WELCOME TO THE WEEKLY MEETING
FRIDAY, May 6, 2016
In
this meeting:
- Personal Greeting
- Rotary Minute
- ABCs of Rotary
- An Update on Polio
- Object of Rotary
- May is Youth Services Month
- Honorary Rotarian Jerome is off to Seoul!
- Meet the Nepalese woman who saved thousands from human trafficking
- Declaration of Rotarians in Businesses and Professions
- What happened on Wednesday?
- What happened last Saturday, April 30?
- Congratulations to our newest PHFs - Lou and Henriette!
- Friends Fur-ever
- Foundation Corner
- Rotary Anthem
- Four-Way Test to close
NOTE: Where links are provided in the meeting, click the link to view the video. To return to the meeting, click either your browser's BACK button or click the previous window or TAB.
OUR GREETER THIS WEEK IS LOU DELAGRAN
Many of our members are in Nassau!
Enjoy!
From left - Lesli, Denis, Jacquie, Dawn
President's Message
Dear fellow
Rotarians and Guests,
Congratulations are in order to Jerome who is setting off to his Youth Conference shortly.
Congratulations to our recent PHFs, Henriette and Lou.
Also, best wishes to all of our E-Club members who are visiting Nassau this week to attend the District Conference.
March is Youth Services month.
Congratulations are in order to Jerome who is setting off to his Youth Conference shortly.
Congratulations to our recent PHFs, Henriette and Lou.
Also, best wishes to all of our E-Club members who are visiting Nassau this week to attend the District Conference.
March is Youth Services month.
May 7 – Weekly Meeting
May 14 – Weekly Meeting
May 21 – Weekly Meeting
May 28 – Weekly Meeting
May 2 – 7, 2016 – District Conference [Bahamas]
July 9, 2016 – RI President K.R. Ravindran visits Jamaica
ROTARY MINUTE
QUOTATIONS REGARDING ROTARY
by
Rotary International Presidents
1960-61
J. Edd McLaughlin (banking), Rotary Club of Ralls, Texas, USA. Rotary vision: For the individual Rotarian to
realize…You are Rotary! Live it! Express it! Expand it!
“Rotary is without reality until men
translate it into their lives and the lives of others. In short, you and I are
Rotary.”
— You Are Rotary — Live It!, THE
ROTARIAN, July 1960
1961-62
Joseph A. Abey (newspaper publishing), Rotary Club of Reading, Pennsylvania,
USA. Rotary vision: Act; Aim for Action; Communicate for Understanding; Test
for Leadership.
“This is not a time for us to say, ‘Somebody
ought to do that.’ Our words must be, ‘We will do it.’”
— Act, THE ROTARIAN, July 1961
ABCs OF ROTARY
 |
| RI President (1992-93) Cliff Dochterman |
Women's Groups Associated with Rotary Clubs
Some very significant programs of Rotary service are
not conducted by Rotarians. This is true because of the many projects sponsored
by organizations of Rotarians' wives and other women relatives associated with Rotary
clubs around the world.
Women's groups - often called Women of Rotary, Rotary
Ann Clubs, Las Damas de Rotary, Rotary Wives or, the more formalized
organization, The Inner Wheel - annually conduct hundreds of notable projects
of humanitarian service in their communities. The women's groups establish
schools, baby clinics, food and clothing distribution centres, hospital
facilities, orphanages, homes for the elderly and other service activities, and
they frequently provide volunteer service on a day-to-day basis to operate
childcare centres for working mothers and provide necessary resources for Youth
Exchange students. Usually the women's groups complement and supplement the programs
of service performed by the local Rotary clubs.
Many of the women's groups actively conduct
international service projects as well as local projects.
The Rl Board of Directors in 1984 recognized the
excellent service and fellowship of the clubs and
organization of women relatives of Rotarians, and
encouraged all Rotary clubs to sponsor such informal organizations.
Functional Literacy Program
It has been estimated that a billion people -
one-sixth of the world's population - are unable to read. Illiteracy among
adults and children is a global concern in highly industrialized nations and in
developing countries.
