January 2018www.rotary.org

ANNUAL3rd

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n Rotary, our diversity is our strength. This idea dates back to the earliest years of our organization, when the classification system was first proposed. The

idea behind it was simple: that a club with members who had a wide variety of backgrounds and abilities would be capable of better service than one without.

In the years since, the idea of diversity in Rotary has come to be defined more broadly. We have discovered that a club that truly represents its community is far better able to serve that community effectively. Looking ahead, it is clear how essential diversity will remain in Rotary: not only to strong service today, but to a strong organization in the future.

One of the most pressing aspects of diversity to address in our membership is the age of our members. When you look around at almost any Rotary event, it becomes immediately obvious that the age range in the room does not promise a sustainable future for our organization. Our membership is near a record high, and we are bringing in new members all the time – yet only a small minority of those members are young enough to have decades of Rotary service ahead of them. To ensure a strong and capable Rotary leadership tomorrow, we need to bring in young and capable members today.

We also cannot discuss diversity in Rotary without addressing the issue of gender. It is difficult to imagine that just three decades ago, women could not join Rotary. Although we have come a long way since then, the legacy of that misguided policy is still with us. Far too many people continue to think of Rotary as an organization only for men, and that idea has had a detrimental effect on both our public image and our membership growth. Today, women make up just over 21 percent of Rotary’s membership. While this is certainly a great improve-ment, we have a long way to go to meet what should be the goal of every club: a gender balance that matches the balance of our world, with as many women in Rotary as men.

Whatever brought each of us to Rotary, we stay because we find value in Rotary membership and believe that our service has value to the world. By building clubs that reflect that world in all its diversity, we will build even more enduring value in Rotary: Making a Difference.

D E A R F E L L O W R O T A R I A N S ,

I

ON THE WEBSpeeches and news from RI President Ian H.S. Riseley atwww.rotary.org/offi ce-president

I A N H. S. R I S E L E Y

President, Rotary International

jan18-01-Presmessage_v1.indd 1 10/31/17 2:52 PM

january contents

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O N T H E C O V E R

What’s black and white and read all over?

Vol.196 No.7

F E A T U R E S

30 What it’s like to …Survive an atomic bomb. Chase your baseball dream.

Walk 27,000 miles for peace. Rotarians describe some

of their most remarkable experiences.

Illustrations by Richard Mia

L E F T Rotary Peace Fellow d’Arcy Lunn, at his tiny house outside

Adelaide, Australia, describes what it’s like to live on $1.50 a day

on page 38. (Photography by Matt Turner / The Advertiser)

D E P A R T M E N T S

6 Letters

11 Up front• Lamont Clemons, bridge builder• Yachts bring aid to remote islands• Tiny club has an

oversize impact

22 Calendar

55 Insider• Cellphones

power polio fi ght• Fund helps

wildfi re victims• Rotarian Action

Groups

C O L U M N S

1 President’s message Our diversity is our strength

8 Editor’s note

24 Clubs Tee party

57 Trustee’s message

58 Crossword

64 Last look

january contents

jan18-02-03-contents-v1.indd 3 11/14/17 2:23 PM

General O� cers of �Rotary International2017-18

President IAN H.S. RISELEY Sandringham, Australia

President-elect BARRY RASSIN East Nassau, Bahamas

Vice President DEAN ROHRS Langley Central, B.C., Canada

Treasurer MIKAEL AHLBERG Ölands Södra, Sweden

Directors GÉRARD ALLONNEAU Parthenay, France

JORGE AUFRANC Guatemala Sur, Guatemala

BASKER CHOCKALINGAM Karur, India

CORNELIU DINCĂ Craiova, Romania

JAMES RONALD FERRILL Martinsville, Va., USA

PETER IBLHER Nürnberg-Reichswald, Germany

KEIICHI ISHIGURO Tsuruoka West, Japan

ROBERT C. KNUEPFER JR. Chicago, Ill., USA

JOHN C. MATTHEWS Mercer Island, Wash., USA

EUNSOO MOON Cheonan-Dosol, Korea

TADAMI SAITO Toyota, Japan

BRIAN A.E. STOYEL Saltash, England

NOEL J. TREVASKIS Bega, Australia

GREGORY F. YANK O’Fallon, Ill., USA

PAULO AUGUSTO ZANARDI Curitiba-Cidade Industrial, Brazil

JOHN HEWKO General SecretaryKyiv, Ukraine

Trustees of The Rotary Foundation 2017-18

Chair PAUL A. NETZEL Los Angeles, Calif., USA

Chair-elect RON D. BURTON Norman, Okla., USA

Vice Chair KENNETH M. SCHUPPERT JR. Decatur, Ala., USA

Trustees ÖRSÇELIK BALKAN Istanbul-Karaköy, Turkey

WILLIAM B. BOYD Pakuranga, New Zealand

MÁRIO CÉSAR MARTINS Santo André, BrazilDE CAMARGO

BRENDA M. CRESSEY Paso Robles, Calif., USA

MARY BETH GROWNEY SELENE Madison West Towne-Middleton, Wis., USA

SUSHIL GUPTA Delhi Midwest, India

GARY C.K. HUANG Taipei, Taiwan

SEIJI KITA Urawa East, Japan

JULIA PHELPS Amesbury, Mass., USA

K.R. RAVINDRAN Colombo, Sri Lanka

MICHAEL F. WEBB Mendip, England

YOUNG SUK YOON Seoul Hoehyon, Korea

JOHN HEWKO General SecretaryKyiv, Ukraine

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Published monthly by Rotary International. The Rotarian® is a registered trademark of Rotary International. Copyright ©2018 by Rotary International. All rights reserved. Periodicals postage paid at Evanston, Ill., USA, and additional mailing offi ces. Canada Publications Mail Agreement No. 1381644. Canadian return address: MSI, PO Box 2600, Mississauga ON L4T 0A8. This is the January 2018 issue, volume 196, number 7, of The Rotarian (ISSN 0035-838X). Publication number: USPS 548-810.

JOHN REZEK Editor in chief

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For three Toronto-area Rotarians,a successful six-day trek upMount Kilimanjaro in Tanzaniain June 2016 was momentous forseveral reasons. After a year ofplanning and publicizing, JenniferBoyd, Ryan Fogarty, and RaffyChouljian raised CA$500,000 forEnd Polio Now. The climb wentwithout a hitch, and at thesummit, Fogarty surprised Boydwhen he got on one knee andproposed. The seed for thejourney was planted in 2011. “Atthe District 7070 Conference,one of the keynote speakerswas a polio survivor, RameshFerris, who crawled in,” explainsBoyd, who is her club’s president.“It was the first time I’d seen whatpolio was firsthand. It made mewant to make a difference.” AfterBoyd participated in a NationalImmunization Day in India in2015, a friend suggested she climbKilimanjaro to raise funds forEnd Polio Now; within days shepersuaded Fogarty and Chouljianto come along. They exceededtheir initial fundraising goalof CA$100,000 in donations. The Canadian government and theBill & Melinda Gates Foundationmatched it 2-to-1, bringing it toCA$500,000. Boyd’s next bigproject was her September wedding,where every guest was to receivea wooden rose with a note that a$10 donation had been made intheir name – to End Polio Now,of course. – ANNE STEIN

JENNIFER BOYDScarborough Rotary Passport Club, Ontario

Summit meeting

O C T O B E R 2 0 1 7 | T H E R O T A R I A N 1 1

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In mid-1960s Iran, Peace Corpsvolunteers made a big impression onstudent Abbas Rajabi. Rajabi becamefriendly with volunteer Don Laffoon,who taught in his high school.“Wewere not all that different, even thoughour cultures were thousands of milesapart,” remembers Rajabi, nowgovernor for District 5450 (northernColorado) and a member and pastpresident of the Rotary Club ofDenver Southeast. Rajabi emigrated tothe United States for college in 1967,eventually going into the real estatebusiness and joining Rotary. All thewhile, the memories of his PeaceCorps friends lingered. So when afellow Rotarian asked him if hewould like to help foster cooperationbetween Rotary and the Peace Corps,Rajabi knew where to start.“I wantedto call Don,” he says.“I tracked himdown in California, and I said,‘Thankyou. You made a great impact in mylife, and I needed to tell you that.’ ” Since that conversation, Rajabi hasbeen encouraging Rotary clubs allover the world to support the PeaceCorps’ work. At the InternationalAssembly, he passed out hundreds offlyers encouraging clubs to find waysto work with Peace Corps volunteers; at a Peace Corps conference, hespread the word about Rotary. “Myhope is that people realize that inspite of our looks, our background,our cultures, we are more or lessthe same,” he says. – ANNE FORD

ABBAS RAJABIRotary Club of Denver Southeast, Colo.

A teacher’slesson spansthe years

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up front

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You’re on the go. Take The Rotarian with you.

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easy viewing on phones and tablets

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Spangled Banner” before a small crowd, including family and friends. Some fans con- gratulated me on my rendition.  

Encouraged and newly confident, I started send-ing tapes to many teams. Now a retired business owner, I have sung at over 300 events throughout the East Coast. I’m always looking to per-form more because of the kindness and appreciation of a few who took the time to thank me early on. But the one performance dearest to my heart is singing in Pittsfield every summer at the century-old ballpark of my hometown.

William A. Squires Longmeadow, Mass.

Flag fliersI want to comment on your well-written article “The Fun in Fundraising” [October] by Nancy Shepherdson. Fund-

raising is the highway that allows Rotary to help improve lives in the world. Together we continue to eradicate polio and do other humanitarian works in our communities. If not for fundraising, we never could have accomplished all of what we are proud of.

A few years ago, a Rotarian returning from a Texas vacation brought an idea to his club in Mary-land. He had heard about a concept of signing up sponsors to allow American flags to be placed in front yards for a fee on five patriotic holidays. They would be installed at dawn and removed at dusk. He proposed this to his club but suggested that once a year they display hundreds of flags at a park or on a school lawn for a week or so. He sug-gested that we honor those

letters

who keep us safe such as our military and our first responders. We could ask our communities who their heroes are and give them an opportunity to sponsor an American flag for $50.

That is how Rotary’s Flags for Heroes began, and today it is spreading through-out the United States. Fifty clubs in seven states held this fundraiser in 2016.

In addition to raising money, this program garners epic media coverage for your club by recognizing our heroes and makes your club’s public image stand tall.

So I ask, who is your hero? They walk among us daily, and everyone has a hero.

A better question would be that if you could lead your club by adding new members, increase public relations, and accomplish more good

Winning scoreReading “Game Changer” in the October issue brought back fond memo-ries of the historic and friendly Wahconah Park. I had returned to my long-time hobby of singing by answering an ad in our newspaper in which the Pittsfield Astros were looking for national an-them singers for the 2001 season. Without an audi-tion, I had the honor of performing “The Star

in your community, why wouldn’t you?

Stephen J. Cropper Sr. Selbyville, Del.

Fight corruptionI was glad to see The Talent Around the Table, “Measur-ing and stopping public corruption,” in the November issue. It was pleasing to see that through our Rotary scholarship programs, Rotary global grant scholarship recipient Lusiné Mehrabyan is focusing her efforts on public corruption.

We see the stories in the news of corrupt officials and government employees taking bribes, diverting funds and assets for their own benefit, selling their votes, and other despicable acts almost daily.

As someone who also decided to stand up against these illegal and unethical

6 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

jan18-06-07-letters-v2.indd 6 11/6/17 4:34 PM

for a consistently well-done and interesting publication. I learn something of value from each issue.

But I would also like to echo the suggestion in the October letter from Thomas V. Lasse concerning a revision for The Four-Way Test. As a retired English teacher with years of experience editing student papers for greater clarity, I, too, find the word “concerned” unnecessary and even a little awkward. I think removing it would indeed better state the goals of Rotary.

Penelope M. Mitchell Jacksonville, Ill.

The editors welcome comments on items published in the magazine but reserve the right to edit for style and length. Published letters do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or Rotary International leadership, nor do the editors take responsibility for errors of fact that may be expressed by the writers.

Follow us to get updates, share stories with your networks, and tell us what you think.

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The Rotarian, One Rotary Center, 1560 Sherman Ave., Evanston, IL 60201 USA

WEBSITE therotarian.comEMAIL yourletters@rotary.org

practices by assisting the U.S. government in investigative operations (including one that led to the arrests of two sitting mayors, a first for the FBI), followed by assisting in changing policies and laws pertaining to public corrup-tion and government em-ployee protections and presenting my experiences to various groups and students, I applaud those like Lusiné who want to make a difference.

I use The Four-Way Test in my presentations and share it with as many in public office as I can. And they have all asked me to provide them a copy for their offices!

Public corruption is a cancer on our society. I am hoping more Rotarians join the efforts and stand up.

Michael W. Kesti Palmetto Bay, Fla.

Service orderMy husband and I are past presidents of our respective clubs, both of which have high percentages of women members.

The three letters regarding the lack of women on the Board of Directors [October] were missing some important facts. As in most organiza-tions, top positions are held by people who have acquired knowledge and experience after years of membership, or, in business, long-term employment in their field.

The RI directors have the time to volunteer for these very consuming positions. It is an extremely large commit-

ment and not just a recogni-tion or right of membership.

Many of us seasoned Rotarians have already done the “silent, unrecognized work” of Rotary. Rotarians understand that recognition is not the Rotary way – service is the Rotary way!

Carol A. Eastwick Reno, Nev.

Candidate poolReading the letters in the October issue about the underrepresentation of women on the RI Board, I am fervently motivated to respond.

Just this week I served as chair of the Zone 26 Nomi-nating Committee to select a director for 2019-21. Our paired zones encompass the westernmost part of the U.S., and we are forward-thinking and innovative. We had a field of six – three men, three women. For the first time in our paired zones’ history, we selected a woman. The encouraging and uplifting outcome is that gender never entered our committee’s discussion. We chose the individual who (a) met the criteria, (b) we believe will best fulfill the role, and (c) will strengthen and invigorate our organization. That is what our Rotary ethical beliefs demand.

Anyone with a solid knowledge of Rotary programs, Rotary Foundation operations, and district and zone positions quickly realizes that our system for either gender moves slowly.

And remember, you cannot start on the road to governor until you have served as a club president. In many parts of the world, that is still not an easy step for women.

When I joined this wonderful organization in 1990, I did not expect or desire that it would conform around me. I joined to serve and strengthen Rotary, and I try to do that every year I remain a member. Past RI Vice President Jennifer Jones answered the question about when there would be a female president very gracefully and succinctly: “When a woman who applies is the best-qualified candidate.”

Lucinda Rose General Phoenix

Makeup testI would first like to commend the editors of the magazine

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editor’s note

Rotarians tell great stories. � at’s because they so

often fi nd themselves doing interesting things. It’s also

because Rotary tends to attract people who have

already had life-changing experiences. Once you

decide to live your life mindful of service to others,

you’re more likely to do and see things that are worth

telling others about. And as members of Rotary know,

the person sitting next to you at any given club meet-

ing is likely to have a story that’s worth hearing.

� is issue marks the third consecutive January that we’ve celebrated what

happens when ordinary Rotarians fi nd themselves in extraordinary circum-

stances. In January 2016, we launched this now-annual event with stories includ-

ing what it’s like to donate a kidney, to survive a hijacking, and to bicycle across

the United States raising money to end polio. � at issue won industry awards

as well as acclaim from our readers.

Last year, we heard, among other stories, what it’s like to save someone from

drowning, to be a prisoner of war, and to sail the ocean using traditional Poly-

nesian navigational techniques. Again, we won awards, but what we appreciated

most was your response. You wrote to tell us how much you enjoyed the issue

and how you planned to use

it to show potential members

what an inspiring, diverse,

and fascinating group of

people they would meet in

our organization.

We hope this issue will

again win your admiration as

you read about the gump-

tion, big-heartedness, and joy

that Rotarians bring to life.

You will learn what’s it’s like to survive an atomic bomb and then dedicate your

life to peace, what it’s like to be a member of the millennial generation in Rotary,

and what it’s like to live on $1.50 a day, along with many other compelling tales.

It is an honor for us to tell the world about the depth of the Rotary experience.

So please tell us about the Rotarians, Rotaractors, and program participants you

know who have found themselves in extraordinary circumstances: Write us at

rotarian@rotary.org and include “What it’s like” in the subject line. We’ll be back

with more fantastic fi rst-person stories in January 2019.

JOHN REZEK

The Object of Rotary

THE OBJECT of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:

FIRST The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;

SECOND High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society;

THIRD The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life;

FOURTH The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service

The Four-Way Test

OF THE THINGS we think, say, or do:

1) Is it the TRUTH?

2) Is it FAIR to all concerned?

3) Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

4) Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Rotarian Code of Conduct

The following code of conduct has been adopted for the use of Rotarians:

AS A ROTARIAN, I will

1) Act with integrity and high ethical standards in my personal and professional life

2) Deal fairly with others and treat them and their occupations with respect

3) Use my professional skills through Rotary to: mentor young people, help those with special needs, and improve people’s quality of life in my community and in the world

4) Avoid behavior that refl ects adversely on Rotary or other Rotarians

SERVICE ABOVE SELF

8 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

“We hope this issue will again win your admiration as you read about the gumption, big-heartedness, and joy Rotarians bring to life.”

jan18-08-editors note-1.indd 4 11/14/17 10:19 AM

editor’s note

Rotarians tell great stories. � at’s because they so

often fi nd themselves doing interesting things. It’s also

because Rotary tends to attract people who have

already had life-changing experiences. Once you

decide to live your life mindful of service to others,

you’re more likely to do and see things that are worth

telling others about. And as members of Rotary know,

the person sitting next to you at any given club meet-

ing is likely to have a story that’s worth hearing.

� is issue marks the third consecutive January that we’ve celebrated what

happens when ordinary Rotarians fi nd themselves in extraordinary circum-

stances. In January 2016, we launched this now-annual event with stories includ-

ing what it’s like to donate a kidney, to survive a hijacking, and to bicycle across

the United States raising money to end polio. � at issue won industry awards

as well as acclaim from our readers.

Last year, we heard, among other stories, what it’s like to save someone from

drowning, to be a prisoner of war, and to sail the ocean using traditional Poly-

nesian navigational techniques. Again, we won awards, but what we appreciated

most was your response. You wrote to tell us how much you enjoyed the issue

and how you planned to use

it to show potential members

what an inspiring, diverse,

and fascinating group of

people they would meet in

our organization.

We hope this issue will

again win your admiration as

you read about the gump-

tion, big-heartedness, and joy

that Rotarians bring to life.

You will learn what’s it’s like to survive an atomic bomb and then dedicate your

life to peace, what it’s like to be a member of the millennial generation in Rotary,

and what it’s like to live on $1.50 a day, along with many other compelling tales.

It is an honor for us to tell the world about the depth of the Rotary experience.

So please tell us about the Rotarians, Rotaractors, and program participants you

know who have found themselves in extraordinary circumstances: Write us at

rotarian@rotary.org and include “What it’s like” in the subject line. We’ll be back

with more fantastic fi rst-person stories in January 2019.

JOHN REZEK

The Object of Rotary

THE OBJECT of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:

FIRST The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;

SECOND High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society;

THIRD The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life;

FOURTH The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service

The Four-Way Test

OF THE THINGS we think, say, or do:

1) Is it the TRUTH?

2) Is it FAIR to all concerned?

3) Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

4) Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Rotarian Code of Conduct

The following code of conduct has been adopted for the use of Rotarians:

AS A ROTARIAN, I will

1) Act with integrity and high ethical standards in my personal and professional life

2) Deal fairly with others and treat them and their occupations with respect

3) Use my professional skills through Rotary to: mentor young people, help those with special needs, and improve people’s quality of life in my community and in the world

4) Avoid behavior that refl ects adversely on Rotary or other Rotarians

SERVICE ABOVE SELF

8 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

“We hope this issue will again win your admiration as you read about the gumption, big-heartedness, and joy Rotarians bring to life.”

jan18-08-editors note-1.indd 4 11/14/17 10:19 AM

9

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“Busy day,” Lamont Clemons says, “and those are the best kind. ” He’s driving to the site of the MGM Springfield, a giant casino under construction in Springfield, Mass. Clemons’ family business, S-Cel-O, is painting much of the 125,000-square-foot palace for MGM. It’s just one of numerous work contracts competing for his attention with a half-dozen civic duties, including his new role as the first African-American president in the 102-year history of the Rotary Club of Springfield. “I feel blessed. Excited. Ecstatic, even, ” he says. He grew up in one of Springfield’s poorest, toughest neighborhoods. “Pretty humble, ” he says of his youth, “but I was lucky to have a hardworking mother and father.” Clemons attended private, mostly white Cathedral High School and learned to get along with people of all sorts – a skill he has used to help diversify the Rotary club. Springfield’s 56-member club boasts a growing number of Latino and African- American Rotarians. Along with his Rotary duties, Clemons runs the city’s entrepreneur program for teens and sits on the board of the local YMCA. “I want to create bridges, ” he says. “Bridges leading young people and minorities to the business world. There aren’t all that many role models for minorities in Springfield. I’m hoping to be one. ” Clemons touches a new ring on his left hand, a wedding band. He spent a recent weekend getting married. Of course he was back at work on Monday morning. – KEVIN COOK

LAMONT CLEMONSRotary Club of Springfield, Mass.

Bridge builder

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Toronto sightseeing

C O N V E N T I O N

D I S P A T C H E S

Schools get help with clean water and hygiene

A n estimated 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation facilities that hygienically separate human excreta from human contact. Rotarian Alfredo Pérez knows the schools in Guatemala and neighboring countries can use all the help available in this area.

So, when Carlos Flores, then governor of District 4250 (Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras), asked Pérez in 2016 to get involved with the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools Target Challenge, he quickly accepted. As the name suggests, the pilot program focuses on providing clean water and sanitation systems, and equipping teachers to educate students on better hygiene practices.

“The objective of the project is to develop good hygiene habits in children,” Pérez says. “By reducing absenteeism due to diseases that are acquired due to lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools, we can increase their academic development. Training teachers to help children develop good hygiene habits is key.”

Indeed, more than a year after the effort began, the Rotary Club of Valle de Guatemala, where Pérez is a member, has improved conditions for as many as 1,793 children from 10 schools in the town of Escuintla, about 40 miles south of Guatemala City, the capital.

Corporación Energías de Guatemala, an energy company, backed the project with a $62,000 grant. Pérez’s club and the Rotary Club of Escuintla worked with local public health officials and urban and rural planners. The project provided toilets, washing stations, and water tanks, and also supported training for teachers so that the facilities would be put to good use.

This year, members of Pérez’s club have a budget of $30,000 for work at five more schools. Pérez is giving talks around his country in hopes of recruiting more clubs to take up the chal-

lenge in their communities, and he’s seeking international partners to help expand the program.Educators tell Rotarians that fewer students now miss school because of gastrointestinal and re-

spiratory illnesses, which sometimes spread by poor hand washing or lack of safe water. –JENNY ESPINO

$15 millionAmount invested in WASH projects worldwide by The

Rotary Foundation since 2010

5.3 million Number of Guatemalans

who lack access to basic sanitation

21 Percent of Guatemalans

without access to soap and water for hand washing

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W hen you’re in Toronto for the 2018 Rotary Interna-tional Convention, from

23 to 27 June, build some time into your schedule to see the sights of this beautiful city. The iconic CN Tower is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Toronto, welcoming about 1.5 million visitors each year. The tower has two observation areas and two restaurants, all of which provide breathtaking views. For the adventurous, the tower also offers a hands-free walk around the outside ledge of its main pod, which is 1,168 feet above ground.

For something easier on the nerves, stroll through St. Lawrence Market, which has dozens of vendors selling food products and specialty items, or the Distillery District, a re-stored historic area that has been turned into an entertain-ment and shopping district.

You could also visit Gothic Revival-style mansion Casa Loma. Built in 1914 by a Cana-dian multimillionaire, it has almost 100 decorated rooms as well as secret passages and 5 acres of estate gardens. Once a private residence, the “House on the Hill” is now a museum and hospitality venue.

To enjoy nature, visit High Park – a huge green space with sunken gardens, hanging basket gardens, nature trails, and streams – or take a ferry to the Toronto Islands, which have meadows, woods, la-goons, and sandy beaches.

– RANDI DRUZIN

Register for the 2018 Rotary Convention in Toronto at riconvention.org.

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THE ROTARIAN: How do you get the vessels and the volunteers for Sea Mercy’s programs?HACKETT: The people with the vessels are either private own-ers or the captains who repre-sent private owners. Most are people who have chased the dream of sailing the South Pa-cific or sailing around the world. For the medical person-

nel, it’s a working vacation: Doctors, nurses, physician as-sistants, pharmacists, dentists, and optometrists come out and join us. Even some medical stu-dents want to participate. It’s a two-week period. We travel to anywhere from five to nine re-mote islands. We set up a clinic onshore, and they treat patients throughout the day or over a

two-day period. When we’re all done, we start sailing to the next remote island.TR: How did disaster relief fit into the original model?HACKETT: We thought once ev-ery five years we would be re-sponding to, perhaps, a cyclone. Cyclone Ian hit Tonga in 2014, and we sent two ves-sels. We were the only vessels

that could reach these remote islands; big merchant ships can’t get in, because of the nar-row entrances and shallow la-goons. Then Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu in 2015, so we sent eight vessels to Vanuatu. We realized we had to get in front of this and created our first re-sponse league. We contacted owners of small yachts and the superyachts, and built a net-work just in case something else happens. When Cyclone Winston hit Fiji in 2016, we had 60 vessels that responded. We were the first on the scene and the last ones to leave.TR: How did this expand into economic development?HACKETT: It started with diabe-tes. The rate of diabetes in the South Pacific is one of the highest in the world. A lot of the health issues are either di-rectly or indirectly a result of diabetes. The [Western] diet that we have introduced to them has changed their whole culture. On the remote islands they don’t have access to the drugs to treat it. And the farm-ers are moving away, and they’re sending money home. Instead of working and farming and fishing, people are buying sugar and processed flour and rice and noodles. In our health clin-ics, we realized, we’re treating the symptoms but not the un-derlying causes. So we are shift-ing to more of an economic development, agriculturally based program. We’re budget-ing it, gearing up, meeting with the leadership, and getting the approval. It’s been a really amazing journey, but we’re very excited about seeing the impact it’s going to have on these re-mote islands. –NIKKI KALLIO

R ichard and Stephanie Hackett began chartering sailboats and yachts to travel the South Pacific more than 20 years ago. Seeing the problems of getting health care to remote islands, Richard Hackett, past president of the Rotary Club of Fern Ridge (Veneta), Ore., came up

with the idea of charter sailboats helping to provide health care and disaster relief. Sea Mercy, the nonprofit he and his wife founded, started with one volunteer vessel in 2013 and now has more than 100 yachts on call, with initiatives to address health care, disaster response, educa-tion and training, and economic development.

T H E T A L E N T A R O U N D T H E T A B L E

Yachts bring aid to remote South Pacific islands

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by B R A D W E B B E R

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Rotary projects around the globeWorld Roundup

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1 ] SPAINNestled between the famed beaches of the Costa del Sol and Gibraltar, La Línea de la Concepción is plagued by tobacco smuggling, drugs, and alcohol abuse. For homeless Spaniards, the Nuevo Hogar Betania shelter offers a haven, if temporary, from the crime-ridden streets. Rotarians have played a critical role in making this a vibrant facility that houses up to 70 people and feeds hundreds more.

The Rotary Club of Marbella-Guadalmina led a project, begun in 2013 and completed in 2016 with the Rotary clubs of Ceuta, Gibraltar, and Benahavís-Costa del Sol, to outfi t the shelter with about $30,000 worth of solar panels to heat water. For many clients, the “New Home” offers the only available shower. “Hogar Betania feeds 260 people, including abused women and their children, victims of human

traffi cking, and ex-convicts being re-socialized,” says Martina Spann, a member of the Marbella-based club.

Marbella Rotarians have pledged their continued support. During the holidays, club members deliver carloads of foodstuffs for residents, proffering rays of hope in a hard place in Andalucía.

The unemployment rate in La Línea de la Concepción, 35%, is double the Spanish average.

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Americans generated more than 250 million tons of trash – about 28% of it metal, plastic, or wood – in 2013.

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2 ] UNITED STATESTinkerers in the Rotary Club of Nashoba Valley in east-central Massachusetts ran a free repair clinic in September, as they have since 2014, mending garments, fi xing lamps, righting reluctant air conditioners, and more. “We set up shop in a school cafeteria,” explains club member Ray Pfau, “we invite people to bring things that are broken, and we try to fi x them for free.” Pfau boasts that two-thirds of the items typically regain their utility. “The guests can keep using the things, we save them money, and we keep [trash] out of the landfi ll – all to avoid this throw-it-out-and-buy-new culture.”

5 ] SOUTH AFRICATo help guide a sports day last May proving that people with intellectual and physical disabilities can participate as ably as any athlete, the Rotary Club of Sandton called on Interactors. One hundred youths and adults drawn from six schools and care centers in the Johannesburg area took part in contests of soccer, volleyball, bocce, and tug-of-war. “Our Rotary club is committed to serving all in need in the community, but especially those who are vulnerable and marginalized,” says club member Edna Mugaa-Mutua. “Spending the day bringing smiles to children and adults with disabilities reminds us, and our Interactors, that in giving we receive so much more.”

4 ] THAILANDSince its inception in 2016, the Rotary Club of Phrae’s mobile medical mission has adminis-tered health screenings and on-site treatment of basic ailments to about 400 people in fi ve villages in northern Thailand. About two dozen volunteers at a time – half of them Rotarians, including a pharmacist, a nurse, and the club’s president, Dr. Natthanin Sestawanich – converge on the remote outposts, says Naratta Seenamngern, a past president. “The project aims to provide basic physical checkups such as hypertension screening, blood sugar screening, body mass index, and dental care.” Lessons in disease prevention and cardiopulmonary resuscitation augment the visits, the signature initiative of the club.

3 ] PERURotarians in the southern Peruvian city of Tacna got cooking to celebrate their nation’s indepen-dence, raising $550 for End Polio Now with a three-day gastronomic fair. All clubs in the municipality – Tacna, Caplina, Miculla Tacna, San Pedro de Tacna, and Takana-Tacna – dished up local specialties including picante a la tacneña during the festival, 28-30 July. Besides fundraising, heightening clubs’ profi les, and satisfying appetites, the gathering let local Rotarians fi ll up on fellowship, says Carlos Miranda Ceballos, president of the Rotary Club of Tacna, who adds that the function was the fi rst to bring members of all fi ve clubs together.

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On a sunny July morning, two dozen preschool children from Brown

Bear Daycare inspect a bed of milkweed plants for monarch butterfly eggs, holding magni-fying glasses to the underside of leaves in search of the tiny, off-white objects.

Their curiosity stoked, the five-year-olds and their teach-ers move to the shade of a large tree to listen to a master gardener explain the role these butterflies play in gar-dens. The Brown Bear kids visit the community garden in Harvard, Ill., every Monday from spring to fall to learn about garden-related topics and even help out.

“They get to taste the veg-etables, some that they have never even seen. They get to

experience what it is like to plant a garden from the plant-ing to the picking to the eat-ing,” says Sheila Henson, executive director of the day care center and a member of the Rotary Club of Harvard. “At the end of the summer, we have a parent night where the parents see the different things their children have been involved with.”

With the goals of alleviat-ing hunger and educating the community, master gardeners from University of Illinois Extension planted the garden in 2001 on a half-acre parcel donated by the city and adja-cent to the public library. Over the years, the master garden-ers have enlisted the support of many businesses, organiza-tions, and clubs, including the

Rotary Club of Harvard, mak-ing the project a community-wide effort.

As many as 250 needy fam-ilies benefit from the 10,000 pounds of vegetables that are grown and donated every year to the local food pantry. The fresh produce serves as a safety net for many families. Roughly a quarter of the com-munity’s 9,200 residents live below the federal poverty line, a result of the limited employ-ment opportunities in small farm towns across Illinois. The already fragile economy was further affected by the closing of a Motorola plant here in 2003 after only seven years of operation.

“In this community, the only way we can get by is by helping each other,” says Dave

Decker, site director for the food pantry. “Everybody needs a little help now and then.”

The Rotary Club of Har-vard took on the project seven years ago, looking for a way to address hunger and help the community. With only seven members, the club has had an impact far beyond its size, amplifying its efforts by work-ing with the master gardeners and other groups.

“Harvard is definitely a bet-ter place because of the mem-bers of this club, and that is what keeps us going,” says Mike Morris, the club’s president. “It’s the expertise of the master gar-deners, individuals in the com-munity, farmers who help, and the education provided through the day care that makes this an amazing team effort.”

In Illinois town, a tiny club has an oversize impact

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The Rotary club has pro-vided $400 to buy seeds and starter plants from a local nurs-ery every year since 2011. It also purchased plastic drip irri-gation tubing and fertilizer valves after a drought threat-ened the garden in 2012. This year, it provided a letter of sup-port needed by the master gar-deners to secure a $5,000 grant from the McHenry County Community Foundation for an organic compost mix that will add nutrients back to the soil and help keep weeds at bay.

During his year as president in 2016-17, Morris made the garden his special focus and enlisted every member of the club to help with planting, weeding, and harvesting. Hen-son also recruited day care employees to volunteer.

For planting, says Dale Nelmes, one of the master gar-deners who volunteer every week, “we need everybody. Many of us master gardeners are up there in years and can’t get down on our hands and knees like we used to. I was so impressed with Rotary and Sheila, who brought all these young volunteers in. It was incredible how much we accomplished.”

