculty at Chulalongkorn University and hosts the students in Cambodia as part of their studies.
28) This week's Rotary Foundation Thought is about a matching grant that has helped turn waste into profit for Philippine coconut farmers.
With the aid of a Foundation matching grant, the Livelihood Project gives local farmers the supplies and labour to turn wasted coconut husks into "coconets", which have environmental and economic benefits for the community. The project increased employment levels for women and out of school youth while reviving he local coconut industry. Coconut husks, which are a huge source of agricultural waste, are now used to make “coconets” which help provide an environmentally friendly solution to land erosion and degradation. Another husk by-product, coconut dust is used as a soil enhancer and organic fertilizer. This is an example of how The Rotary Foundation is helping smaller communities throughout the world and is ensuring that economic growth reaches the poorer communities.