Rotary honors six members as People of Action: Champions of Impact

 

Rotary honors six members as People of Action: Champions of Impact

Members promoted mental health, protected mangrove forests, and helped Indigenous young people increase their economic opportunities

By Etelka Lehoczky

Rotary recognized six extraordinary members as People of Action: Champions of Impact in January. This distinction celebrates the honorees’ successes in projects that have had positive, long-term impact. Their work relates to several of Rotary’s areas of focus, including fighting disease, growing local economies, and protecting the environment.

Rita Aggarwal

Rotary Club of Nagpur, Maharashtra, India
Project: Wellness in a Box—Nagpur

Rita Aggarwal has been a consulting psychologist for 35 years. In 1992 she established Manodaya, a private mental health clinic in central India. She is an officer of the Mental Health Initiatives Rotary Action Group.

Both a community assessment by members of that Rotary Action Group and a study published in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine found that mental health literacy in young people in India was very low. To address the high number of students who showed signs of anxiety, depression, and other psychological problems, effective mental health services were needed.

The Mental Health Initiatives Rotary Action Group had developed a toolkit called Wellness in a Box, and Aggarwal applied it in her hometown of Nagpur. The project created a curriculum for 14-year-olds that covered depression awareness and coping skills, which helped counter the stigma that surrounds mental health care. It also taught teachers counseling skills and established sites for fieldwork, in cooperation with the Tirpude College of Social Work. Ten teachers have completed a yearlong counseling course, and another 10 are expected to complete it in March.

Wellness in a Box—Nagpur has trained 2,280 students and 768 parents and faculty members in the “Break Free From Depression” curriculum. One hundred young people have volunteered for further training as peer mentors.

Steve Dudenhoefer

Rotary Club of Puerto Barrios, Izabal, Guatemala
Project: Guatemalan Tomorrow Fund

Steve Dudenhoefer founded the Guatemalan Tomorrow Fund and Asociación Ak’ Tenamit 33 years ago, after selling his business in the US and moving to Guatemala to serve as a full-time volunteer accompanying rural Indigenous Central American communities in their sustainable development processes.

The Guatemalan Tomorrow Fund helped develop a program of work-based learning and job placement for young Indigenous people in the country. One thousand Indigenous girls and boys receive vocational training at rural residential schools. Community education promoters visited communities to recruit students and offer scholarships. Teachers were trained in improved methodologies and taught how to provide psychological support to students who had been abused. More than 4,000 students have graduated from the program, and 86% of them are gainfully employed.

Members of five Rotary clubs in Guatemala and 36 clubs in the United States worked with Asociación Ak’ Tenamit, the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, and local municipalities to ensure the project’s long-term financial and operational sustainability. The project is now managed by a board of directors composed of Indigenous graduates of the program.

Amal El-Sisi

Rotary Club of El Tahrir, Egypt
Project: Heart2Heart

Amal El-Sisi is a longtime Rotarian, professor of pediatrics, and a member of The Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers. For four years, El-Sisi led Heart2Heart, which helps children in remote parts of Egypt, Kenya, Libya, and Yemen who have heart conditions. El-Sisi recruited 30 local Rotary clubs and 10 clubs in other countries to collaborate on the project. Rotary members also raised funds and secured global grants for the project and used surveys of community members and care providers to measure its success.

Heart2Heart treats children born with heart disease through state-of-the-art, less invasive catheterization procedures. Before it was started, patients and their families in remote areas of the region had to travel to cities to get these lifesaving procedures. Those who could not make the trip faced suffering and even death. .

Heart2Heart has used highly sophisticated catheterization procedures to treat 120 children in remote areas. It also trained 20 doctors and 50 nurses and technicians over four years. With El-Sisi’s leadership, Rotary members oversaw the monitoring and evaluation of all of Heart2Heart’s activities, including follow-up with patients and health care providers.