The Harvard Rotarians also used district grant money to buy a new freezer, which allows the food pantry to store vege-tables longer. Last winter, Mor-ris secured another district grant for $2,000, which, when combined with $5,000 from club funds, funded seven weeks of food deliveries from the Northern Illinois Food Bank. A mobile unit from the food bank set up at Brown Bear Daycare once a month from

October to April, each time distributing 9,000 pounds of meat, vegetables, boxed goods, breads, and fruits.

Morris says growing up on a farm in northwestern Illinois played a big part in his interest in fighting hunger.

“I know we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody in the country,” he says. “It’s just a matter of the logistics of getting it from the farm to their table.”

On a July morning, about 20 people – Rotarians, master gar-deners, and community volun-teers – are scattered among the 14 rows, each 125 feet long, pulling weeds and picking veg-

etables. The garden is behind schedule this year because of heavy rains, and today’s harvest is smaller than normal. At the food pantry, Nelmes weighs each crate: 9 pounds of broc-coli, 6 pounds of kohlrabi, 8 pounds of peppers, and 22 pounds of zucchini. Later in the season, many more hands will be needed to harvest.

Reina Montes began volun-teering at the garden after a back injury forced her to stop work-ing temporarily and she had to go to the pantry to supplement her groceries. When she learned about the garden, she persuaded her daughter, Elizabeth San-chez, to join her on Mondays

to help plant, pick, and weed.Montes moved to Harvard

from Mexico City more than 20 years ago and fell in love with the small town. Her daughter now has two college-age daughters of her own, whom she hopes to teach the value of community service.

“Thanks to the garden, we can feed people who can’t afford to buy fresh food at the super-market,” says Sanchez. “I believe it is everybody’s respon-sibility to help the community. If our children see that there is unity, love, and support, they are going to do the same thing. We are leaving them a legacy.”

–ARNOLD R. GRAHLRO

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OPPOSITE: Club President Mike Morris gets down in the dirt at the garden. THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Harvard residents Elizabeth Sanchez, left, and her mother, Reina Montes, volunteer in the garden; the kids learn how bees make honey; a teacher from Brown Bear Daycare shares the secrets of planting; Dave Decker works with food pantry volunteers.

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I N B R I E F

News, studies, and recent research

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Adults rank bullying and cyberbullying as leading health concerns for children nationwide, according to the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital’s annual poll. Not enough exercise, unhealthy eating, drug abuse, and internet safety were next on the top 10 list. When parents were asked about greatest concerns for their own children, the highest proportion cited bullying/cyberbullying, internet safety, stress, and safety (car accidents and school violence). Black parents cited racial inequity and safety as top health concerns for their children.

Child deaths due to diarrhea decreased by one-third between 2005 and 2015, according to a study published in The Lancet. But in some of the world’s poorest nations, rates still remain high among children under age five. In 2015, 499,000 children globally died from diarrheal disease. India and Nigeria accounted for 42 percent of those deaths, which are most common in countries with poor access to clean water, sanitation, and urgent medical care.

Consumers buy products with lots of reviews over products with fewer, even when more-reviewed products have the same low online ratings. According to findings published in Psychological Science, study participants who were asked to choose between pairs of cellphone cases, shown online with an average user rating and number of reviews for each case, routinely picked the one with more reviews. This bias toward choosing more popular products sometimes led consumers to make very poor decisions, say researchers.

Eighty-year-olds are as streetwise as 20-year-olds when it comes to detecting threats posed by strangers, says psychologist Liam Satchell of the University of Portsmouth in the UK. The findings, published in Europe’s Journal of Psychology, are from the third in a series of studies, which show that feelings of threat and intimidation – gut instincts – are reliable in judging who poses a danger and that this ability improves toward age 18 and doesn’t decline with age. In the study of 39 people aged 59 to 91, and 87 people aged 20 to 28, there was little difference in accurately judging threats. –ANNE STEIN

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bought a $300 popcorn machine and it was a hit every time at events,” recalls Cardwell. “We networked with other charities, es-pecially the Aldinga Giving Garden, which grows fresh fruit and vegetables for the needy. We didn’t just install a $580 rainwater tank that a hardware chain store donated; we put a huge poster on it about Rotary’s clean-water work overseas. Parents see it when they park to pick up their kids at the nearby school. ”

The charter members had the opportunity to start fresh. They wanted to build a club that would be welcoming to women and to people of all ages. And they wanted the focus to be on community service more than on meetings. They decided to limit meetings to twice monthly, on the first Thursday evening and the third Sunday afternoon, a schedule designed to suit more members with children. Guest speakers are invited to only a quarter of the meetings, and then because of direct relevance to club operations.

The club is about two-thirds female. “I look forward to more families getting involved with Rotary and to us changing the old images with new ones filled with diversity and love,” Cardwell says. And Huddleston didn’t want to build membership by poach-ing members from nearby clubs. Only three members are trans-fers from other clubs (including Huddleston).

“On the surface, fast-growing Seaford looks idyllic nestled between the vineyards and the coast,” Cardwell says. “But when you dig beneath the surface, you find food insecurity, domestic violence, homelessness, and youth disaffection – all areas for us to help.” The club organized a recent Seaside Walk on Suicide Prevention at nearby Onkaparinga that mustered 400 people and raised $7,000 for Australian Rotary Health.

HISTORY:One of Australia’s newest clubs, Seaford was chartered in November 2016. Seaford is a fast-growing suburb of Adelaide, and the club focuses on the needs of the expanding community. The club partici-pates in a “giving garden” where local schoolchildren and community members are welcome to take herbs, vegetables, and fruit when they need them, and locals can donate seeds, cuttings, and excess produce. The club also supports Breakfastbellies, a local charity that provides meals for children whose families are having trouble providing food.

The Rotary Club of Seaford was unusual from its inception. While most new clubs are sponsored by another club nearby, Seaford was built from scratch by District 9520. District mem-bership chair Mark Huddleston had been looking at demograph-ics in the Adelaide region and realized that the Seaford area south of the city was experiencing huge growth driven by a new exten-sion of a rail line and a new freeway. There were no service clubs in the area. Huddleston saw an opportunity.

When he approached Cecilie Cardwell, who immigrated to Aus-tralia from Norway in 2010 and had been a Rotaractor at Flinders University in Ade-laide, about chartering a new club, she embraced the chance to build a club for the 21st century.

They started a recruit-ment campaign that included fliers in mailboxes, posters, ads in the local newspaper, phone calls, strong presence at community events, and a social media blitz. “We

CLUB INNOVATION Rotary Club of Seaford, Australia

Charter date: Nov. 26, 2016Original membership: 21Current membership: 28

Top: New member Deborah Lawrence (left) is welcomed to the club by Hännäh Seegärs.

Bottom: At local events, the club often runs a booth serving grilled sausages.

A club built from scratch focuses on service

INNOVATION:The club emphasizes service to the community, with only two meetings per month. The venue for meetings rotates, sometimes in a Rotarian’s home and some-times in a local restaurant, hotel, bookstore, or coffee shop. The meetings are informal.

What is your club doing to reinvent itself? Email club.innovations@rotary.org.

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Perambalur, India To celebrate the centennial year of The Rotary Foundation, Rotary District 3000, the Rotary Club of Perambalur New Gen, the Roever Group of Educational Institutions, and Sri Ramakrishna Group of Educational Institutions went big. Very big. They gathered 16,550 students from local schools and colleges to spell out an inspiring message. The gathering was certified by Guinness World Records as the “largest human sentence.” SRIDHAR BHARATHY, a member of the Rotary Club of Tiruchirapalli Diamond City, used a drone to capture the moment from 2,000 feet up. “Everyone felt a lift in their self-esteem to be a part of a worldwide record,” Bharathy says.

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STOW AWAY FOR FUNGasparilla BallRotary Club of Tampa, Fla.Local charities Every year, Tampa Bay hosts Gasparilla season, three months of pirate-themed parties, festivals, and parades, including an elaborate “pirate invasion” re-enactment. The Tampa club has joined the fun with its inaugural Gasparilla Ball, a shipboard costume gala. So dig out that eyepatch and get ready to walk the plank!

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Tell us about your club’s event. Write to rotarian@rotary.org with “calendar” in the subject line.

RESOLUTIONS ON HOLDTaste of Ridgefi eldRotary Club of Ridgefi eld, Conn.Local charitiesNow that your New Year’s resolutions are broken, it’s time to let loose a little at the 19th annual Taste of Ridgefi eld. Sample cuisine from many local restaurants and sip selections from area wine shops.

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MAKE A DIFFERENCEKeep India Polio FreeRotary Club of Agra Taj Mahal, IndiaIndia’s polio immunization efforts Rotary club volunteers from around the world make their way to Agra, India, at the start of 2018 to help administer lifesaving polio immunization drops. What better way to begin the new year than to participate in the world-wide effort to eradicate polio?

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6thCHOOSE YOUR ADVENTUREMission 10 RaceRotary Club of Hollister, Calif.Local charities This race offers several running choices for those who are looking to complete a half-marathon, set a personal record in a 10-mile run, log their fi rst 5K, or just participate in a one-mile fun run. Start 2018 strong with a run through historic San Juan Bautista.

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OFF-ROAD ADVENTURERotary New Year Trail Run 5KRotary clubs of Somerset and Somerset-Pulaski County, Ky.Local charitiesIf you prefer to take the road less traveled, then this race is for you. You run one mile on the road and two miles on scenic trails. You can also jog or walk; all speeds are welcome.

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Rotary unites problem solvers around the globe behind one goal: to do more good. Our members are driven to bring communities together to create lasting change. Connecting to

make things better — that’s what people of action do. Learn more at Rotary.org.

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T he first rule of the Rotary golf event is: You talk and talk about the Rotary golf event.

You persuade local merchants to sign up as tee sponsors, raffle spon-sors, or silent auction sponsors. You talk every golfer you know into play-ing. In the run-up to the tourna-ment, you post signs and hand out fliers. In the last days you watch the weather reports, employing what-ever voodoo you have to ward off low-pressure systems.

Then the fun starts. Watch out down the fairway – I’ve got my bad-drive warning ready to go: “Service beFOOORE self! ”

For many Rotary clubs, the an-nual golf event is one of the year’s biggest fundraisers. In September, my Massachu-setts club held its 22nd annual Northamp-ton Rotary Golf Tournament, a day the players might have enjoyed even more if not for the worries that bedeviled so many of them:

How will I play?What if I embarrass myself?Why is golf so damn difficult? You can blame the Scots for making the

game so hard. Long ago they made the hole a mere 4¼ inches across and banned do-overs. Since then, golfers have spent too

much time kicking themselves and cursing their luck, and too little time heeding Ben Hogan’s advice to stop and smell the flow-ers along the fairway.

Luckily for me, I have hit so many lousy shots in more than 40 years as a golfer that I have developed a sort of immunity to the jitters. Here’s my secret: One day I noticed that everyone on the course was as nervous as I was. Everybody else was so worried about his or her own game, they barely no-ticed how I was hitting the ball.

Golf got more relaxing after that. No easier, but a lot more fun.

Joining my foursome at the first tee, I saw that I was the only guy in our group. We were the Lemon Drops: Julee Clement, a corporate comptroller and treasurer of our Ro-tary club; Kris Armstrong, recently retired from a career in the timber business; Lesley Birk, an executive with the Boy Scouts of America; and me. As we donned yellow T-shirts, Lesley mentioned that it was her first round of golf ever. “I’m not nervous, ” she said bravely. “I’m here to help the team. ” She had a tattoo on her leg, a quote from A Midsum-mer Night’s Dream: “And though she be but little, she is fierce. ”

We were playing a scramble, a format that allows every member of a team to hit a drive, then pick the best one and play again from there. Your group gets four tries for every shot. A scramble makes for low scores and plenty of team spirit. Even so, we found ourselves playing through a forest. Kris, who knows how to cut a tree trunk so that the tree falls away from you, wished she had her chain saw. But we kept swinging and even made a couple of birdies no one expected from the Lemon Drops.

On one of those holes, I swung as hard as I could. My ball zoomed straight into a sand trap, then hopped out to the edge of

Tee partyGolf is so much more fun – and less stressful – as a team sport

by KEVIN COOK

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I N B R I E F

News, studies, and recent research

up front

Five portions of fruit and vegetables are great for your health, but 10 a day are even better. Imperial College London scientists analyzed 95 studies and confirmed that the five-a-day recommendation reduces the risk of heart attack, stroke, and cancer. But if people doubled that intake, an estimated 7.8 million premature deaths worldwide could potentially be prevented each year. One small banana or 3 heaping tablespoons of cooked vegetables count as a portion.

Patients of rude surgeons experience more medical complications in the 30 days after surgery than patients who rate their surgeon’s behavior as respectful. Complications include infection, pneumonia, blood clots, and stroke, according to a team led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers, who studied more than 32,000 patients at seven health systems. The disrespectful behavior affects other surgical team members, who are less likely to speak up about safety and other issues when working with that surgeon, say study authors.

More seniors are taking dangerous combinations of prescription medications that affect brain health, according to a JAMA Internal Medicine study. In rural areas, the combination of opioids, antidepressants, tranquilizers, and antipsychotics taken by those ages 65 and older has more than tripled in the past decade. Among seniors overall, the number has doubled. Combining opioids with certain tranquilizers increases the risk of death; nearly half taking these combinations weren’t formally diagnosed with a mental health condition, insomnia, or pain.

Cellphones can be used to show family and health care workers how to treat post-stroke patients in remote areas where health care is limited. The study in Journal of the Neurological Sciences, by a Peruvian physician looking at rural Peru, proposed providing stroke rehabilitation information via cellphone, including graphics and video, on topics including how to move a patient and how to maintain flexibility and strength with exercise. Stroke affects 62 million people annually, and in developing nations rehabilitation care is often limited or nonexistent. –ANNE STEIN

jul17-upfront-C-v3.indd 18 5/3/17 10:33 AM

Share your club’s great new ideas. Email us at

club.innovations@rotary.org.

Reinvent our wheel

What is your club doing? In coming months, The Rotarian will be showcasing:• NEW MEMBERSHIP MODELS• WAYS TO ENGAGE THE COMMUNITY• PROJECT IDEAS• FUNDRAISERS

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the green. (Sometimes the golf gods give you a break so you won’t take up tennis.) Of course I duffed the chip shot. But Julee ran her chip to the lip of the cup and we tapped in the putt. That’s how you ham-and-egg your way to a score: When one player messes up, his teammates make up for his blunder.

And that’s the charm of a scramble: It’s teamwork in action. In fact, ham-and-egging makes for a good Rotary metaphor – we combine our efforts for a better outcome than any of us could achieve on our own.

There were 44 golfers in action that day. Club President Phil Sullivan had pulled into the parking lot before dawn. Sullivan wasn’t playing today – he had had part of a lung removed a few months before. Still, he spent an hour unloading tables, chairs, traffic cones, a couple of jumbo umbrellas, a U.S. flag, and a Rotary-wheel road sign that weighed approximately 6 tons. His doctors would have winced to see him huffing and sweating, but Sullivan rests when his work is done and no sooner.

By breakfast time, he had plopped into a folding chair to greet the first golfers. Some resembled the pros you see on TV. They carried binocular range finders and shiny clubs that made my Sunday bag full of old sticks look like the garage-sale reject it was. Yet the Lemon Drops hung tough as the day went on. At the seventh hole, a long par 3 where a hole-in-one would win a new car, I swung hard again and would have made an ace if the hole had been the size of the Arizona Meteor Crater. Kris, swinging a red persimmon driver, knocked one to the green and we made par. Don’t look now, fancy golfers, but you’ve got four Lemon Drops sneaking up behind you.

As the group’s veteran golfer, I kept get-ting asked for swing tips. Fortunately, the golf swing is pretty simple. All you have to do is keep your left arm straight and turn your left shoulder under your chin. Tuck your right elbow into your side. Keep your eye on the ball as you bring the club back until the shaft is parallel to the ground, then start down toward the ball, shifting your weight over your left knee as your hips turn … OK, maybe it’s not so simple.

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To Be Determined⅔ v - 4.4375" × 9.5"

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DEVELOPSSPATIAL SKILLS!

SOLO OR 2PERSON PLAY!

ZOBRIST CUBE20,000 Puzzles in a Box!

33 POLYCUBE PIECES & 52 PAGE CODE BOOK

1 (855) 962-7478 www.ZobristCube.com Ages 6 - Adult

Never get bored by a cube assembly puzzle again. Each code in the code book specifies a different set of pieces that assemble into a cube. The codes are sorted by difficulty from easy to hard. There are even two sections of simple puzzles for children. Extra pieces allow two player competition, all packed in a beautiful box.

TM

2 JUNE 2018CHICAGO, USAZONES 28 AND 29rotaryliteracy.org

BASIC EDUCATION AND LITERACY Worldwide, more than 250 million children live in regions affected by violence. In Chicago, more than 1,500 youths under age 17 have been shot since 2011.

