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Foundation honoree creates opportunities for the poor
For her work to mitigate extreme poverty around the world, Susan Davis has received many honors. But the 2015-16 Rotary Foundation Global Alumni Service to Humanity Award has special significance.
“It feels like a circle of completion,” says Davis, who was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar in 1980-81, doing graduate studies in international relations at Oxford University in England. “Rotary invested in me when I was young, and now is celebrating the harvest.”
A decade ago, Davis co-founded BRAC USA to advance the mission of BRAC — Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee — the…
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What it's like to tell your club your secret
From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian. In this issue, we kick off 2016 with first-person accounts of Rotary members’ most harrowing and heartfelt personal experiences. Pick up the issue to explore more stories.
Dushan “Dude” Angius
Rotary Club of Los Altos, Calif.
On Christmas Eve 1988, I picked up my son Steve at the airport. He always kept himself in good shape, but he was so skinny it was really beyond the pale. I didn’t say anything, but Christmas morning I asked him, “Are you right?”
He said, “No, actually, I’m not well at all.” At first, he said he had Kaposi sarcoma, which is a…
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What it's like to go to jail for your beliefs ... and forgive your captors
From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian. In this issue, we kick off 2016 with first-person accounts of Rotary members’ most harrowing and heartfelt personal experiences. Pick up the issue to explore more stories.
Naing Ko Ko
Rotary Peace Fellow
University of Queensland, Australia, 2012-13
In 1988, when I was 16, I began to protest with other students for democracy, human rights, and social justice in my home country of Burma, now called Myanmar. Four years later, I was arrested and tortured for two months in an interrogation camp. I was shackled and beaten. I was not allowed to sleep….
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What it's like to survive the London Blitz
From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian. In this issue, we kick off 2016 with first-person accounts of Rotary members’ most harrowing and heartfelt personal experiences. Pick up the issue to explore more stories.
Linda Le Vine
Rotary Club of Westlake Village, Calif.
When I was a child, my mother and I lived in an apartment near the center of London. This was during World War II, and our neighborhood was constantly under assault by the Luftwaffe. Most nights and many days, monstrous bombs, sometimes from hundreds of bombers at a time, attempted to destroy our city and demoralize or murder…
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Sports: A winning goal
From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian
Anyone who spends a weekend morning or weekday evening as a casual observer of a youth sporting event is likely to come away thinking that too many adults take kids’ sports far too seriously. Whether it’s parents who harbor illusions that their children are destined to make the pros or coaches who entertain delusions of Vince Lombardi grandeur, there always seems to be someone on the sidelines or in the bleachers with no apparent misgivings about barking dubious advice at a player or beefing at a referee.
In my experience as a baseball coach in a…
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Rochester club camps it up for kids with disabilities
From the January 2016 issue of The Rotarian
Peter Sarratori couldn’t sleep. He had treehouses on his mind. After watching a television documentary about Paul Newman that featured the late actor-entrepreneur’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children with cancer and other serious illnesses, he spent an entire night in August 2012 thinking about the camp’s 30-foot-high hideaway amid the branches. Sarratori pondered the thought of 2,500 children with special needs served by his Rotary club experiencing the feeling of being “up in the trees.”
For two decades, Sarratori has been deeply involved in…
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Clubs battle hunger in Missouri with ‘food fight’
Though the media tends to focus on underdeveloped countries when the subject is hunger, food scarcity is also a problem in the United States.
Consider parts of Missouri, where one of every six people goes hungry, according to the Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri.
Rotary member Steve Dulle wanted to change that. For his induction as this year’s governor of District 6080, he eschewed a traditional installation featuring fine food and formal wear. Instead, he asked members throughout the district to collect nonperishable provisions and volunteer at local food banks and pantries on…
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Bringing social change and mobility through wheelchair project
The common perception of the physically disabled throughout Mexico was that they are incapable of being productive members of society. Unable to work or provide for their families, they face discrimination, must be taken care of, and are kept at home.
But an organization called Autonomy, Liberation Through Movement (ALEM) is working to change all that. Founded in 2007, ALEM provides vocational training, encouraging and empowering people with motor disabilities to find meaningful employment. In addition, the group is providing a service that was sorely needed throughout central Mexico:…
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New online process makes it easy to follow up on prospective members
Tracking your membership leads is easier than ever. District leaders and club officers can now review inquiries from prospective, referred, and relocating or returning members — all in one place.
Sign in to My Rotary and visit the Club and District Administration pages to discover how easy it is to manage your online membership leads and review reports. You’ll also find guides to help walk you through the new process.
To refer a member or begin the process of changing clubs, visit the Member Center. If you’re not a Rotary member but are interested in joining us, you can learn more about club…