The number of adult illiterates in the world is
increasing by 25 million each year! In the United States, one quarter of the
entire population is considered functionally illiterate.
The tragedy of illiteracy is that those who cannot
read are denied personal independence and become victims of unscrupulous
manipulation, poverty and the loss of human dignity that give meaning to life.
Illiteracy is demeaning. It is a major obstacle for economic, political, social
and personal development. Illiteracy is a barrier to international understanding,
cooperation and peace in the world.
Literacy education was considered a program priority
by Rotary's original Health, Hunger and Humanity (3-H) Committee in 1978. An
early 3-H Grant led to the preparation of an excellent source book on the
issues of literacy in the world. The Rotary-sponsored publication, The Right to
Read, was edited by Rotarian Eve Malmquist, a past district governor from
Linkoping, Sweden, and a recognized authority on reading and educational
research. The book was the forerunner of a major Rotary program emphasis on
literacy promotion.
In 1985 the Rl board declared a ten-year emphasis on
literacy education. In 1992 the board extended the emphasis until the year
2000. In 1997 the board again extended the emphasis until 2005. Many Rotary
clubs are thoughtfully surveying the needs of their community for literacy
training.
- Some clubs provide basic books for teaching reading.
- Others establish and support reading and language clinics, provide volunteer tutorial assistance and purchase reading materials.
Rotarians can play a vitally important part in their
community and in developing countries by promoting projects to open
opportunities that come from the ability to read.
AN UPDATE ON POLIO
As new
polio vaccine rolls out, world moves closer to complete eradication
GEOFFREY
YORK
MAIDUGURI,
NIGERIA — The Globe and Mail
Published
Friday, Apr. 22, 2016 9:18PM EDT
Last
updated Friday, Apr. 22, 2016 9:20PM EDT
A young girl is given the bivalent polio vaccine at
a medical clinic in Maiduguri, the largest city of Borno State in northeastern
Nigeria.
(Stephan Heunis for The Globe and Mail)
As the refugees sit patiently on the clinic’s grimy
floor, fanning their infant children in the stifling heat, the vaccinators are
getting a lesson in destruction.
“You are the foot soldiers,” the man from the World
Health Organization tells the clinic workers.
He shows them a vaccine bottle with a green label.
“If you see a purple cap, don’t use it. We’re going to collect it and destroy
it. From today, there’s no more. Are we clear about that?”
The vaccinators nod. This is a crucial moment in the global fight against
polio, and here in northeastern Nigeria, they are at the front lines of the
battle.
In a carefully synchronized move this week, the
world’s health workers stopped using their traditional three-strain oral polio
vaccine and switched to a simpler and safer two-strain vaccine. It means that
the world is one step closer to its first complete eradication of a human
disease since smallpox was eliminated in 1980. The co-ordinated switch in 150
countries is being described as the biggest and fastest rollout of a vaccine in
history. Experts call it a key element in the “polio endgame strategy” – an
endgame that could lead to the eradication of polio worldwide by the end of the
decade.
“It’s a landmark, a milestone,” said Gregory Agogo,
the WHO official who was explaining the switch to the vaccinators at the
refugee camp in Maiduguri this week. “But people don’t like to change the
status quo, so we need to supervise it.”
Disposal will be an urgent issue. To make
absolutely certain of the switch, the old vaccine will be taken to incinerators
and burned at extreme temperatures of more than 800 degrees. They don’t want
any of the old vaccine to get into sewage systems, where it could infiltrate
the water supply.
“To destroy it, we need to kill it completely,” Mr.
Agogo said. “We don’t want it to get into the environment or the wrong hands.
If children ingest it, they could get polio.”
As recently as 2012, Nigeria was one of polio’s
last strongholds. In that year, it recorded more than half of all global cases.
War-torn cities like Maiduguri, under siege by Boko Haram insurgents, were
among the main sources of new polio cases. But after a huge campaign of
immunization and education by thousands of health workers, the country hasn’t
experienced a single case of the wild polio virus since July, 2014.