The conference will explore the relationship of education, peace, and the role of youths and educational programming in mitigating confl ict. Join community members, education professionals, students, and other thought leaders to explore strategies for empowering young people and communities to reduce violence through safe and quality education.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT rotary.org/presidential-conferences

P A G E B L E E D

ARRIVE CURIOUS.LEAVE INSPIRED.

Always Free | Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–5pmNext to Seattle Center | 440 5th Ave N | (206) 709-3100 x7100gatesvc.org |

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the green. (Sometimes the golf gods give you a break so you won’t take up tennis.) Of course I duffed the chip shot. But Julee ran her chip to the lip of the cup and we tapped in the putt. That’s how you ham-and-egg your way to a score: When one player messes up, his teammates make up for his blunder.

And that’s the charm of a scramble: It’s teamwork in action. In fact, ham-and-egging makes for a good Rotary metaphor – we combine our efforts for a better outcome than any of us could achieve on our own.

There were 44 golfers in action that day. Club President Phil Sullivan had pulled into the parking lot before dawn. Sullivan wasn’t playing today – he had had part of a lung removed a few months before. Still, he spent an hour unloading tables, chairs, traffic cones, a couple of jumbo umbrellas, a U.S. flag, and a Rotary-wheel road sign that weighed approximately 6 tons. His doctors would have winced to see him huffing and sweating, but Sullivan rests when his work is done and no sooner.

By breakfast time, he had plopped into a folding chair to greet the first golfers. Some resembled the pros you see on TV. They carried binocular range finders and shiny clubs that made my Sunday bag full of old sticks look like the garage-sale reject it was. Yet the Lemon Drops hung tough as the day went on. At the seventh hole, a long par 3 where a hole-in-one would win a new car, I swung hard again and would have made an ace if the hole had been the size of the Arizona Meteor Crater. Kris, swinging a red persimmon driver, knocked one to the green and we made par. Don’t look now, fancy golfers, but you’ve got four Lemon Drops sneaking up behind you.

As the group’s veteran golfer, I kept get-ting asked for swing tips. Fortunately, the golf swing is pretty simple. All you have to do is keep your left arm straight and turn your left shoulder under your chin. Tuck your right elbow into your side. Keep your eye on the ball as you bring the club back until the shaft is parallel to the ground, then start down toward the ball, shifting your weight over your left knee as your hips turn … OK, maybe it’s not so simple.

2 6 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

To Be Determined⅔ v - 4.4375" × 9.5"

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P A G E B L E E D

ARRIVE CURIOUS.LEAVE INSPIRED.

Always Free | Tuesday–Saturday, 10am–5pmNext to Seattle Center | 440 5th Ave N | (206) 709-3100 x7100gatesvc.org |

Single Page Conformer ROTARIAN.indd 1 9/5/17 1:49 PMJAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 27 11/16/17 6:11 PM

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Maybe that’s why there are only a couple of hundred humans getting rich playing golf. The rest of us, if we’re smart, settle for hitting a good shot now and then.

It’s hard to relax when you’re making your golf debut in a tournament with cash prizes at stake, but Lesley was full of team spirit, playing a bright yellow ball that matched our T-shirts. Her trademark feroc-ity came out on the greens, where she smacked a few putts that were still picking up speed as they reached the parking lot. Through it all, she never complained. She had intuited the secret of social golf: Every-body wants an upbeat partner.

Still, it’s no fun when the team never uses your ball. Lesley hit a few good shots, but somebody always hit a better one. It went that way until the last hole. By then it was clear that we weren’t going to win, but we could still post a score that raised eyebrows. All that stood between us and a Lemon Drops-record score was a short putt. Just 2 or 3 feet, the kind of putt you would call a gimme in a casual round. But they don’t have gimmes at the Northamp-ton Rotary Golf Tournament.

Julee missed the putt. Kris missed. I stepped up and confidently missed.

It was up to Lesley. She didn’t have a putter of her own, so she used Julee’s. She peered down at the ball, took a breath, pulled the putter back, and smacked the putt right in the hole.

While we won no cars or cash prizes, we had our moments. More important, our club cleared $6,000 for its causes: our an-nual holiday party for underprivileged chil-dren; the local Survival Center food bank; the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; and the club’s ongoing effort to provide clean water for families in Guatemala. Few golfers ever played for better reasons. But when I think back on the 22nd annual Northampton Rotary Golf Tournament, what I’ll remem-ber is the 19th hole. That’s where the four of us lifted beers with twists of lemon, toasting Lesley’s putt. n

Kevin Cook is a former editor of Golf Mag-azine. His latest book is Electric October.

jan18-column-v4.indd 28 11/16/17 5:30 PM

INVEST YOURSELF

There’s an opportunity to become a member of The Rotary Foundation’s Investment CommitteeThe Rotary Foundation’s Investment CommitteeThe Rotary Foundation’s Investment CommitteeThe Rotary Foundation’s Investment Committeestarting 1 July 2018. Candidates must be Rotarians, starting 1 July 2018. Candidates must be Rotarians, starting 1 July 2018. Candidates must be Rotarians, starting 1 July 2018. Candidates must be Rotarians,

preferably with a CFA or CAIA designation, be fluent preferably with a CFA or CAIA designation, be fluent preferably with a CFA or CAIA designation, be fluent preferably with a CFA or CAIA designation, be fluent preferably with a CFA or CAIA designation, be fluent in English, and be a resident of North America. in English, and be a resident of North America. in English, and be a resident of North America. in English, and be a resident of North America. in English, and be a resident of North America.

CANDIDATES SHOULD CONTACT:CANDIDATES SHOULD CONTACT:CANDIDATES SHOULD CONTACT:CANDIDATES SHOULD CONTACT:CANDIDATES SHOULD CONTACT:CANDIDATES SHOULD CONTACT:Eric Jones, Rotary’s Chief Investment Officer Eric Jones, Rotary’s Chief Investment Officer Eric Jones, Rotary’s Chief Investment Officer Eric Jones, Rotary’s Chief Investment Officer Eric Jones, Rotary’s Chief Investment Officer Eric Jones, Rotary’s Chief Investment Officer at (847) 866-3015 or Eric.Jonesat (847) 866-3015 or Eric.Jonesat (847) 866-3015 or Eric.Jones@@Rotary.org.Rotary.org.Rotary.org.@Rotary.org.@@Rotary.org.@

FIND A CLUBANYWHERE IN THE WORLD!

Get Rotary’s free Club Locator app and fi nd a meeting wherever you go!

www.rotary.org/clublocator

Order today at shop.rotary.org

• GET INSPIRED Read about 100 years of doing good and take action to be part of the next century.

• SEND AS A GIFT Encourage your loved ones to get involved.

• EDUCATE YOUR COMMUNITY Inspire the next generation of humanitarians by donating copies to your local library and schools.

A little inspiration goes a long way

JAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 28 11/16/17 6:11 PM

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Maybe that’s why there are only a couple of hundred humans getting rich playing golf. The rest of us, if we’re smart, settle for hitting a good shot now and then.

It’s hard to relax when you’re making your golf debut in a tournament with cash prizes at stake, but Lesley was full of team spirit, playing a bright yellow ball that matched our T-shirts. Her trademark feroc-ity came out on the greens, where she smacked a few putts that were still picking up speed as they reached the parking lot. Through it all, she never complained. She had intuited the secret of social golf: Every-body wants an upbeat partner.

Still, it’s no fun when the team never uses your ball. Lesley hit a few good shots, but somebody always hit a better one. It went that way until the last hole. By then it was clear that we weren’t going to win, but we could still post a score that raised eyebrows. All that stood between us and a Lemon Drops-record score was a short putt. Just 2 or 3 feet, the kind of putt you would call a gimme in a casual round. But they don’t have gimmes at the Northamp-ton Rotary Golf Tournament.

Julee missed the putt. Kris missed. I stepped up and confidently missed.

It was up to Lesley. She didn’t have a putter of her own, so she used Julee’s. She peered down at the ball, took a breath, pulled the putter back, and smacked the putt right in the hole.

While we won no cars or cash prizes, we had our moments. More important, our club cleared $6,000 for its causes: our an-nual holiday party for underprivileged chil-dren; the local Survival Center food bank; the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; and the club’s ongoing effort to provide clean water for families in Guatemala. Few golfers ever played for better reasons. But when I think back on the 22nd annual Northampton Rotary Golf Tournament, what I’ll remem-ber is the 19th hole. That’s where the four of us lifted beers with twists of lemon, toasting Lesley’s putt. n

Kevin Cook is a former editor of Golf Mag-azine. His latest book is Electric October.

jan18-column-v4.indd 28 11/16/17 5:30 PM

Order today at shop.rotary.org

• GET INSPIRED Read about 100 years of doing good and take action to be part of the next century.

• SEND AS A GIFT Encourage your loved ones to get involved.

• EDUCATE YOUR COMMUNITY Inspire the next generation of humanitarians by donating copies to your local library and schools.

A little inspiration goes a long way

JAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 29 11/16/17 6:11 PM

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Ordinary Rotarians can find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.

In their own words, they tell us

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illustrations by R I C H ARD M I A

Ordinary Rotarians can find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.

In their own words, they tell us

what it’s like to...

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survive an atomic bomb JIRO KAWATSUMA Rotary Club of Tokyo Yoneyama Yuai, Japan

WHEN I FOUND MY SISTER, only her bones were left.

I had been told that she died in the bombing, so I went to identify her. But when I got to the bomb shelter where she had been hiding with a friend, I only saw two charred bodies. They were unrecog-nizable. Then I noticed that one had a gold tooth. I knew my sister didn’t have a crown on any of her teeth, so that’s how I knew which one was her. I gathered her bones and left her friend there for her own fam-ily to claim. My sister was 23. She had been a teacher.

Most people think they would like their loved one to live even an hour longer, but with this kind of bomb, I knew it was bet-ter to die right away. I was grateful that she had died immediately. That was the best I could hope for.

A B-29 bomber transported the atomic bomb they called “Little Boy ” on the

morning of 6 August 1945. My mother, my father, and my sister were in Hiro-shima when the bomb hit. I was 18 and a freshman at Hiroshima University, but to support the war effort I had been sent 70 kilometers away to Mihara to supervise a team of high school-age factory workers. We supplied fuel to fighter planes.

I was at work that morning when I found out that a huge bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. They said that fire was spreading through the city and that catastrophe was unavoidable. At the time, we didn’t know it was an atomic bomb. I got three days off from my supe-rior and rushed to the train station to get back to my family, but nobody knew when the trains would resume running. I waited at the station in Mihara the entire day and finally arrived in Hiroshima about 8 o’clock in the evening. That delayed train saved me from being exposed to the most

extreme concentration of radiation. As I walked to my parents’ house from

the station that night, I saw many dead horses, but no human corpses. Seventy-two years later, I learned from a TV pro-gram that the streets I had walked down that night were in an area where the first cleanup efforts had taken place. I had been spared from an even more terrifying sight.

Our house was destroyed, so I walked to the nearby university campus, where people were sleeping in tents. I found my parents there. My mother was bleeding from her head, but able to talk and other-wise OK. My father had been at his office, which was a very sturdy concrete building, so he didn’t have many injuries. I stayed in a tent with them that night. The next day, I went to claim my sister’s body.

My sister was a teacher at a girls high school. She was married, but her husband was away serving in the army, so she and

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survive an atomic bombher mother-in-law had rented a small house outside the city. Because so many air raids took place at night, it was common for people to rent homes outside the city for safety and commute into Hiroshima for work. But the day before the atomic bomb was dropped, my sister had a meeting, so she and her mother-in-law stayed at their house in the city that night. There was a bomb shelter under the first floor. When the air raid sirens went off, the two of them, along with one of my sister’s colleagues, went down there. But there wasn’t enough room. As the air raid sirens blared, my sis-ter’s mother-in-law ran 10 kilometers back to their rural house.

After I found my sister, I spent my third day of leave looking for her mother-in-law. I’ll never forget what I saw when I arrived at the house. She was lying face-up, and between her lips, there was a blood clot the size of a golf ball. She was

badly burned and had blood all over her face and chest. The radiation must have affected her, yet she still made it back to the house. I could tell she had suffered terribly. I still can’t bear to think about how badly she suffered before she died.

Later, I heard more stories of suffering. I heard about a group of schoolgirls who were so badly burned that their own mothers couldn’t identify them. But they could still talk, so one by one the children called out. “Mom, I am Keiko. ”

I’m 90 now, but what I experienced that day is still very clear in my mind. I believe there should not be a bomb like this. Hu-man beings should not have nuclear weap-ons. That’s why I have dedicated the rest of my life to peace.

After the bomb, they told us that noth-ing would grow in Hiroshima for 75 years. Everything was destroyed. But soon after, some trees started to bud. It gave us hope

that we could live on as well. Hope for a better, more peaceful world.

I recently moved from Hiroshima to Tokyo to have a new start and dedicate my last years to Rotary and peacebuilding. I have worked on a global grant to help fund the planting of saplings from trees that survived the atomic bomb. My goal is to plant these “peace trees ” around the world. During the 2017 Rotary Convention in Atlanta, I helped plant one, a ginkgo tree, at the Carter Center.

I know nuclear weapons are not going away. But maybe I can help spread a mes-sage of peace so that others never suffer as we did.

As told to Vanessa Glavinskas

Peace is one of Rotary’s six areas of focus. Learn about the different ways you can work

for peace at rotary.org/our-causes.

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WHEN I DECIDED TO BECOME A TEACHER for the deaf, I enrolled in a program at Fresno State. We started with 80 candidates, but by graduation we were down to 13. That’s how intense the program was.

People don’t realize the linguistic chal-lenges of deaf students, especially the trouble they have learning to read. Why is that? Because reading is a sound/symbol system. You don’t read with your eyes but with your ears. This is why blind stu-dents, for instance, read at the same level as their sighted peers, while deaf students might graduate from high school reading at a fourth-grade level.

When I started out, 38 years ago, teachers dealt with this problem using workarounds, trying to figure out how to get information to deaf students in ways that didn’t involve reading. Then I heard about a professor in England, David Wood, who was doing groundbreaking work with the deaf.

He was studying artificial intelligence, and he fed a computer all the rules of English and programmed it to generate language. But the language that came out was very strange. He passed it around to his colleagues and someone said, ‘That’s deaf language!’ And he had this epiph-any: A computer is deaf! A computer has no ear for language. So he realized that he would have to study how deaf people process language if he wanted to under-stand how computers process language. That’s how he came to form the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the Uni-versity of Nottingham.

I was at a party talking about all this

when a Rotarian overheard me and said, “You know, we have a program that sends teachers overseas to continue their education. ” I received an Ambassadorial Scholarship worth $26,000, more than I was earning at the time. The problem was Professor Wood. He told me, “We don’t train teachers of the deaf. ” So the Rotari-ans sent another Rotarian who worked in the university’s engineering department to talk to him, and he finally allowed me to come over and help with the research.

The technique that Professor Wood focused on, story retelling, had been in the educational toolbox for a long time. It’s based on a crucial insight, one that educators tend to overlook, which is that students develop language intrinsically. How we talk to ourselves in our own heads is really more important than the communication between two people.

We didn’t work with grammar books. Instead, we would have students read the same story over and over, then have them retell that story. The kids were confused at first, because they were so used to being with speech therapists and specialists who talked for them. But Professor Wood was very strict. You said nothing. You let the uncomfortable silence go. Eventually the kids would realize you were going to let them keep talking, and you could see the wheels turning. They would start to cor-rect themselves. It was amazing to watch them have that moment.

Now, education is never quick. It’s not like microwaving something. You have to be patient and consistent. But with my students, I started seeing things in writing

break the sound barrier

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and reading that I had never seen from deaf children before. And once I saw that, there was no going back. I realized that I could choose particular stories that would help with whatever clause structures that student was struggling to master. I also fig-ured out that stories with a lot of repeated dialogue were crucial, because when my students repeated the dialogue, you hear the music come into their voices and out would come these perfect sentences.

After using this method for several years, my graduating students went from reading at a fourth-grade level to a 10th-grade level, and some of them were exceed-ing that. Some graduated from college.

I just went back into teaching after be-ing retired for eight years. Once again the kids have very low reading levels, so I’m starting all over again.

I speak at reading conferences, and I al-ways get letters from teachers who tell me, “Oh, my gosh. What a game changer this method has been! ” So when I tell Rotar-ians how much the scholarship has meant, I’m not just blowing air up their skirts. It’s amazing how much the lives of these kids have been changed just by giving one year of education to one teacher of the deaf.

As told to Steve Almond

JEAN IRWIN HATFIELDRotary Club of Folsom, Calif.(as a teacher for the deaf)

Through The Rotary Foundation, clubs and districts can sponsor scholarships for

graduate students to study abroad in the field of education or any of Rotary’s other areas

of focus. They can also sponsor undergraduate or graduate students using district grants.