Evangeline Buella Mandia

Rotary Club of Marinduque North, Marinduque, Philippines
Project: Mangrove Rehabilitation and Aqua-silviculture Project

Evangeline Buella Mandia is the club Foundation chair and a past president of the Rotary Club of Marinduque North and dean of the College of Environmental Studies at Marinduque State College, in Marinduque, Philippines. She is a member of The Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers.

Mandia’s project addressed the decline in mangrove populations in parts of Marinduque. This decline, caused by deforestation, pollution, and climate change, has increased coastal erosion, degraded water quality, and caused a loss of biodiversity. Rotary members raised funds to plant mangrove seedlings and rehabilitate established forests as well as train community members in mangrove propagation and aquaculture. The project also established a seedling nursery and a long-term mangrove conservation plan. Mandia oversaw daily operations, communicated with everyone who was involved, monitored progress, and ensured that the project’s objectives were met.

Local fishers and farmers gained better job prospects and higher earnings, while the entire community enjoyed a more dependable supply of fresh, local food. The revived mangroves protect against storm surges and reduce coastal erosion. Training improved community members’ understanding of their environment and their ability to take care of it. As a result, the whole community began working together to conserve local natural resources.

Bindi Rajasegaran

Rotary Club of Ipoh Central, Perak, Malaysia
Project: National Coalition for Mental Wellbeing

Bindi Rajasegaran is a past Rotary club president and past governor of District 3300. A member of the Advisory Council to Malaysia’s Ministry of Health, she helped establish the National Coalition for Mental Wellbeing in 2019. Rajasegaran’s project addressed youth mental health. A study found that more than 400,000 children in Malaysia have mental health problems, but many do not seek care. Family and societal pressures, bullying, and loneliness all contribute to poor mental health.

The project helped school counselors develop their crisis management skills through a Mental Health First Aid certification course. It also showed counselors how to foster supportive and inclusive school environments that promote mental wellness and reduce stigma. A series of awareness campaigns encouraged students to discuss mental health issues and seek help when they need it. The project also developed an online platform where counselors recorded case data so the results of their efforts could be measured.

Walley Temple

Rotary Club of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Project: Towards the Elimination of Cervical Cancer in Guatemala

Walley J. Temple is a professor emeritus in the Department of Oncology at the University of Calgary and the Tom Baker Cancer Centre. He established a Royal College-approved training program in surgical oncology that has drawn trainees from around the world.

Temple’s project sought to identify and treat the conditions that lead to cervical cancer, a disease that one in 33 women in Guatemala will contract in their lifetime. Cervical cancer, which is caused by the human papillomavirus, can be prevented by vaccinating girls aged 9 to 14 and screening women aged 30 to 55. The equipment that is needed for screenings is low-cost and can be carried to even the most remote communities by mobile health care teams.

Under Temple’s leadership, teams of clinicians conducted training, did examinations, and provided treatment. Temple and his team purchased mobile screening equipment and trained nurses in its use. The project has screened more than 8,000 women, educated more than 3,000 women about cervical cancer, and trained and certified 65 health care practitioners.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/rotary-honors-six-members-people-action-champions-impact

Health workers trained through a Rotary project resuscitate infants struggling for air

 

Health workers trained through a Rotary project resuscitate infants struggling for air

By Etelka Lehoczky

Trainees in the Helping Babies Breathe program hold newborn simulator dolls called NeoNatalies at the Lungi Government Hospital in Sierra Leone.

As a midwife who works at health facilities all over the Western Rural District of Sierra Leone, Banneh Daramy sometimes has to assert herself. Her confidence and skill can make the difference between life and death.

“I went to one facility and the people on duty did not even recognize that I was a midwife,” she recalls. “They’d just done a delivery, and the baby was not crying. So they concentrated on the mom, and the baby was left alone. Immediately, I entered. I knew how to resuscitate the baby.”

As the mother screamed in panic, Daramy grabbed a self-inflating resuscitator and fitted it over the baby’s face.