Last September, the WHO announced that Nigeria had
halted the transmission of wild polio, and the country was removed from the
list of polio-endemic countries. By next year, the entire African region could
be certified as polio-free, if no new cases occur.
This leaves only two countries – Afghanistan and
Pakistan – where the wild polio virus is still circulating. And even in those
countries, only 12 cases have been reported this year.
Until the switch this week, the vaccine was usually
a trivalent vaccine, protecting against three types of wild polio virus. But
one of the three strains – known as type 2 – is now considered to be
eradicated, so the old vaccine is being replaced by a bivalent vaccine, which
targets the remaining two strains.
In a few cases in the past, the weakened type 2
virus in the trivalent vaccine has mutated and caused “vaccine-derived” polio
infections. By eliminating this strain from the vaccine, the risk of
vaccine-derived polio will be drastically reduced. It will also boost the
protection against the other two types.
Since 1988, the polio campaign has eliminated about
99 per cent of polio cases worldwide, but the final 1 per cent has stubbornly
persisted, while the campaign has repeatedly missed targets for halting all
transmission.
Now the campaigners are more optimistic. “We’re
closer than ever to ending polio worldwide, which is why we are able to move
forward with the largest and fastest globally synchronized vaccine switch
ever,” WHO polio eradication director Michel Zaffran said in a statement.
FROM OUR OWN JEROME COWANS -
Congratulations, Jerome!
I am pleased to inform you that I have won the video
competition and will be attending the Rotary Convention in Seoul, South Korea.
I am one of four winners from hundreds of entries, and its an honor to be
representing district 7020 and specifically our E-Club.
During the conference, there is a visit to a library to give
book donations. I was wondering if there is a way we could donate a few of the
Butterfly Storybooks if any are in stock.
I leave Birmingham on the 25th of May for South Korea though
so I am not sure if it is enough time.
Here is Jerome's winning video -
Meet the Nepalese Woman Who Has Saved 50K People from Human Trafficking
Anuradha
Koirala is a 65-year-old Nepalese woman who has saved 50,000 lives from human
trafficking. Koirala is the founder of Maiti Nepal, a non-profit
organization founded in 1993 with roots in Kathmandu. Maiti Nepal works to
identify, rescue, and rehabilitate Nepalese women after they have been
trafficked and forced into prostitution. She has positioned Maiti Nepal and its
extension Maiti India as both a border watchdog and a rescue service for
Nepalese women who are moved across these borders on a daily basis.
Koirala
herself is modest. She relates a story about losing 15 children during a rescue
raid in a Mafia-ridden brothel in Mumbai like she is talking about the weather.
It’s eight in the morning in Nepal and she has already started working. I can
hear her grandson yelling from the other room. I don’t dare ask this woman what
she does on her downtime. As we speak one thing becomes fundamentally clear:
There is no neat divide or even haphazard line between work and play for
Anuradha Koirala. It appears that Maiti Nepal is, instead, her life’s mission
and any implication otherwise is a misunderstanding of her work entirely.
VICE:
What happens when you do a raid?
Anuradha Koirala: The whole brothel is surrounded by mafia security, so it’s a very scary thing to go and do. It used to be that the police would work very closely with the brothel owners and the mafia. Now they work with us. When we go in to do a raid, we have the police force with us and they help to rescue the girl.
How
do you rescue girls from brothels?
What often happens is brothel clients find girls crying and not cooperating inside the brothel. When this happens the witness will report back to the girl’s parents with a letter that says: “I know where your girl is. Please call Maiti Nepal and they will rescue her.” The people of India know that Maiti Nepal is working very hard to stop trafficking. After they receive the letter, the parents will walk for five or six days to find us in the city to show us the letter they received.
We take the letter and ask for a photograph of the
girl. In the villages there is no means of taking any photographs and hardly
anyone has photographs of their family — this makes finding the girl much more
difficult. We take the address from the letter and send it to our branch in
India, Maiti India. We send it to them and then— depending on where the brothel
is — Maiti India contacts an NGO in the brothel’s region and works together
with that NGO to find the girl.