To learn more, visit rotary.org/scholarships.

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WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, not many peo-ple thought about going to college. So in 1952, when I graduated from Rahway High School in New Jersey, I knew what I was going to do: sign a contract to play baseball. I had made the varsity team for the Rahway Indians my fresh-man year, and in my sophomore year we won three major New Jersey champion-ships. I was All State my junior and se-nior year, and team captain in my senior year. I was feeling pretty good.

In those days there were no drafts, but scouts for the major league teams were going around and looking at high school players. I had become friendly with a scout for the Boston Red Sox, and I ended up signing with them. They sent me to up-state New York to play in the All Star Col-lege League. It was my first time ever on an airplane, and I found myself sitting next to another young guy. Like me, he was a catcher, and he had some impressive cre-dentials. This worried me. He might get the starting job ahead of me. I thought, “How can I be on the bench? I’m the best baseball player in the world. ”

Things turned out differently than expected. In my first at-bat, I struck out on three pitches, and they sent me back home. I thought, “My life has ended. ” I was practically crying.

Fortunately, as part of my deal with the Red Sox, I received a scholarship to Wagner College on Staten Island. I continued playing baseball – at Wagner, where I was named All Conference each year in the Metropolitan league, with stints of summer ball in Maine and Nova Scotia.

At the beginning of my senior year, the

Red Sox signed me to another contract. I figured I would go to Wagner for the first half of my senior year, go to spring training in February, and finish college later. But at spring training, I hurt my knee, and when they sent me up to play with the minor league Corning (N.Y.) Red Sox, I had trouble crouching. I ended up playing in the outfield. I had been a great catcher, but I was only OK in the outfield. Still, I hit 32 home runs – more than any other player in the Red Sox organization that year – batted over .300, and had 100 RBIs. In my mind, I was going to make it.

In Corning, if you played for the Red Sox, you were a hero. People looked up to you, asked for your autograph. If you walk-ed into a restaurant, everyone knew you.

That’s when I got drafted into the Army. I did my training at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and after I finished, the Red Sox arranged for me to stay there. There were a lot of other professional players there, and we played exhibition games. Not many of them made it big, though I did go out drinking a few times with two future pitchers for the Dodgers: Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. I really liked Koufax; he was a nice guy. And he had huge hands. His hands were twice as big as mine.

When I got out of the Army in 1960, I thought about leaving baseball. I fig-ured I was already too old. I ended up playing anyway, first for the Allentown (Pa.) Red Sox and then the Raleigh (N.C.) Capitals. That’s where I roomed with Carl Yastrzemski. He had just fin-ished his freshman year at Notre Dame, but he already had that beautiful swing. When the Red Sox asked the great Ted

chase your baseball dream GEORGE “THE WATERMAN” LEWISRotary Club of Lakewood Ranch, Fla.

Why is George Lewis known as the Waterman? He is a Rotary Foundation Major Donor

who has worked on dozens of Foundation-supported water projects throughout the world.

You can also help provide clean water to those in need – or support Rotary’s other

areas of focus – by giving to the Foundation at rotary.org/donate.

Williams if he could help Yaz with his swing, he shouted back, “No! Don’t mess with that swing! ”

We played all night games in the mi-nors, except for a day game on Sundays. We played in old stadiums, and if they got 2,000 people, that was a lot. The lights were bad, and it was tough to see the ball. When I played in Corning, the teams were pretty close to one another, so the travel wasn’t bad. But when I was in Allentown, the teams were spread out, and as soon as a game was over, we would get on the bus. I got paid $450 a month, which wasn’t too bad for 1959. My first job after baseball, with Texaco, paid $400 a month.

After Allentown I went to the Savan-nah (Ga.) Pirates. I was good but not good enough. That’s when I decided to quit. The Red Sox sent me another con-tract, but I never signed it. I felt lousy, but I realized I was just fooling myself.

Life should be an exciting adventure, and that’s how I lived my life. I regret not making it to the majors, but at least I had the opportunity. I hated losing those prime years to the Army, especially right after having had such a great year in Corning. But it was a great experience. I was a poor kid from Rahway. Baseball gave me everything.

As told to Geoff Johnson

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IN 2012, I WAS LOOKING FOR WAYS to pro-mote the Live Below the Line campaign. That’s an annual event that challenges people to spend five days subsisting on $1.50 a day, just as 1.4 billion people – those living in a state of extreme poverty – do. Interest in the event was low. Ameri-cans couldn’t believe that people actually live on that small amount of money.

I figured I could help. I had spent the past 11 years traveling almost continu-ously, visiting more than 90 countries – especially developing countries. In my travels, I had grown passionate about advocating for an end to extreme poverty. Also: I like riding a bike, I had a friend in Portland, Oregon, and I had lived in Whistler, British Columbia. This was a chance to connect all those dots.

I decided I would bicycle from Port-land to Whistler, a distance of more than 400 miles. I announced my plan to live on $1.50 a day during my three-week ride. My rules were very strict: I could eat only the food I bought with my $1.50. I couldn’t beg, borrow, or steal food – and no dumpster diving!

Things didn’t go as planned. I’m based in Australia, so I borrowed a bike for the ride. It was a lovely bike, but it just didn’t work with my body. I set off on April 11. By the time I reached Olympia, Wash-ington, I had tendinitis in one knee.

My host there happened to be a doctor. She knew I wanted to press on, but she convinced me to stop for a day and recon-sider my plans. I was really heartbroken, so I went for a walk and thought about it.

All things conspire to inspire. I came up with an entirely different approach to my trip. I decided to keep going on foot, walking 10, 15, 20 miles a day. On those days when I wasn’t traveling, I would find a pool and swim a mile. Along the way, I spoke at schools, churches, Rotary clubs, and other gatherings. I gave a presenta-tion prepared by the Global Poverty Project, called 1.4 Billion Reasons, that encourages people to help end extreme poverty.

Through all this, I had to discover how to live on $1.50 a day. I relied on a lot of oats, hominy, potatoes, pasta, and lentils. I supplemented that with very small portions of fruit or frozen vegeta-bles. Every five days or so, if I could afford it, I would buy an egg. When I ate it, I could feel the protein running through my body.

Whenever I shopped, I bought what-ever was cheapest. Each night, I did a big cook-up for the following day. I raided my host’s kitchen for the biggest pot I could find, since whatever I was cooking would usually be boiled. When it was cooked, I packed it in a Tupperware con-tainer and I was ready to go.

From Olympia, I walked north toward Port Angeles, and from there I caught a ferry to Victoria, British Columbia. From there, I needed to catch another ferry to Vancouver. I figured the terminal would be right in town, but in fact I had to walk more than 30 miles to reach it. All I had to eat was three-quarters of a potato and an egg. I ate the potato on the walk and

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live on $1.50 a day

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enjoyed my egg on the ferry. I will always remember that egg.

In Whistler, I had a momentary lapse. I encountered a person handing out free samples of beef jerky, and I took one with-out thinking. I usually eat very little meat, but after I finished a mile swim, that beef jerky was calling me from my pocket. I ended up eating it, but I felt guilty about it. People living in extreme poverty don’t get those kinds of handouts.

After my three-week journey across the Pacific Northwest, I flew to New York in early May for the official five days of Live Below the Line. I spoke at a num-ber of universities, and I still met people who were skeptical about living on $1.50 a day. “But that’s impossible, ” they’d say. “You can’t do that. ”

At midnight of the last day, a friend and I had our own little countdown in Times Square. I could eat anything I wanted. I settled for a 35-cent can of soda water. (I figured I wouldn’t make it back from Times Square if I had a beer.) It tasted amazing. Every bubble mat-tered. I felt as if I had done something special, but there was a bittersweet feel-ing as well. There were still 1.4 billion people who didn’t have the kind of choic-es that I did.

As told to Geoff Johnson

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8 | T H E R O T A R I A N 3 9

D’ARCY LUNN Rotary Peace Fellow, International Christian University, Tokyo, 2016-18

Know someone who would make a great Rotary Peace Fellow? Clubs can

recommend candidates for the program. Learn more at rotary.org/peace-fellowships.

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4 0 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

THERE WAS NEVER ANY QUESTION that I would go on a Rotary Youth Exchange, because my whole family has been through that program. My mom went from Belgium to the United States in 1973, my older brother went to the States too, and my sister went to New Zealand. My parents always empha-sized how important it is to travel and see the world from a new view.

When I told Rotary that I wanted to visit Korea, they were a little surprised. This was 2004, and for most Europeans, Korea was just the name of a country that you might find on some cheap gadget. But I had a classmate who was half Kore-an, and I got interested in the culture, the music, and this form of animation called manga. So I asked Rotary, and to my sur-prise they said yes, I could go. It was a bit like asking Santa Claus for a car. You never think it’s going to happen.

When I landed at the airport, there was a crowd of people jumping up and down with a big banner and a TV cam-era. I didn’t think it could be for me. I’m just some kid from Belgium. Then the

cameraman came over to interview me. I told my friend back home, “Oh, I’m going to be a TV star here! ” I was just joking, but later on this became true.

At that time, the only thing I knew how to say in Korean was, “Hello, I am a human. Hello, I am not a dog. ” But I spent a lot of time talking to Koreans, who are very outgoing, and after six months I started to be fluent. A friend of mine was making a TV show about for-eigners who travel the Korean country-side. He asked me to appear, because I was this young Belgian guy who could speak Korean. The show aired after I returned to Belgium, and it was a crazy success. There were hundreds of mes-sages on the chat boards, and it was the No. 1 Google search. The producer called me and said, “You have to come back. ”

I was just 18 and was supposed to go to university, but suddenly I had a chance to go back to a country I loved and be on TV. My parents were very supportive. They said, “Of course you have to do this. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. ”

I spent the next few years doing TV and

movies in Korea. Then I learned how to be a DJ. I got a lot of offers to do TV again, but I always said no, because as a foreigner you always come off a bit like a clown. Then, a couple of years ago, I got a call about a show called Non-Summit, which looked at Korean life in a more serious way. It featured people from all over the world and discussed real issues, such as gay mar-riage or whether to allow a parent to move in with you. Each person discussed how an issue was dealt with in their own country.

The show was lighthearted, but it was also a chance for Koreans to talk about social issues, and it was a huge success. At that point, I experienced a totally dif-ferent level of fame. I could not walk in the streets without getting mobbed. People were knocking on my door and taking pictures all the time. I remember one time we had a big event in Seoul, and the whole street was filled with scream-ing people. I felt like I was in a zombie movie, where you’re trying to get from Point A to Point B without getting eaten. It was scary. Honestly, it was like what Justin Bieber experiences.

For about a year, I did six shows every week, along with interviews and other appearances. It was an amazing experi-ence. These days, I do a lot more charity work. I just finished cycling around Korea, raising money for local hospitals. I feel I was given a voice, and I want to use that voice for something good.

That comes back to Rotary, really, the philosophy that life is about helping other people. Sometimes that’s on a big scale, but sometimes it’s as simple as sending a student to a foreign country.

As told to Steve Almond

be the Justin Bieber of Korea JULIAN QUINTART Rotary Youth Exchange, Korea, 2004-05

Rotary Youth Exchange has been expanding horizons since the 1920s. To learn more and get

involved, visit rotary.org/youthexchange.

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ROTARY IS WEIRD. Rotarians are old, mostly. They sing songs and say the Pledge of Allegiance before meetings. They tell lame jokes.

But they also organize highway trash cleanups, blood drives, and literacy fairs. They raise money for students to study abroad, and they open their homes to foreign students studying here. They are fixated on eradicating polio. Yes, polio is still a thing.

I’m 32. I joined Rotary three years ago when Earl Tilly, a leader I respect in our community, invited me. At my first meet-ing, I didn’t see a lot of faces my age, but I found that I fit in well with the Rotary mindset of Service Above Self. I remember thinking, “Oh, wow. I’m home. ” Earl has since become a mentor to me. He’s 83 and still plays tennis and bikes regularly. He was mayor of our town, then our state repre-sentative. I admire him and the way he has

lived his life. I find that people in Rotary do a lot of good, but not for self-promotion. I really respect and want to emulate that.

I run a social media and marketing company. I manage web pages for our local newspaper, three school districts, and other organizations. Part of my job is to monitor comments from the public, which means I’m in a quagmire of social media trolls every day. People are just terrible to one another online. They say awful, mali-cious things. It’s a downer. For me, Rotary is a way to unplug from that. I think the path back to a more civil society is through our clubs. While social media is good for a lot of things, it’s not good for breaking down the walls we build between us. Rotary offers a neutral space where I can gather with other people, even those I may not see eye-to-eye with on every issue, and focus on what really matters – making the world a better place.

be a millennial in Rotary DOMINICK BONNYRotary Club of Wenatchee North, Wash.

Being in Rotary hasn’t been a total hon-eymoon. I went through a period when I wondered if it was for me. After I joined, I took over running our social media and built a new website for our club. I also started promoting Rotary to my network, but it didn’t feel as though we were making any progress or any other young people were going to join. But I had made a commitment to show up, so I stuck with it. To volunteer for stuff. I’m glad I did. Our club is almost half younger people now. It has added a bit of urgency to our lunch meetings, since not everyone is retired anymore.

So what’s it like to be a millennial in Rotary? To most young people, Rotary is old-fashioned. For me, that’s what makes it cool. People in my peer group tend to iso-late themselves. We are connected by tech-nology, but not truly connected. Rotary is my antidote to that.

As told to Vanessa Glavinskas

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I WAS A TEACHER. I taught geography at all levels – elementary, secondary, teacher training. Then for about five years I wrote about agriculture for teachers. I authored or edited over 120 books, in-cluding three Canadian atlases.

When they asked me to write the first teachers guide for Project Tomatosphere, I thought, “This will be a nice little thing to do. ” I ended up staying 15 years, until I retired last year. It was just so exciting! We send tomato seeds to the International Space Station and back, then mail them

out to kids in schools across Canada and the United States to plant to see if being in space has any effect.

The program was started by a Canadi-an astronaut, Robert Thirsk, and Michael Dixon, a professor at the University of Guelph who specializes in “closed environ-ment systems ” – what it’s like to maintain, and live in, environments like the Interna-tional Space Station or a module on Mars. They had worked together at the Cana-dian Space Agency and thought, “Why don’t we try growing seeds in space? ”

Getting things up to the International Space Station is always a struggle. We sent seeds up every two or three years at first, and in other years we used various simula-

grow space tomatoes

tions. Now they go up every year. We send 1.2 million in two packages of 600,000 seeds; each package is about 18 inches by 18 inches by 2 inches. My estimate is that the cost of sending a package that size into space is probably in the neighborhood of half a million dollars. Then we have two other packages that don’t go up in space. That’s the control group.

When a teacher registers, their class gets two smaller packets of seeds. One has been in space. One hasn’t. And they don’t know which is which. The first year we said, “These are the space seeds, and these are Earth seeds. ” And the students took really good care of the space seeds, and their germination rate was way better than the Earth seeds. Now we don’t tell them, so it’s a blind study.

Getting stuff back down became a big problem after the U.S. space shuttle pro-gram ended. We sent some of the seeds up

ROBERT MORROWRotary Club of Dundas Valley Sunrise, Ont.

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from Russia. But the Russians don’t bring back a whole lot of stuff. They send sup-plies in what’s called a “progress vehicle, ” which they then fill with garbage and burn up on re-entry. That doesn’t do our seeds any good. So we had to get them crammed into one of the Soyuz modules, which bring people back. A Soyuz is about the size of a dining room table, and there are three people in it. The shuttles were carry-ing 5 tons of stuff; the Soyuz only carries a couple hundred pounds of cargo.

Now the seeds go up on the SpaceX Dragons and come back down with the part of the Dragon that lands in the ocean.

With the last set of seeds that went up, we included something called a “Hobo ” – a data logger. My Rotary club bought two of them. One stayed on the ground with the seeds that never went into space, and the other went up to the ISS and came back down. We’re now analyzing the

data showing the changes in temperature, humidity, and pressure that the seeds underwent.

The whole purpose of this is to get the right seeds to go to Mars. The longest the seeds have been in space is 23 months, and those germinated fine. One year we put them in a Mars simulator for a week, which is a vacuum with a temperature of minus 90 degrees Celsius. We wanted to simulate a breach in the storage system on the way to Mars. It didn’t affect the seeds.

Sending the Hobo was Stage 2 of Tomatosphere. The final two stages – germinating seeds on the International Space Station and actually growing to-matoes there – are in progress. So even

though I’m retired, I still watch what is happening.

The reaction of the kids is incredible. They love the project. They love graphing the information and sending us pictures of them growing the seeds. It’s possible that the students right now who are in grades three and six will be the astronauts who will go to Mars in the mid-2030s. Toma-toes will be one of the candidate crops to go to Mars. So they may be the ones who grow and eat these plants on Mars.

