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Rotary Calcutta - Foundation Files | ||
| WILLIAM BOYD | |||
| Trustee Chair-Elect @ San Diego |
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Our Pride in Our
Foundation There is a school at Ada in Nigeria called the Umuocham Girls Secondary School, and it had a problem. The school, with 2,400 pupils, had no water supply, yet was bound by a government requirement that its sanitation be water-based. Classes were rostered each day to bring water to school and when the water ran out, the school had to close. The Rotary Foundation gave a grant to two Rotary clubs that has ensured that Umuocham and 21 other schools now have their own water supply. Their students now spend their time in school learning, not carrying water; the length of their school day is no longer determined by how much water is left to use. In Nairobi, there is a slum called Mathare where 500,000 people struggle to survive. It is a slum far beyond the comprehension of most of us. In the slum is a school that exists through the support of Rotary. [My wife] Lorna and I visited it. It is not glamorous — really, a big corrugated-iron shed — and I wondered why we should be educating children in a country with over 50 percent unemployment. The answer is that if we can teach them to read and write, we give them a pathway to better health and the opportunity to find employment. We cannot guarantee a job, but we can give them a chance. In Manila, Lorna and I watched a cataract surgery in an eye hospital that had been equipped by Rotary. Young doctors were being trained by the specialist and would eventually move out into country areas. An older lady was having a cataract removed, and after watching for a few minutes we moved on to see the rest of the hospital with all the machines identified by the Rotary wheel. As we were about to leave, the patient came out on the arm of the doctor with a bandage covering the eye that had been operated on. She took Lorna's arm and tears streamed from her other eye. "I thank God for Rotary," she told us, "for I am poor and was going blind and Rotary has given me back my sight." Lorna shed a few tears and I was close, and I felt so proud to be a Rotarian. But as we move into Future Vision, we are realizing that an unfocused Rotary Foundation will not build on opportunities like these: We need to expand those opportunities, so that we change the lives of the greatest number of people. This is why we have agreed that we should have six areas of focus. They are broad and will allow us as Rotarians to do the projects we wish but with some common purpose and in such a way that benefits as many people as possible, to do bigger projects that touch more lives. They match some of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations, and they meet the RI Strategic Plan objective to focus and increase humanitarian service. Our areas of focus are: • Peace and conflict prevention/resolution • Disease prevention and treatment • Water and sanitation • Maternal and child health • Basic education and literacy • Economic and community development These areas of focus overlap. Our Umuocham Girls Secondary School received a water supply, and this has led to better education. A UNESCO project showed that giving women just a primary school education decreases child mortality by between 5 percent and cent. The World Bank says that the more girls who go to secondary school in a country, the higher that country's per capita income growth. You can see the pattern. Address one major issue and you impact on others. The ripples roll on and on. Too many statistics in a speech are hard to absorb, but they do help us understand the issues. Afghanistan is rated 169th in the International Monetary Fund economic ranking of 181 countries. Of every 1,000 babies born there, 257 die before the age of 5. The literacy rate is 28 percent. Of the appropriate age group, 28 percent of boys and 9 percent of girls go to secondary school. UNICEF says that in 2006, 22 percent of the population had improved drinking water and 30 percent improved sanitation. A poor economy, a high rate of child mortality, low literacy, inadequate water and sanitation. If you come from a developed country, please don't feel smug. The National Institute for Literacy in the United States says that in the U.S., adults who cannot read are hospitalized at twice the rate of those with reading skills, 45 percent of those at the lowest literacy level live in poverty, and 60 percent of prison inmates are illiterate. So how do we as Rotarians respond? Through Future Vision, we develop projects in the six areas of focus, and we look to get the best results from our resources. None of this is new, but we are looking to better target our efforts. It is our Foundation, our money, and we need to work out the best way to use it. The Rotary Foundation is an important tool in our service toolbox. Each year, it is customary at the International Assembly for the chairman-elect of our Foundation to announce the Foundation goals for the coming year. Our first goal remains the eradication of polio, and suddenly that goal seems much closer. Another key goal involves increasing support of our Foundation. As Rotary leaders, we can help our fellow Rotarians to realize that this is their Foundation and that they should take ownership by supporting the Annual Programs Fund, the Permanent Fund, and the Rotary Peace Centers. Continuing our progress on the Future Vision Plan is our final goal. If you are a pilot district, you are a driving force in ensuring our Future Vision is as good as it can be. If you are not a pilot district, then you should start preparing now to transition easily in 2013 by aligning service projects with the areas of focus. All of us should work to build those six areas of focus into the culture and thinking of every Rotary club. To help meet our goals, we should seek opportunities to build partnerships between clubs and districts, our Rotary Foundation, and other organizations that can join us in our mission to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, the support of education, and the alleviation of poverty. New Zealand is a country of 4.2 million people, smaller than many big cities around the world. We Rotarians in New Zealand decided that we would take up the dictionary project that has been so successful [with Rotary clubs] in the United States and RIBI [Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland]. Within the first three years of the project, we have imported 63,000 copies of a high-quality, 288-page, full-color dictionary, and we believe that we are making a significant impact in assisting children, particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, to become fully literate. How does this project relate to The Rotary Foundation? Before we began our project, we built a partnership of Rotary clubs, some community trusts, and our Rotary Foundation through a District Simplified Grant. We have since received a second District Simplified Grant. Our project has extended beyond schools into places such as the Refugee Resettlement Centre, where every child is given a dictionary, and a roading company that runs literacy classes for its workers. Each attendee gets a dictionary and, with it, a helping hand to a better life. Lorna and I met a lady in Manila named Ynday Mijares. She had had polio as a child, but that was well behind her and life was good for Ynday with her own business, a happy family, and her life as a Rotarian. In the mid-1990s, she found it increasingly difficult to walk, and when her doctor checked he found that she had developed post polio syndrome and would have to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She said she went home and shut herself away in her bedroom, unable to accept what had happened to her. It just wasn't fair. She had done nothing to deserve this. She was unpleasant to her family and did not want to see her friends. Then, Ynday said, one day God sent her a candle, and it was in the shape of a Rotary wheel. She came out of her bedroom and made peace with her family. She became the charter president of the Rotary Club of Centennial Quezon City, has been an assistant governor three times, and has served on a number of district committees, all in her wheelchair. As you travel the world, you come to realize the power of that Rotary wheel. Mother Teresa said: "The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody. The greatest evil is the lack of love and charity, the terrible indifference to our neighbor. At the hour of death, when we come to face God, we are going to be judged on love — not how much we have done but how much love we have put into our actions." We Rotarians refuse to fall prey to that terrible indifference. Each of us came to Rotary because we want the ability to reach out, to show others that we care, to express our sincerity and our love. You and I want many people — as many as possible — to know that someone who wears that Rotary wheel cares for them, cares enough to reach out and change their lives. We know that we can do this through our Rotary Foundation. Together, we can. And together, we will. Source: Rotary International |
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Author:
Rotary Club of Calcutta, RID-3291 Contact: 
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send mailURL: www.rotacal.org/rf/trustee_boyd.htm Updated: 06 Feb 2011 |