“I used it to ventilate the baby. And within one minute, the baby started crying,” she says. “The mom had been crying and shouting, ‘Oh God, please save my baby! Please save my baby!’ And then she was so happy. That’s why, whenever I see a delivery, I stay until the end to see that the baby is safe.”

It didn’t take expensive equipment to save that baby’s life. A self-inflating resuscitator sells for about US$11. Daramy’s knowledge of neonatal resuscitation — and her quick thinking — made all the difference. She learned many of her skills through Helping Babies Breathe, a training program created by the American Academy of Pediatrics that she took part in through a Rotary global grant project.

Birth asphyxia, or the failure to breathe at birth, kills an estimated 900,000 infants globally each year. Although it accounts for less than 0.1% of newborn deaths in industrialized countries, it’s the leading cause of neonatal mortality in low- and middle-income countries, like Sierra Leone. Many newborns who aren’t breathing can be saved if health care workers begin resuscitation immediately, so it’s crucial for providers to learn how to respond as quickly as Daramy did.

Since 2022, Rotary members in Sierra Leone and North America have collaborated to offer the Helping Babies Breathe protocol to more than 650 nurses, midwives, and other health workers from all over Sierra Leone. The program was funded through a global grant co-sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Palm Harbor, Florida, USA, and Freetown, Sierra Leone. 

Charlotte Israel, 2023-24 president of the Rotary Club of Palm Harbor, initiated the project partly because of a personal tragedy.

“In 2020, my daughter passed away,” she says. “I went in to wake her up to go to work, and she was lying on her bed. I called [emergency services] and they told me to try giving her CPR. But I had never done CPR. That has always been on my mind: Maybe, if I had the training, I could have helped my daughter.”

On the Freetown side, the project was coordinated by club member Sylvia Bailor and her sister-in-law, 2023-24 club president Sybil Bailor. Sybil was committed to the project in part because of her own experience. She once had a difficult delivery, during which her baby struggled to breathe.

“When my second child was being born, it was quite a long process, and she got distressed in my birth canal,” Sybil. “Her oxygen level was below 90%, so they gave me [a medication] to make the contractions come quicker. This is one of the reasons why this particular project is very special to me.”

Like CPR programs, Helping Babies Breathe teaches non-doctors how to provide lifesaving care. Rotary’s association with the program goes back several years. The American Academy of Pediatrics relied on help from Rotary members when it created training materials for the program in 2010.

“Rotarians have been champions of the program from the very start, [including] serving as editors on the various curricula,” says Beena Kamath-Rayne, a neonatologist and the vice president of global newborn and child health for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “We have a very much valued partnership with them as we continue to spread Helping Babies Breathe around the world.”

One of the great things about Helping Babies Breathe, Israel notes, is that its training materials can be downloaded for free.

“We provided wall charts. We provided brochures. And if I gave you a brochure, you could actually learn that entire course yourself to be able to do that technique,” she says.

But Israel wanted the trainees in Sierra Leone to be able to practice on dolls that are specially designed for the program. The NeoNatalie newborn simulator’s chest rises only when the trainee uses the correct resuscitation technique. The trainee can also check for a pulse in the doll’s attached umbilical cord, and a trainer can use squeeze bulbs to make the doll breathe spontaneously or cry.

Israel and Bailor’s clubs used The Rotary Foundation grant to purchase 160 NeoNatalies and other supplies. The trainees practiced with self-inflating resuscitation devices and used plastic bottles (known as “penguins” because of their shape) to learn to suction fluid from infants’ noses and mouths.

Graduates display their certificates after completing the Helping Babies Breathe training program that was sponsored by Rotary clubs.

The project’s sponsors overcame some unexpected costs, including higher shipping fees and the need to provide transportation and lodging for nurses and midwives from rural areas. Israel was able to raise a bit more money from clubs to meet some of these needs and received a donation of free lodging.