As told to Frank Bures

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THE FIRST TIME I JOINED ROTARY, it was love at first sight. That famous wheel – the logo I had seen on service projects all over the world – hung on the wall of the restaurant where I sat in on my first Tuesday morning meeting. It sparked immediate feelings of allegiance to an organization I didn’t even know well yet.

The club president was a woman in her 30s. She cracked jokes and discussed club business in equal amounts. Com-mittee members planned a meeting at a local wine shop. I knew this was the service club for me.

In the years that followed, the Rotary Club of San Luis Obispo Daybreak and I had so many adventures together: taking a dental chair to Guatemala, building an exercise structure at a local park, work-ing through matching grant applications. Good times.

My husband, Scott, joined soon after I did, and when our son was born, the club welcomed him as an unofficial member. We were an active Rotary family for his first five years.

Then, kindergarten happened. Our son’s school schedule conflicted with morning meetings, and one of us had to leave the club. I volunteered. It was sad, as breakups always are. But Rotary and I promised to keep in touch.

I am hardly the first Rotarian to have life get in the way of service. Even Past RI President Ron Burton once dropped out of the organization. “I had little kids, a full-time job, and you do the things you

join Rotary four times KIM LISAGOR

Rotary Club of the Central Coast-Passport, D5240, Calif.

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think are important, ” he told The Rotar-ian in a 2014 interview about how to attract and engage members.

Rotary membership has grown in some parts of the world and declined in others, leaving the overall number hover-ing around 1.2 million. Many a Rotarian has puzzled over this trend.

My theory: Today’s Rotarians are different from those of generations past. We are just as passionate about serving our communities, but we are more likely to live in two-working-parent house-holds, more likely to be connected to the office around the clock because of “advances ” in communication technol-ogy – and less likely to find time for weekday meetings.

In 2014, the RI Board of Directors voted to give local Rotary leaders more flexibility in how they run their clubs. Since then, Rotarians have been ex-perimenting with new models that aim to accommodate the needs of modern members without abandoning Rotary’s core values.

In my effort to stay connected to Ro-tary, I’ve sampled a few of those models.

The second time I joined, I became a member of an e-club. Once a week, I logged on to the club’s web page, regis-tered my attendance, read or watched the program, and posted a comment. Mem-bers shared service opportunities and posted photos from their events. I became part of an international group of Rotar-ians who used this platform to establish a

strong digital rapport, and I enjoyed that twist on traditional Rotary fellowship.

Alas, I spend most of my workdays staring at a computer screen. After a while, I just couldn’t get excited about logging on after hours.

The third time I joined Rotary was more of a piggybacking than a joining. I registered as a Rotary spouse with my original club, where my husband was still a member. That status allowed us to share attendance responsibilities: Scott was the official member, but I could go to meetings in his place. What a happy reunion it was!

Sadly, it was short-lived. A change in job and school schedules meant morning meetings became impossible. My hus-band and I both had to leave our beloved club. We resigned ourselves to the ap-parent fact that our lives were simply no longer compatible with Rotary.

When I was asked to join Rotary the fourth time, I had no intention of doing so.

A friend invited us to a planning meeting for what he billed as an entirely new kind of Rotary club, and I politely declined. This “passport ” club, he ex-plained, was designed for Rotarians like us whose lives had forced them to give up their memberships. This club would meet less frequently than a traditional club and have lower dues and a mini-mum service hours requirement that we could fulfill in any way we chose. And when we could return to a traditional

club, we would be encouraged to do so. I was tempted, but I held firm. My

husband went to the meeting and signed on immediately. I stayed home.

But here’s the thing about Rotary. If you’re the sort of person who is drawn to its unique attributes as a service club – its global mission, its ability to connect and inspire, its adherence to the prin-ciples in The Four-Way Test – then you are a Rotarian for life.

I can’t quit you, Rotary. That’s why I ended up joining my husband in be-coming founding members of the Ro-tary Club of the Central Coast-Passport, D5240.

Two months in, our club’s 21 members have logged nearly 1,000 volunteer hours in our community. We have picked up trash at local beaches, raised money for the food bank, and served on our city’s advisory bodies, nonprofit boards, and PTAs. We have leveraged our collective ability to conduct service in a way that connects us with other Rotarians and ac-commodates our schedules. I’ll return to a traditional club someday, but right now, I’m just happy to be a Rotarian again.

I feel more connected to Rotary than I have in years. And I feel certain that we’ll remain connected this time, happily ever after.

Visit myrotary.org/club-flexibility to learn how your club can take advantage of

new options to respond to members’ needs.

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AS OUR BUS ARRIVED AT THE HOSPITAL, a line of women in shawls accompanied by wide-eyed children stretched from the hospital entrance along the dusty cobbled street. There must have been at least 200 people waiting. It was barely dawn.

On that chilly November day in 2005, my colleagues and I, members of the Mercy Outreach Surgical Team (MOST), were in Tehuacán, about 150 miles south-east of Mexico City. I’m a plastic surgeon, and I had been making trips like this since the late 1970s. In fact, I met my wife, Syl-via, a recovery room nurse, when we served on a mission to El Salvador.

The MOST program dates to Febru-ary 1988, when 58 children from rural Mexico arrived at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego. Thirteen months later, our team made its first trip to Mexico, travel-ing more than 2,000 miles to Oaxaca. MOST continues to make weeklong trips to Mexico twice a year. To date, we’ve vis-ited 26 towns there and helped more than 13,000 patients.

On our first trips, we found the medical facilities to be very crude. The hospitals were basically just big rooms, more like outpatient clinics. There was very little equipment, certainly no X-ray, and no post-op out there in the wilderness. The plastic surgeons down there are good, and we’ve always made a point of sharing our medical knowledge and expertise with them, but we were all hampered by what we had to work with.

That’s why, on that first visit to Oaxaca, we limited ourselves to helping only the simplest cases: burns, scar revisions, pro-cedures we could do with local anesthesia and not have to worry about a lengthy follow-up. Safety was our immediate con-cern. I don’t want to take any chances when I have a child’s life in my hands.

Our worst fear was bleeding, and there were two or three times I really had to sweat a little. I was operating on a child’s palate once when he started bleeding, and all I could do was put my finger on it to stop it. But our care and caution have paid off: In nearly 30 years, we’ve never lost a child.

Memories of patients stick with you. I remember the scared little boy in Morelia who insisted we all say a prayer before we put him to sleep – and who, when he awoke in recovery, his eyes still closed, whispered in Spanish, “Forgive me for my sins. ” A nurse started crying.

I also remember the teenage boy who, following surgery to repair a bilateral cleft lip, looked in a mirror, smiled, and said, “Now I can kiss a girl. ”

In Pachuca in 2010, there was a beauti-ful, dark-eyed girl with a hairy nevus – a pigmented birthmark covered in thick hair – across part of her forehead and cheek. The difficulty of removing the nevus and applying skin grafts took four or five sur-geries over a number of years. She’s a young woman now, and she still comes back to say hello.

And then there was the boy in Zamora who had suffered such terrible burns that the scars had adhered his chin to his chest. We fixed that, again over the course of many visits. He continues to return, now as a young man helping and reassuring the latest round of scared young patients.

And on that chilly November morning in Tehuacán, there was a boy named Juan who stood ramrod straight in his tattered white shirt and threadbare jeans holding his mother’s hand. He was like a little sol-dier ready to do battle. Across his upper lip, he had spread a strip of neatly cut elec-trical tape.

When I examined him, his mother told me Juan had been using the tape to hide

his open cleft lip for three or four months. He also thought the tape might heal his lip and make it grow back together. I ex-plained to Juan that we could heal his lip in a 35-minute operation – and the next morning, that’s what we did.

On our earliest missions, I noticed there were always some local people helping out. I saw one of those men was wearing a Rotary shirt, and when I got back to San Diego, I joined Rotary. If it weren’t for the Rotary clubs in Mexico, we couldn’t do what we do. It’s always good to have friends like that in a foreign country. When a prob-lem arises, they always know somebody who knows somebody who can help out.

Today we travel with a team of almost 50 people: several surgeons, the very best pediatric anesthesiologists, and top-flight nurses to handle all aspects of our mission, from pre-op through the operating room and into post-op and recovery. Now we can handle the most complex cases, though if there’s ever any doubt, we’ll try to find a place to do it more safely. On our first trip to Oaxaca, we treated 40 patients; we had to turn away a lot of patients who, if we had had them back in the United States, we could have taken care of right away. In 2015, on our weeklong missions to Morelia and San Cristóbal de las Casas, we helped more than 860 children.

When will we stop going? We show up, and there are 400 or 500 kids waiting outside a clinic; clearly there’s still a need. And as long as there’s a need, we want to be there. It’s the best thing I can do with my life.

As told to Geoff Johnson

change lives through surgery THOMAS VECCHIONERotary Club of San Diego

Saving mothers and children is one of Rotary’s six areas of focus. Learn more

about all of them at rotary.org/our-causes.

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THOMAS VECCHIONERotary Club of San Diego

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I FIRST STARTED WALKING BACK IN 1996. I had gone through a divorce. I was so broken that I didn’t feel I had any life. I had this idea that I could walk for peace, and I think I was also looking for some kind of inner peace.

I took off from San Francisco, headed toward San Diego. That first day I walked 30 miles in the pouring rain. I was soaking wet and only had $48 in my pocket. No credit cards. No nothing. I came to a hotel in Half Moon Bay, and the manager was wondering what I was doing. I told him, “Well, I need a room,

support of the people I’ve met. That’s how I got involved with Rotary, because we’re really doing the same work, pushing to help those in need, pushing for charity and kindness and cultural exchange. Ro-tarians are special people. They’re like a giant family. And they don’t just talk, they do. That’s what I love about them.

And I need the support, because it can be dangerous out there. I’ve been clipped by cars. The backblast from semitrailers can literally knock you off the side of the road. I’ve encountered mudslides and sandstorms and lightning and rattlesnakes.

walk 27,000 miles for peace

but I don’t have any money. ” But he said, “Hey, it’s OK. You can stay here as long as you need to. ” That act of kindness really launched my 20 years of walking.

Then a friend of mine called the Ma-rines, because I’m a former Marine, and they said, “Don’t go anywhere. We’re coming. ” And three Humvees ended up being my escort vehicles.

I spent three months walking across the United States. The media picked up on the story, and I got a lot of support. I’ve now done walks on six continents. What has kept me going is the love and

4 8 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

DANNY GARCIA E-Club of District 7210

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because I heard this voice inside me that said, “Get up and walk. ” And then off in the distance I saw a French Red Cross vehicle coming to be my escort. Those are the mo-ments that I know this is a calling for me.

I’m 72 years old now, and I thought my walking days were pretty much over. I was living in Florida, trying to downsize and retire and enjoy the sun. But when I asked what I was supposed to do with my life now, I knew the answer: I had to start walking again. I’m in Jerusalem now. I don’t know where exactly I’ll go from here. The way I travel is that I take one

I remember walking in a remote area in Florida, and I looked up and saw a tornado coming straight at me. Things were being tossed up in the air. I had to run for my life. Another time, I saw a pack of wild dogs coming at me. I didn’t have time to get to my escort vehicle, and you can’t assume a position of fear anyway. So I took my walking stick and I faced them down.

I’ve walked in all kinds of weather. I once walked in snow up to my knees. I was wearing my pack and I fell on my face, and the pack was weighing me down. And I’ll tell you, I wanted to quit. But I didn’t quit,

J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8 | T H E R O T A R I A N 4 9

DANNY GARCIA E-Club of District 7210

Are you inspired to work for peace? Join the Rotarian Action Group for Peace at

rotarianactiongroupforpeace.org.

step at a time. But I do know this part of the world is in need of peace.

I don’t know what’s next. Actually, I do have one idea. I haven’t told anyone else, but I’d really love to go to the Vatican, and I’d like to ask the pope to walk with me. Just a short walk, even, where we can talk and pray together. Does that sound crazy? May-be so. But I’ve seen a lot of miracles out here.

As told to Steve Almond

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I WAS BORN IN PUCALLPA IN 1982. It was a small town then, but like all the regional capitals of Peru, it underwent a very ac-celerated growth in the past 20 years. When I was growing up, it was a beautiful place. The Ucayali River, a major tributary of the Amazon, was just two blocks from my house, and it was filled with birds and with nature and with magic. That’s the link with my grandfather.

The world knows my grandfather as the renowned shaman Don Agustín Rivas Vásquez, but I call him Papito Agustín. He was born in Tamshiyacu, in northeastern Peru on the Amazon River, in 1933. When he was 30, while working as a carpenter, he also started to paint. This was the tipping point. Everything started with the art.

Looking for inspiration, he began studying with a shaman, and he began to take ayahuasca, a drug made with jungle plants that produces hallucinations and visions. During one of these experi-ences, he saw fantastic wooden images and heard the voice of his dead grand-mother telling him to give up painting and to sculpt. With that he started a

grow up with a shaman

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journey into the magic of the Amazon that never stopped.

My grandfather began collecting big roots of trees in the river basin. He took these roots and started sculpting. That is my earliest memory of Papito Agustín. He had built a big house in downtown Pucallpa where we all lived, and I remem-ber him in his taller – his workshop – while he was crafting his sculptures. His sources of inspiration were the peo-ple and places from Amazon traditions and the magical things he had seen in his hallucinations.

When I was still very young, my fam-ily moved to Lima, but I visited Papito Agustín in Pucallpa on every vacation. With my grandfather as my guide, I took ayahuasca for the first time when I was six years old. Let me bring the experience to my mind. What I have is a clear image of music and colors. I saw the colors. I saw the music. I remember the moment very vividly, but I’m afraid I don’t re-member the feeling. Eventually my fa-ther took me from the chair where I was sitting and carried me to my bed and I fell asleep.

grow up with a shaman ELOHIM MONARD Rotary Peace Fellow, Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014-16

I continued taking ayahuasca with my grandfather over the years. He would dance and sing in Spanish and in the dif-ferent languages and dialects of the in-digenous Amazon people, languages he cannot speak when not in a trance. He even invented a stringed instrument, el arco del duende – the fairy’s bow – whose music enters your brain and makes you fly. You fly on those waves of sound. The vibrations carry you to the different worlds around you: to the past, to the future, to people not next to you.

Everything is energy. This is physics. Ayahuasca is the medium that introduces you to the energy that’s floating around your body and your soul. It lifts the filters – your senses, the way you organize things in your brain – that protect you from chaos. When you connect with this chaos, you connect with every piece of the world. You connect with the universe. When you are able to manage all that energy without filters, that’s the ultimate magic. But I had a very bad experience the last time I took ayahuasca, 10 years ago. It left me with very bad feelings. I don’t know if I will ever try it again.

My grandfather still lives near his birthplace on the Amazon. Walk a mile and a half into the jungle and you will find his place: Yushintaita, which means “father of soul. ” It’s a gathering of cabins and lodges that he built himself, and people travel from all over the world to study with him. They come for the sha-man’s healing and for the visions associ-ated with ayahuasca.

As for me, I consider the times with my grandfather as a gift, magical and transcendental. The most important legacy of this experience is that it has left me open to all kinds of experiences and shown me different approaches to life. It has reduced any prejudices I might oth-erwise have, and I am more easily able to connect with other cultures. Nowadays it helps me with my peace journey; I’m a technical adviser for Barrio Seguro (Safe Neighborhood), a program of the Inte-rior Ministry of Peru.

I feel I still owe a debt to the Amazon and its people. I need to do something I haven’t explored yet. Like my grandfather, I need to recall and connect with my roots.

As told to Geoff Johnson

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5 2 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

THERE’S A FRANK SINATRA SONG THAT GOES, “Without a song the day would never end/ Without a song the road would never bend/ When things go wrong, a man ain’t got a friend without a song. ”

I quoted that line on my first day as president of the Rotary Club of Little Rock. I explained that throughout my year, we were going to honor music be-cause music adds so much to life. I opened with that quote, then told them that no-where on earth will you find better music than on Broadway. I was wearing my tux, and I reached down and stuck a phantom mask on before singing “The Music of the Night. ” I don’t want to brag, but I got a standing ovation.

I’m not sure anyone in my club saw this coming. I’m a CPA and a funeral di-rector. It’s pretty serious work. But I love

live theater, especially musicals. It’s my favorite way to escape from reality and forget about whatever else is going on for a few hours.

Every week, I would pick a song and play it over and over and over to memo-rize the words and tune. I would play the song so much, I was almost sick of it. Then I would get up there, close my eyes, pretend I was in the shower, and start singing. I admire people who really do sing for a living. There were times when I was off-key, but I thought, “What’s the worst that could happen? I’ll embarrass myself in front of my friends. ” I had no organ, no piano. But a lot of members would sing along. Some people really got into it. One told me, “Don’t do Annie when I’m out of town! ”

One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t see anything on Broadway until I was 40 years old. I’ve since seen 31 shows in New York and more than 100 shows in total. But musicals are my passion. I can tell you how many beads are in the chandelier that shatters onstage during The Phantom of the Opera. I can also tell

serenade your clubBILL BOOKERRotary Club of Little Rock, Ark.

you how many costume changes there are. I know how many Tony Awards nearly every musical has been nominated for and how many it has won. I learned even more obscure facts about musicals during my year as president of the Little Rock club so I could tell our members a little bit about each production before I sang a song from the show to open our meeting.