As soon as they find her they send an
investigations officer disguised as a client to the brothel. He tells the girl:
“Get ready. We are going to take you away from here.” The NGO and Maiti India
then work together to raid the brothel and rescue the girl.
What
do traffickers say to convince girls to leave with them?
When the traffickers come they never say, “Come with me and I will make you a prostitute.” If they say that the father and the parents will kill the man or woman who has come to take the girl away. What happens is they come and say to the girl, “You will get a big job in the city and you will earn money.” Then they turn to the father and say, “Your daughter needs money to get married.” With this gender disparity they convince the family. There is also an education issue. The government says education is free but it is not free. What happens is that families rather send their boys to school than their girls. There are also no job opportunities for girls. It seems like a good opportunity when a disguised trafficker says, “I have a big job for your daughter in the city where she will make money and get married.”
And
they fall for it?
The traffickers give the families a year’s salary up front. They say, “Send her to the city with me now and when she comes to visit you in a year she will bring even more money home.” The families think their daughter has been given a great opportunity and send them away.
What
happens inside the rehabilitation centers in Nepal?
Girls come to the rehabilitation centers from three categories: those women and girls who are intercepted at the border there are the girls who are rescued from brothels; and there are also those who are sent to us by different kinds of people like police and government officials. In the rehabilitation centers we have different activities. We teach children and have activities for them to go to school.
What
happens to the traffickers?
When intercepted girls come to the rehabilitation center we ask them who trafficked them. We use this information to find the criminal and start a court case. We do not send the girl home during the court case. We keep her with us at the center during the case procedure. Throughout the entire procedure period the girls have to be in Maiti Nepal. If they are sent back to the village to be with their family, the case may turn hostile. The traffickers may bribe the family to stop the case. We keep the girl with us to make sure the trafficker is convicted. The case period usually takes from one to one and a half years. During that period we teach the girls different skills and counsel them. They come to know more about Maiti Nepal and become very confident with us. That is how they get into different jobs. After their traffickers are convicted, the girls still want to stay with us and learn.
Are
girls ever reluctant to be rescued?
Sometimes those who are intercepted won’t cooperate with us at first. This happens because traffickers tell them that they’ve been taken away to get a big job. They get really angry with us for stopping them. Then when we tell them the whole story about how they were going to be trafficked and cheated, they are ready to file a case against the trafficker. Then we keep the girls, provide them with training, and they start working. Right now we have about 250 girls working in different places in Kathmandu. We also have about 250 girls working with our foundation at the borders. We have different girls working in different places.
 |
| Nepalese women after being rescued from an Indian brothel in Silchar, Assam |
Have
you ever felt like you were in danger while doing a raid?
Yes. One time we went to Mumbai for a raid. We took the police with us and went into the brothel. We had been informed that there were many minors in the brothel, so we went inside and took all the minors with us. There were about 15 children in there. Then, right away, the brothel owner asked, “Why are you doing this? We weren’t going to keep the children.”
The owner and the other
workers suddenly all surrounded us from different angles and started attacking
us. They were throwing whatever they could get their hands on. Then — in an
instant — all the children disappeared. I don’t know where they went.
All 15
children that we had rescued disappeared. We know that the mafia members who
were working with the brothel took them somewhere. Now we know that they hide
girls under the plywood of folding beds, inside walls, and above ceilings. When
we do a raid now we check all the ceilings, walls, and beds. We check
everything.
How
many people have you rescued?
About 25,000 women and girls have been rescued through Maiti Nepal so far. We have also intercepted 25,000 women and girls from being trafficked at the borders. We have been doing awareness campaigns in the villages; people now come to report to us instead of the police.
Why
does trafficking happen?
The whole world would say girls are trafficked because of poverty. I would say that is not the case. Poverty is one of the causes but there are also no job opportunities and there is no education. There is gender disparity, a lack of literacy, and then, of course, there is poverty. The main cause is gender disparity. There is such a huge disparity of gender in our country that girls are considered second-class citizens. Women are considered second-class citizens.
What
else can be done to help stop trafficking?