Because of this, the clubs were able to make another significant investment in the health of babies in Sierra Leone. The grant also provided five oxygen concentrators and a solar power system to the King Harman Maternity and Child Hospital in Freetown. In addition, Israel distributed baby hats, blankets, and clothing at the hospitals where the training was conducted.

To ensure sustainability, the project trained people who could then teach other health workers and lead courses for them to refresh their skills. The clubs partnered with Sierra Leone’s health ministry and the nongovernmental organization Health Care Sierra Leone USA to make sure training would continue. Members of Health Care Sierra Leone USA had been providing training before the Rotary grant-funded project, and they continue to monitor the program.

“We train the participants with the goal that when they go back to their various localities, they will be able to train others,” says Sulaiman Sannoh, a neonatologist and member of Health Care Sierra Leone USA. “Over the years, people who’ve attended our training sessions have sent us pictures of themselves training their colleagues.”

Learn more about Rotary’s focus on maternal and child health.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/fighting-their-first-breath

Rotary projects around the globe

 

Rotary projects around the globe

November 2024

By Brad Webber

Guatemala

The Rotary Club of Guatemala La Reforma’s Upcycling Art Festival featured whimsical sculptures and paintings created with cast-off materials such as paper and cardboard, wood scraps, glass, plastics, metal, rubber, and electronic waste. Like many countries, Guatemala struggles with solid waste management, notes Esther Brol, a past club president who pioneered the event in 2023. “Pushing artists out of their comfort zone by challenging them to create works of art from waste has generated wonderful results,” including raising funds for club projects and The Rotary Foundation, she says. The club partnered with the Rotaract Club of Guatemala La Reforma and the Rotary Club of Los Altos Quetzaltenango to organize the three-week exposition and sale that concluded 5 June.

Canada

The annual Concert to Feed the Need has raised nearly $90,000 since 2018 to offer meals in the Durham region in Ontario, through a network of food banks, meal and snack programs, shelters, and other social service providers. Feed Ontario reports an increase of 47 percent in the number of employed people using food banks since 2018. “With the rising cost of food and the impact of the pandemic still being felt, food bank use is soaring,” says Joe Solway, a member of the Rotary Club of Bowmanville, which initiated the event. Members of six other Rotary clubs also sell sponsorships and tickets and promote the show, an eclectic mix of pop, folk, country, rock, blues, gospel, “and maybe this year some opera,” Solway says. Media attention surrounding the concert and its acclaimed performers helped it yield nearly $23,000 in 2023. The 2024 event will take place on 8 December.

Bulgaria

In 2007, the Rotary Club of Sofia-Balkan teamed up with the Bulgarian Basketball Federation and the National Sports Academy to form a basketball club for wheelchair users, and the project has kept growing. Over the years, the club has lured coaches from the European Wheelchair Basketball Federation to offer a player clinic, cultivated referee skills, and established a Rotary Community Corps to help. On 13 February, in conjunction with a Rotary zone event, the Bulgarian team faced off against a Serbian team for a friendly match. RI’s president at the time, Gordon McInally, sounded the starting whistle and tossed the ball into play. The club’s signature project is a point of pride for Rotarians, says Past Club President Krasimir Veselinov, and several organizations that advocate for people with disabilities have signed on to support the venture.

Kenya

Recognizing the importance of sleep to child development, the Rotary Club of Nairobi delivered bed kits for 8,000 school children in 2024, a milestone in a long-running project. Over the past 16 years, the club has partnered with Toronto-based charity Sleeping Children Around the World to supply bed kits to a total of 80,000 children at a cost of about $4 million, says club member Mumbi King. Each kit includes a mat or mattress, bedding, and mosquito netting, along with school supplies and clothing. The kits have an outsize influence on children’s lives, since better sleep improves health and school performance, King says. Twenty Nairobi Rotarians mobilized for the five-day delivery mission in February, serving the town of Naro Moru at the base of Mount Kenya and other villages, including in the Maasai Mara region. “The heat couldn’t keep the team from visiting the villages and interacting with the families,” says King.