I did deviate from the Broadway theme on my wedding anniversary. That Tues-day, my wife attended our meeting with me. I surprised her by having the whole

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T H E R O T A R I A N 5 3

club serenade her with Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline. ” Her name is Carolyn, and she loves Neil Diamond. She always says he wrote that song for her.

Even though my year as president is over, people now consider me to be some type of Broadway expert. Whenever they see a show anywhere, they’ll ask me what I thought about it. I judge whether I really like a show if I want to see it again the next day. I like to buy back-to-back tickets and see a show twice in a row. You really need to see a show four or five times to catch every little thing.

One of my favorite moments is when Jean Valjean is dying at the end of Les Miz and Fantine comes out of the shadows. She sings, “Take my hand, I’ll lead you to salvation/ Take my love, for love is everlasting/ And remember the truth that once was spoken: To love another person is to see the face of God. ”

In my profession, you see that life is full of surprises, and not always good ones. My wife was diagnosed with cancer right after we saw The Lion King for the first time, and that show means more to me now because it was the last musical we saw together before the word cancer came into our lives. The last two funerals I did were for 51-year-old guys. It’s im-portant to try to live life to the fullest and enjoy what you love, because every day you have is truly a blessing. n

As told to Vanessa Glavinskas

every week for a year

Like to sing? Tune in to the International Fellowship of Rotarian Musicians at ifrm.org.

SHARE YOUR STORYThis is the third annual appearance of

What It’s Like, a proven favorite with

readers inside and outside Rotary.

If you’re a Rotarian with a great story –

or you know someone connected

with Rotary who’s got a fantastic tale –

we want to hear it. Look for the best

stories in our fourth installment

of What It’s Like in January 2019.

Share your own story with us at rotarian@rotary.org.

Include “What it’s like” in the subject line of your email.

jan18-WhatItsLike-v9.indd 53 11/16/17 4:02 PM

Let’s tell the world we areLet’s tell the world we are

TOGETHER, WE

Rotary unites problem solvers around the globe behind one goal: to do more good. Our members are driven to bring communities together to create lasting change. Connecting to

make things better — that’s what people of action do. Learn more at Rotary.org.

JAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 54 11/16/17 6:11 PM

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

As the disease retreats, thriving only in a few remote areas in three countries, it’s up to health workers to deliver vaccines and share informa-tion with speed and accuracy. Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative are strengthen-ing the lines of communication by giving cellphones to health workers in Pakistan and Nigeria.

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 that country have received more than 800 phones through a partnership with Telenor, the country’s second-largest telecom-munications provider; Eycon, a data monitoring and evaluation special-ist; Rotary; and the Pakistani gov-ernment. Organizers plan to distribute 5,000 cellphones by the end of 2018.

Health workers use the phones to send data via text message to a central server. If they see a sus-pected case of polio, they can im-mediately alert officials at Pakistan’s National Emergency Operations Center. They also can keep track of any children who didn’t receive the vaccine, note parental refusals, and record successful immunizations. In Pakistan, the polio eradication ef-

Cellphones power polio fight

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fort aims to reach the nation’s 35 million children under age five.

The result is a collection of information that officials can monitor and assess in real time, says Michel Thieren, regional emer-gency director of the World Health Orga-nization’s Health Emergency Program.

“Cellphone technology signals tremen-dous progress in the polio eradication pro-gram,” says Thieren, who has directed polio-related initiatives for WHO in Pak-istan. “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.”

Health workers also are using mobile phones to monitor a multitude of other fac-tors that affect maternal and child health.

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. Mobile technol-ogy can help save lives, says Asher Ali, project manager for Rotary’s Pakistan PolioPlus Committee.

“Our health workers, including com-munity 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 dis-eases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and influenza-like illnesses, as well as child

F R O M T H E A R C H I V E S O F T H E R O T A R I A N

January 1937 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote an article for this issue supporting universal fingerprinting to aid in iden-tifying amnesia patients, disaster and murder victims, and other missing persons. “Fingerprint impressions constitute a signature that cannot be forged,” he wrote. “It is my personal opinion that the time will come when every honest man and woman will be glad to have his or her fingerprints on file.” Sir Basil Thomson, an English criminolo-gist who had headed Scotland Yard, wrote a counterpoint, arguing that having everybody’s prints on file would be so expensive and unwieldy that it would hinder searches rather than help them. Also in the issue, The Rotarian named Gone with the Wind the No. 2 book of 1936.

Previous page: Health workers in Pakistan use cellphones to report vaccination data. Above: The polio eradication effort in that country aims to reach 35 million children.

ROTARYMembers:

1,220,185Clubs:

35,727

ROTARACTMembers:

242,949Clubs:

10,563

INTERACTMembers:

511,796Clubs:

22,252

RCCSMembers:

210,500Corps:

9,900

ROTARY AT A

GLANCEAs of 31 August

KH

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malnutrition and maternal health concerns. If there are problems with babies or moth-ers, they can alert government health de-partments immediately.

Cellphones also facilitate follow-up visits with families, because health work-ers can send appointment reminders by text message.

Worldwide, there are about 7 billion mo-bile phone subscriptions, 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 mes-saging, according to WHO. Cellphones are used more than any other technology in the developing world.

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

“Traditional paper reporting was mis-leading our program,” says Boniface Igomu, program coordinator of Rotary’s Nigeria PolioPlus Committee. “The information we were getting was not entirely accurate. This gave us the sense that we were doing better than we actually were. 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 cellphone-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 and has expanded to three additional states, Igomu says.

After more than 1,000 people died in early 2017 in Nigeria from meningitis, the country used the same digital tools in emer-gency vaccination campaigns, he adds.

“Mobile technologies are the type of in-novations 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.” – RYAN HYLAND

Paul A. NetzelFOUNDATION TRUSTEE CHAIR

Happy New Year!We are at the halfway point of this Rotary year.

There is plenty to look forward to in 2018 as we complete the first year of The Rotary Foundation’s second century of service. By working in partner-ship with our Foundation, Rotarians are making a difference in ways we could never have imagined when we began.

First, our signature polio eradication initiative continues to bring us closer to the historic day of a polio-free world. Following our tremendous World Polio Day event in Seattle, and the thousands of local events hosted by Rotary members around the world, we are keeping up the momentum to reach this year’s polio fundraising goal of $50 million (including District Designated Fund contributions). We are already closing in on that target thanks, in part, to the efforts of Rotarians and friends who participated in the recent Miles to End Polio bike ride to raise funds for the cause.

Second, our Foundation’s comprehensive fundraising target of $360 million this year will empower you and other Rotarians to continue helping people all over the world.

In addition, the Building TRF Endowment: 2025 by 2025 initiative is pro-gressing well. Our goal is to build an endowment of $2.025 billion by 2025 to ensure the long-term financial stability of the Foundation and provide essential resources well into the future.

Another emphasis relates to our work in peacebuilding and the Rotary Peace Centers program. Applications for Rotary Peace Fellowships become available this month. Be on the lookout for great candidates and support our Peace Fellow alumni in the field by inviting them to work with you as advisers on your projects.

Between February and June, RI President Ian H.S. Riseley is convening six Presidential Peacebuilding Conferences, which will showcase the connections between our work in each area of focus and sustainable peace. You are invited to attend!

Of course, the biggest event of the Rotary year will be the 2018 Rotary International Convention in Toronto from 23 to 27 June. We will celebrate not only the highlights of this Rotary year, but also the 50th anniversary of Rotaract.

In the new year, let us continue to show that we are People of Action! And let the world take notice: We Rotarians are Making a Difference.

M E S S A G E F R O M T H E F O U N D A T I O N C H A I R

Send me your thoughts on the Foundation:

paul.netzel@rotary.org.We are listening!

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To Be Determined½ h - 7" × 4.4375"

Across 1 WWW

facilitators5 “I agree!”9 Crocodile

Dundee star 14 Former

ruler of Iran 15 Gal’s guy 16 Strong

Japanese dog 17 English poet

Alexander 18 Shortfall 19 Mild and pleasant 20 1985-86 RI theme 23 Green Hornet’s

assistant 24 Saltwater swimmer 28 Must 32 1960 Hitchcock

thriller 33 DOJ heads 36 Get short with 38 Group of courses 39 1980-81

RI theme 42 At the hub of 43 Speaker’s spot 44 Sleeper’s spot 45 Called on the phone,

in ’60s slang

47 Frame, perhaps 49 “You’re on!” 51 Cook on the outside 54 2007-08 RI theme 59 String quartet

member 62 Close,

as an envelope 63 Baptism, e.g. 64 Coastal recess 65 Leafy vitamin A

source 66 1965 Julie

Christie role 67 Llama locale 68 Disgorge, as lava 69 Mailbox feature

Down 1 2002 Eddie Murphy/

Owen Wilson movie2 Rocked3 Easternmost

province of Indonesia

4 Knife holder5 Competent6 Menu selection7 Per item8 Reheats, in a way9 ___ corpus

10 “That’s fine as faras I’m concerned”

11 Early Mets manager Hodges

12 Money dispenser, briefly

13 Thumbs-down vote

21 Cook with dry heat 22 Barred 25 Sharp-tasting 26 Clear whiskers from 27 Did shoe repair 29 Little piece 30 ___-shanter

(Scottish cap) 31 David Brooks

pieces 33 Video game

company 34 Run the ___ 35 Outer surfaces 37 End in ___

(necessitate overtime)

40 Masters of American poetry

41 Compress 46 WWI menaces 48 Wisdom units? 50 Work

assignments

52 Times New Roman alternative

53 From an earlier era

55 Gather, as crops

56 Ivy League institution

57 Boatload 58 Bench

or pew

59 Itinerary preposition 60 Rustic stopover 61 West or World

preceder

BY VICTOR FLEMING, ROTARY CLUB OF LITTLE ROCK, ARK., USAA N O T H E R T R I - T H E M E R

Solution on page 18

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VOYAGE. FORMATION. DÉCOUVERTE.

TRAVEL.LEARN.GROW.

TRAVEL.LEARN.GROW.

Long-term exchanges build peace one young person at a time. Students learn a new language, discover another culture, and live with host families for a full academic year. Become a global citizen. Start in one of more than 100 countries.

Long-term exchanges build peace one young person at a time. Students learn a new language, discover another culture, and live with host families for a full academic year. Become a global citizen. Start in one of more than 100 countries.

Long-term exchanges build peace one young person at a time. Students learn a new language, discover another culture, and live with host families for a full academic year. Become a global citizen. Start in one of more than 100 countries.

ROTARY YOUTH EXCHANGE LONG-TERM

ROTARY YOUTH EXCHANGE LONG-TERM

ROTARY YOUTH EXCHANGE LONG-TERM

海外体験。学び。奉仕。

TRAVEL.LEARN.SERVE.

TRAVEL.LEARN.SERVE.

目標をもって海を渡り、異国での奉仕活動に参加し、短期間の滞在で新しいスキルを学びたいと思う大学生やフレッシュ社会人にとって、この上ない特別な経験ができるでしょう。

Professional development with a purpose: University students and young professionals learn new skills, learn a language, and take action through humanitarian service during short-term, customizable exchanges.

Professional development with a purpose: University students and young professionals learn new skills, learn a language, and take action through humanitarian service during short-term, customizable exchanges.

新世代交換NEW GENERATIONS SERVICE EXCHANGE

NEW GENERATIONS SERVICE EXCHANGE

TRAVEL. DISCOVERY. FUN.

TRAVEL.DISCOVERY.FUN.

TRAVEL.DISCOVERY.FUN.

Short-term exchanges immerse young people in another culture. Some live with host families for up to three months, while others embark on a tour or go to camp for a few weeks. Go on an adventure in one of more than 100 countries.

Short-term exchanges immerse young people in another culture. Some live with host families for up to three months, while others embark on a tour or go to camp for a few weeks. Go on an adventure in one of more than 100 countries.

Short-term exchanges immerse young people in another culture. Some live with host families for up to three months, while others embark on a tour or go to camp for a few weeks. Go on an adventure in one of more than 100 countries.

ROTARY YOUTH EXCHANGESHORT-TERM

ROTARY YOUTH EXCHANGESHORT-TERM

ROTARY YOUTH EXCHANGESHORT-TERM

目標をもって海を渡り、異国での奉仕活動に参加し、短期間の滞在で新しいスキルを学びたいと思う大学生やフレッシュ社会人にとって、この上ない特別な経験ができる

VIAJES. AVENTURAS. DIVERSIÓN.

SERVICE.FRIENDSHIP.FUN.

SERVICE.FRIENDSHIP.FUN.

Toma acción, promueve la comprensión internacional y forja nuevas amistades alrededor del mundo. Desarrolla tus aptitudes de liderazgo mientras descubres el poder de Dar de Sí antes de Pensar en Sí y cuan divertido es el verdadero liderazgo.

Take action, build international understanding, and make new friends around the world. Develop your leadership skills while you discover the power of Service Above Self and find out how serious leadership can be seriously fun!

Take action, build international understanding, and make new friends around the world. Develop your leadership skills while you discover the power of Service Above Self and find out how serious leadership can be seriously fun!

Short-term exchanges immerse young people in another culture. Some live with host families for up to three months, while others embark on a tour or

LIDERANÇA. INSPIRAÇÃO. DIVERSÃO.

LEADERSHIP.INSPIRATION.FUN.

LEADERSHIP.INSPIRATION.FUN.

Descubra um mundo novo fora da sala de aula. Participe de um programa intensivo de liderança que se baseia em técnicas de comunicação, solução de problemas e maneiras de transformar o mundo num lugar melhor.

Discover a world outside the classroom through an intensive leadership experience that builds communication skills, teaches creative problem-solving, and challenges you to change not only yourself but the world.

Discover a world outside the classroom through an intensive leadership experience that builds communication skills, teaches creative problem-solving, and challenges you to change not only yourself but the world.

INSPIRAÇÃO. DIVERSÃO.INSPIRAÇÃO. DIVERSÃO.DIVERSÃO.INSPIRAÇÃO.

Descubra um mundo novo fora da sala de aula. Participe de um programa intensivo de liderança que se baseia em técnicas de comunicação, solução de problemas e maneiras de transformar o mundo num lugar melhor.

FORMATION. DÉCOUVERTE.FORMATION. DÉCOUVERTE.

to three months, while others embark on a tour or go to camp for a few weeks. Go on an adventure in one of more than 100 countries.

AVENTURAS. DIVERSIÓN.

Toma acción, promueve la comprensión internacional y forja nuevas amistades alrededor del mundo. Desarrolla tus aptitudes de liderazgo mientras

Dar de Sí antes de Pensar en Síy cuan divertido es el verdadero liderazgo.

another culture. Some live with host families for up to three months, while others embark on a tour or

SERVICE.LEADERSHIP.ACTION.

SERVICE.LEADERSHIP.ACTION.

SERVICE.LEADERSHIP.ACTION.

Join the global movement of young leaders taking action to build a better world. Exchange ideas with leaders in your community and mobilize your friends to develop innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing common challenges.

Join the global movement of young leaders taking action to build a better world. Exchange ideas with leaders in your community and mobilize your friends to develop innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing common challenges.

Join the global movement of young leaders taking action to build a better world. Exchange ideas with leaders in your community and mobilize your friends to develop innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing common challenges.

Create your own promotional cards to showcase your youth activities. Available now in Rotary’s Brand Center.