I think everybody should be aware of Nepal’s problem. Human trafficking is the third biggest crime in the world. Everybody should know that this crime is happening in Nepal to girls as young as 6-years-old. The average age of trafficked girls is 16. International government officials need to start lobbying with our government, saying: “If you do not do anything on trafficking then we will stop our aid.”
There are many ways that people can get involved,
and one of the ways is financial support. I am very thankful that more people
have joined this fight. Hopefully you and me together will end this crime one
day and make Nepal a society free of trafficking.
DECLARATION
OF ROTARIANS
IN
BUSINESSES AND PROFESSIONS
The Declaration of
Rotarians in Businesses and Professions was adopted by the Rotary International
Council on Legislation in 1989 to provide more specific guidelines for the high
ethical standards called for in the Object of Rotary:
As a Rotarian engaged in a
business or profession, I am expected to:
- Consider my vocation to be another opportunity
to serve;
- Be faithful to the letter and to the spirit of
the ethical codes of my vocation, to the laws of my country, and to the
moral standards of my community;
- Do all in my power to dignify my vocation and
to promote the highest ethical standards in my chosen vocation;
- Be fair to my employer, employees, associates,
competitors, customers, the public, and all those with whom I have a
business or professional relationship;
- Recognize the honor and respect due to all
occupations which are useful to society;
- Offer my vocational talents: to provide
opportunities for young people, to work for the relief of the special
needs of others, and to improve the quality of life in my community;
- Adhere to honesty in my advertising and in all
representations to the public concerning my business or profession;
- Neither seek from nor grant to a fellow
Rotarian a privilege or advantage not normally accorded others in a
business or professional relationship.
WHAT HAPPENED ON WEDNESDAY!
May 4
This is a documentary about the general environmental
problems we are facing today. These problems are having an extremely negative
impact upon our earth, and this short documentary includes some examples of
what you can do to make your impact.
KL&AT Productions
KL&AT Productions
Life on Earth was said to have begun 3.5 billion years ago,
and humans were thought to only have existed for 6 or 7 million years. We have always lived with our own traditions
and cultures, staying in equilibrium, living in time with the Earth, and then
all of a sudden…
This documentary was prepared by young people. It is relevant to May - Youth Services Month.
Rotarians Kitty and Lou were in attendance.
Plan to join us on a Wednesday to continue to learn and to have fun!
Rotarians Kitty and Lou were in attendance.
Plan to join us on a Wednesday to continue to learn and to have fun!
WHAT HAPPENED ON SATURDAY
APRIL 30
Congratulations to Henriette and Lou!
Rotarians Henriette Raccah and Lou deLagran were honoured during the meeting for their extensive contributions to the E-Club. We thank them for their enthusiasm and for their devotion to the club. Both have been awarded a Paul Harris Fellow designation.
Congratulations!
MUSIC - MUSIC - MUSIC
FRIENDS FUR-EVER
FOUNDATION CORNER
WHAT
IS THE ANNUAL FUND
ANNUAL
FUND is the
primary source of funding for all Foundation activities. Our annual
contributions help Rotary Clubs take action to create positive change in
communities at home and around the world. Our gift helps strengthen peace
efforts, provide clean water and sanitation, support education, grow local
economies, save mothers and children and fight disease.
The
EVERY ROTARIAN every year (EREY) initiative asks every Rotarian to support The
Rotary Foundation every year.
Through
our annual Sustaining Member contributions of $100 or more, the Rotary E-Club
of the Caribbean, 7020 has been a 100% EREY contributor since we
were chartered in 2013. Let us continue to support The Rotary Foundation
(TRF) through our annual donations. We have been and continue to “Be a
gift to the World."
THE ROTARY ANTHEM
Rotary Anthem from Rotary International on Vimeo.
THE ROTARY FOUR-WAY TEST
To
close the meeting...
ROTARY
FOUR-WAY TEST
of
the things we think, say, or do...
Honorary Rotarian Jerome Cowans leads us.
Honorary Rotarian Jerome Cowans leads us.
And
the final bell with our own John Fuller...
Thanks for stopping by!
Enjoy your week, and all that you do for Rotary!
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