CREATE. SHARE. CONNECT. END POLIO

NOW2 0 1 7 - 1 8 C A M P A I G N

$3 FROM EVERY WASHINGTON WIZARDSTICKET SOLD BENEFITS ROTARY’S

POLIOPLUS PROGRAM.Use promo code

ENDPOLIOWIZ

Tickets available atwww.msesales.com/wiz/endpolio

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:Robert Minnitte | rminnitte@monumentalsports.com

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To Be Determined½ h - 7" × 4.4375"

Across 1 WWW

facilitators 5 “I agree!” 9 Crocodile

Dundee star 14 Former

ruler of Iran 15 Gal’s guy 16 Strong

Japanese dog 17 English poet

Alexander 18 Shortfall 19 Mild and pleasant 20 1985-86 RI theme 23 Green Hornet’s

assistant 24 Saltwater swimmer 28 Must 32 1960 Hitchcock

thriller 33 DOJ heads 36 Get short with 38 Group of courses 39 1980-81

RI theme 42 At the hub of 43 Speaker’s spot 44 Sleeper’s spot 45 Called on the phone,

in ’60s slang

47 Frame, perhaps 49 “You’re on!” 51 Cook on the outside 54 2007-08 RI theme 59 String quartet

member 62 Close,

as an envelope 63 Baptism, e.g. 64 Coastal recess 65 Leafy vitamin A

source 66 1965 Julie

Christie role 67 Llama locale 68 Disgorge, as lava 69 Mailbox feature

Down 1 2002 Eddie Murphy/

Owen Wilson movie 2 Rocked 3 Easternmost

province of Indonesia

4 Knife holder 5 Competent 6 Menu selection 7 Per item 8 Reheats, in a way 9 ___ corpus

10 “That’s fine as far as I’m concerned”

11 Early Mets manager Hodges

12 Money dispenser, briefly

13 Thumbs-down vote

21 Cook with dry heat 22 Barred 25 Sharp-tasting 26 Clear whiskers from 27 Did shoe repair 29 Little piece 30 ___-shanter

(Scottish cap) 31 David Brooks

pieces 33 Video game

company 34 Run the ___ 35 Outer surfaces 37 End in ___

(necessitate overtime)

40 Masters of American poetry

41 Compress 46 WWI menaces 48 Wisdom units? 50 Work

assignments

52 Times New Roman alternative

53 From an earlier era

55 Gather, as crops

56 Ivy League institution

57 Boatload 58 Bench

or pew

59 Itinerary preposition 60 Rustic stopover 61 West or World

preceder

BY VICTOR FLEMING, ROTARY CLUB OF LITTLE ROCK, ARK., USAA N O T H E R T R I - T H E M E R

Solution on page 18

5 8 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

jan18-insider-v4.indd 58 11/10/17 8:44 AM

END POLIO NOW

2 0 1 7 - 1 8 C A M P A I G N

$3 FROM EVERY WASHINGTON WIZARDS TICKET SOLD BENEFITS ROTARY’S

POLIOPLUS PROGRAM. Use promo code

ENDPOLIOWIZ

Tickets available atwww.msesales.com/wiz/endpolio

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Robert Minnitte | rminnitte@monumentalsports.com

Single Page Conformer ROTARIAN.indd 1 9/7/17 4:50 PMJAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 59 11/16/17 6:11 PM

Addiction Prevention rag-ap.org

Alzheimer’s and Dementia adrag.org

Blindness Prevention rag4bp.org

Blood Donation ourblooddrive.org

Clubfoot rag4clubfoot.org

Diabetes ragdiabetes.org

Disaster Assistance dna-rag.com

Domestic Violence Prevention ragfamsafe.org

Endangered Species endangeredrag.org

Environmental Sustainability esrag.org

Family Health and AIDS Prevention rfha.org

Food Plant Solutions foodplantsolutions.org

Health Education and Wellness hewrag.org

Rotarian Action GroupsRotarian Action Groups help Rotary clubs and districts plan and carry out community development and humanitarian service projects in their areas of expertise. The groups are organized by Rotarians and Rotaractors with skills and a passion to serve in a particular field. Membership is open to Rotarians, their family members, and participants and alumni of all Rotary and Foundation programs. Members have the opportunity to engage in meaningful service activities outside their own clubs, districts, or coun-tries. Draw on these groups to enhance your projects, engage members, and attract new ones. Find out more by emailing or visiting the website of the group you’re interested in or by writing to actiongroups@rotary.org.

T he Rotary Foundation has set up a special fund to help communities affected by deadly wildfires in

California.More than 220,000 acres have been

scorched, and more than 40 people have been confirmed dead.

“The devastation in the North Bay and wine country is vast and far-reaching. The recovery and rebuilding is going to be a long process, but we are confident that we can lead the way in bringing these communities back,” says Bob Rog-ers, governor of District 5130.

You can contribute by check, by wire transfer, or online with a credit card. You’ll need to provide the account name (The Northern California Fire Recovery Fund) and number (615). When con-tributing via credit card, please check the address box to share your address with Rotary. Make your donation at bit.ly/2xXRyuI.

If you have questions about how you can help, contact relief@rotary.org.

Help wildfire victims

Hearing ifrahl.org

Hepatitis ragforhepatitiseradication.org

Literacy litrag.org

Malaria remarag.org

Maternal and Child Health rifpd.org

Mental Health ragonmentalhealth.org

Microfinance and Community Development ragm.org

Multiple Sclerosis rotary-ragmsa.org

Peace rotarianactiongroupforpeace.org

Polio Survivors and Associates rotarypoliosurvivors.com

Preconception Care raghphc.org

Slavery Prevention ragas.online

Water and Sanitation wasrag.org

6 0 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

GE

OR

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ES

jan18-insider-v4.indd 60 11/10/17 8:44 AM

EXPLOREeveryday experiences made better than expected

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ROTARY.ORG/GLOBALREWARDS

A Member Benefits Program

discounts on the products and services you value most

opportunity to post an offer and see your community and business grow

a new way to support Rotary with offers that give back

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JAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 61 11/16/17 6:11 PM

Your Legacy,Rotary’s Promise

Your annual gifts to The Rotary Foundation are helping people around the globe live better lives today.

Planning a gift to Rotary’s Endowment supports these same life-changing programs forever.

Learn how the next century of service begins with your Rotary legacy at rotary.org/legacy.

6 0 T H E R O T A R I A N | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7

District | Name

1630 Lucien Emringer1850 Friedrich

Neddermeier1990 Peter Eichenberger2232 Anatolli Parubets2420 Turgut Gökyigit2440 Ahmet Gürmeric2452 George Mirti Azar2470 Maria Delivoria2490 Yoram Cohen2520 Shigeru Kuwahara2660 Hiromichi Kuriyama2680 Shigeyasu Mizutani2710 Yokichi Matsuoka2981 Narayanasamy

Govindaraj3000 Smuel Christdoss

Savariraj3011 Ramesh Chander3030 Juhal Chiraniya3040 Tarun Mishra3052 Ramesh Agrawal3053 Radhe Shyam Rathi3060 Prafall Bhatt3070 Gurjeet Singh Sekhon3080 Ashok Chhokra3090 Vijay Arora3110 Shailendra Raju3131 Marutrao Jadhav3132 Ismail Patel3141 Balkrishna Inamdar

3142 Hemant Jagtap3150 Vasu Dev Malladi3170 Mahesh Raikar3190 Nagendra Kurugoilu

Setty3211 Thomas Vavanikunnel3220 Gowri Rajan3262 Dilip Patnaik3271 Syed Tahzeeb UI Has

Kazmi3272 Saeeda Rehman3291 Hira Lal Yadav3310 Ghim Bok Chew3340 Martin Brands3450 David Harilela3460 Po-Jung Lin3480 Chao-Ying Kuo3490 Ming Shan Huang3500 Wen-Yen Chang3520 I-Tson Soo3600 Jun Taik Kim3662 Young-Sun Han3690 Eun Sook Cho3700 Joon Ki Song3722 Yeong-Ho Yun3730 Seok-Hwan Seong3740 Hyeong-Su Lee3770 Vincente Enriquez3810 Ernesto Choa3830 Isidro Garcia3860 William Moraca

4060 Freddy Santana Cespedes

4250 Angel Agusto Mendoza4320 Armando Raul

Ehrenfeld Weihe4480 Gilberto Scandiuzzi5010 Will Files5100 Dennis William5160 Pate Thomson5220 Dorothy Bizzini5280 Douglas Baker5300 Miles Petroff5440 Krishna Murthy5490 Charles Fitzgerald5500 Michael Drake5510 Abe Feder5580 Roland Turner5710 William Richter5730 James Cole5750 Martin Postic Jr.5810 Darren Collins5830 Danny Carpenter5840 Mike Canales5890 Michelle Boreer5950 Sandra Schley5970 Jill Olsen6000 Herbert Wilson6040 Carl Chinnery6080 Everette Wood6190 Carroll Gates6200 Clarence Prudhomme

6270 Tamie Koop6330 Jean Aitcheson6360 Martin Graber6380 Kamal Shouhayib6400 Donna Schmidt6440 Pamela Kerr6450 Linda Yates6490 Kenneth Buel6600 Timothy Kearney6840 Ace Necaise III6890 Thomas Wade6900 William Woulfin6910 Peter Gleichman6920 Bill Kemp6940 Kim Outnik6950 Roger Proffer Sr.6970 Norberto Benitez7255 Arnold Quaranta7280 Ruzhail Bakalli7390 John Judson7470 Robert Pityo7510 Joe Horner7570 Kenneth Tuck7710 Rick Carnagua7980 Mukund Nori9110 Matthias Shoga9211 Sharmila Bhatt9212 Geeta Manek9600 Gary Lillicrap9675 Patrick Roberts9910 Ernest Meyer

Rotary International

SERVICE ABOVE SELFAward winners

The 2016-17 recipients of the Service Above Self Award, Rotary International’s highest honor for individual Rotarians, have been announced.

This award recognizes Rotarians who have demonstrated exemplary humanitarian service, especially those who have helped others through personal volunteer work and active involvement in Rotary.

District | Name District | Name District | Name

sep17-insider-v8.indd 60 7/20/17 3:28 PMSEP17 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v0.indd 61 7/26/17 5:06 PMDEC17 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v0.indd 10 10/25/17 6:21 PM

Order today at shop.rotary.org

Own a piece of history and become inspired to leave your mark on humanity with The Rotary Foundation as it enters its second century of Doing Good in the World.

313 pages of history and inspiration

JAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 62 11/16/17 6:11 PM

Your Legacy,Rotary’s Promise

Your annual gifts to The Rotary Foundation are helping people around the globe live better lives today.

Planning a gift to Rotary’s Endowment supports these same life-changing programs forever.

Learn how the next century of service begins with your Rotary legacy at rotary.org/legacy.

6 0 T H E R O T A R I A N | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7

District | Name

1630 Lucien Emringer1850 Friedrich Neddermeier1990 Peter Eichenberger2232 Anatolli Parubets2420 Turgut Gökyigit2440 Ahmet Gürmeric2452 George Mirti Azar2470 Maria Delivoria2490 Yoram Cohen2520 Shigeru Kuwahara2660 Hiromichi Kuriyama2680 Shigeyasu Mizutani2710 Yokichi Matsuoka2981 Narayanasamy Govindaraj3000 Smuel Christdoss Savariraj3011 Ramesh Chander3030 Juhal Chiraniya3040 Tarun Mishra3052 Ramesh Agrawal3053 Radhe Shyam Rathi3060 Prafall Bhatt3070 Gurjeet Singh Sekhon3080 Ashok Chhokra3090 Vijay Arora3110 Shailendra Raju3131 Marutrao Jadhav3132 Ismail Patel3141 Balkrishna Inamdar

3142 Hemant Jagtap3150 Vasu Dev Malladi3170 Mahesh Raikar3190 Nagendra Kurugoilu Setty3211 Thomas Vavanikunnel3220 Gowri Rajan3262 Dilip Patnaik3271 Syed Tahzeeb UI Has Kazmi3272 Saeeda Rehman3291 Hira Lal Yadav3310 Ghim Bok Chew3340 Martin Brands3450 David Harilela3460 Po-Jung Lin3480 Chao-Ying Kuo3490 Ming Shan Huang3500 Wen-Yen Chang3520 I-Tson Soo3600 Jun Taik Kim3662 Young-Sun Han3690 Eun Sook Cho3700 Joon Ki Song3722 Yeong-Ho Yun3730 Seok-Hwan Seong3740 Hyeong-Su Lee3770 Vincente Enriquez3810 Ernesto Choa3830 Isidro Garcia3860 William Moraca

4060 Freddy Santana Cespedes4250 Angel Agusto Mendoza4320 Armando Raul Ehrenfeld Weihe4480 Gilberto Scandiuzzi5010 Will Files5100 Dennis William5160 Pate Thomson5220 Dorothy Bizzini5280 Douglas Baker5300 Miles Petroff5440 Krishna Murthy5490 Charles Fitzgerald5500 Michael Drake5510 Abe Feder5580 Roland Turner5710 William Richter5730 James Cole5750 Martin Postic Jr.5810 Darren Collins5830 Danny Carpenter5840 Mike Canales5890 Michelle Boreer5950 Sandra Schley5970 Jill Olsen6000 Herbert Wilson6040 Carl Chinnery6080 Everette Wood6190 Carroll Gates6200 Clarence Prudhomme

6270 Tamie Koop6330 Jean Aitcheson6360 Martin Graber6380 Kamal Shouhayib6400 Donna Schmidt6440 Pamela Kerr6450 Linda Yates6490 Kenneth Buel6600 Timothy Kearney6840 Ace Necaise III6890 Thomas Wade6900 William Woulfin6910 Peter Gleichman6920 Bill Kemp6940 Kim Outnik6950 Roger Proffer Sr.6970 Norberto Benitez7255 Arnold Quaranta7280 Ruzhail Bakalli7390 John Judson7470 Robert Pityo7510 Joe Horner7570 Kenneth Tuck7710 Rick Carnagua7980 Mukund Nori9110 Matthias Shoga9211 Sharmila Bhatt9212 Geeta Manek9600 Gary Lillicrap9675 Patrick Roberts9910 Ernest Meyer

Rotary International

SERVICE ABOVE SELF Award winners

The 2016-17 recipients of the Service Above Self Award, Rotary International’s highest honor for individual Rotarians, have been announced.

This award recognizes Rotarians who have demonstrated exemplary humanitarian service, especially those who have helped others through personal volunteer work and active involvement in Rotary.

District | Name District | Name District | Name

sep17-insider-v8.indd 60 7/20/17 3:28 PMSEP17 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v0.indd 61 7/26/17 5:06 PMDEC17 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v0.indd 10 10/25/17 6:21 PM

Order today at shop.rotary.org

Own a piece of history and become inspired to leave your mark on humanity with The Rotary Foundation as it enters its second century of Doing Good in the World.

313 pages of history and inspiration

JAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 63 11/16/17 6:11 PM

6 4 T H E R O T A R I A N | J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 8

The Green Legacy Hiroshima Initiative is

planting seeds and saplings from trees that

survived the atomic bombing.

facebook.com/rotary

@rotary

rotarian@rotary.org

DISCOVEROn page 32, you read Jiro Kawatsuma’s gripping recollection of surviving the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Kawatsuma is now 90 and has dedicated the rest of his life to peace, including planting seeds and saplings from trees that survived the bomb around the world. Find out more about the Green Legacy Hiroshima Initiative at unitar.org/greenlegacyhiroshima.

ATTENDKawatsuma is speaking in Vancouver, B.C., next month at the fi rst of six Presidential Peacebuilding Conferences. The events, hosted by RI President Ian H.S. Riseley, will explore the connection between peace and Rotary’s fi ve other areas of focus plus environmental sustainability. Learn about each of the conferences, which will be held in Lebanon, England, Australia, Italy, and the U.S. until June, at rotary.org/presidential-conferences.

PLANTRiseley has challenged every Rotary club to plant a tree for each of its members by Earth Day, 22 April. Watch for more about trees in our April issue, and fi nd inspiration for projects from the Environ-mental Sustainability Rotarian Action Group at esrag.org/tree-planting-challenge.

last look

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jan18-LastLook-4.indd 1 11/16/17 4:04 PM

The spark of insight that changed everythingBrenda from the U.S. joined Rotary to do something for her community and connect with others, but it wasn’t until her first Rotary Convention, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that she felt like a true Rotarian.

While exploring the House of Friendship, she noticed something that everyone had in common: the smile of a joyful person. That was the moment a light flashed in Brenda’s mind and made her realize the true spirit of Rotary, which motivated her to go back to her club and get more involved — locally and internationally.

Find your inspiration at the Rotary Convention in Toronto. Register today at riconvention.org.

ROTARY CONVENTION23-27 JUNE 2018 TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA

InspirationInspirationInspirationAROUND EVERY CORNER

Single Page Conformer ROTARIAN copy 3.indd 1 11/10/17 1:16 PMJAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 3 11/16/17 6:11 PM

The enduring legacy of family. In the 1960s at just 15years old, Ferrini Pietro and Grotti Rodolfo began their

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For over fifty years they’ve created unsurpassed artisan jewelry that combines age-old Etruscan metalsmithingtechniques with innovative design. Today, we bring theirtalents to America.

A striking testimony of elegance to the woman whowears it. Aria is Italian for “air” as well as a striking solo musical performance and the name captures the light, yetbold essence of this necklace perfectly. Each necklace ismade by hand in Italy from polished 14K yellow gold andcelebrates the traditional woven Byzantine design.

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Raffinato™ 18K Gold-Finished Sterling SilverAria Necklace Stunningly affordable $95 with FREE SHIPPINGAlso availableRaffinato™ 14K Yellow Gold Aria NecklaceStunningly well-priced at $595 with FREE SHIPPING(a $1,295 value) Save $700

JAN18 - Rotarian Main Conformer_v1.indd 4 11/16/17 6:11 PM