Ethiopia

With the wind at their backs, members of the Rotary Fellowship of Kites and its founder, Henock Alemayehu, gathered for a day of kite making and flying with 250 children, many of them displaced by conflict among the more than 80 ethnic groups in Ethiopia. The children and volunteers converged on the grounds of an elementary school in Quiha, in the northern Tigray region, for the Ashengoda Kite Festival on 9 June. “The simplicity of this activity carried profound significance, offering a rare moment of peace and joy for these children,” says Alemayehu, a member of the Rotary Club of Addis Ababa Central-Mella. The kite fellowship, which has more than 100 members from 12 countries, is “creating lasting change through the simple yet powerful act of kite flying,” says Alemayehu.

This story originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.

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https://www.rotary.org/en/rotary-projects-around-globe-november-2024

Golfslag van hoop en verandering

Deze maand komen we samen voor de International Assembly en de Presidential Peace Conference om de magie van Rotary te vieren — een unieke combinatie van wereldwijde verbinding, visie en actie waarmee we blijvende verandering kunnen realiseren.

Rotary Peace Fellowship-programma

Een van de meest inspirerende voorbeelden hiervan is ons Rotary Peace Fellowship-programma, een hoeksteen van Rotary’s missie om een vreedzamere en rechtvaardigere wereld op te bouwen. Al meer dan 23 jaar transformeren de Rotary Peace Fellowships gemeenschappen. Onze Rotary Peace Centers, gevestigd aan vooraanstaande universiteiten over de hele wereld, hebben inmiddels meer dan 1.800 fellows opgeleid, die actief zijn in meer dan 140 landen. Deze centra bevorderen expertise op het gebied van conflictbemiddeling, duurzame ontwikkeling en vredesopbouw en bereiden fellows voor om enkele van de meest urgente uitdagingen in de wereld aan te pakken. Dit programma is een voorbeeld van hoe Rotary visie omzet in actie, met een kettingreactie van hoop en verandering als resultaat.

Presidential Peace Conference

Tijdens de Presidential Peace Conference vieren we deze maand een belangrijke mijlpaal: de opening van ons nieuwste Peace Center in Istanbul. Dit centrum zal zich richten op het trainen van leiders die uitdagingen op het gebied van vredesopbouw in het Midden-Oosten en Noord-Afrika aangaan en zo de impact van Rotary verder uitbreiden.

Onze peace fellows zijn toegewijde voorvechters van verandering en pakken cruciale kwesties aan zoals de hervestiging van vluchtelingen, de empowerment van jongeren en vrouwen en verzoening in conflictgebieden. Velen van hen hebben invloedrijke organisaties opgericht of bekleden leiderschapsposities binnen overheden, ngo’s en internationale instellingen zoals de Verenigde Naties en de Wereldbank.

Een inspirerend voorbeeld

Een inspirerend voorbeeld is Ntang Julius Meleng, een 2024 Rotary Peace Fellow aan Makerere University in Oeganda. Via zijn Social Change Initiative heeft Julius jongeren in Kameroen geholpen om een actieve rol te spelen in vredesopbouw en leiderschap. Zijn project bood training in conflictpreventie, burgerparticipatie en leiderschap aan jongeren en gemeenschapsfunctionarissen in door conflicten getroffen gebieden, waardoor mensen in staat werden gesteld duurzame vrede te bewerkstelligen.

Julius maakte gebruik van het wereldwijde netwerk van Rotary om obstakels zoals beperkte financiering en veiligheidsrisico's te overwinnen en zo een tastbare impact te maken. Het Rotary Peace Fellowship gaf Julius de middelen en steun om zijn visie werkelijkheid te laten worden. Zijn werk belichaamt de magie van Rotary — de transformatieve kracht van mensen verbinden, middelen delen en samenwerken voor een gemeenschappelijk doel.

Terwijl we de prestaties van onze peace fellows overdenken en Rotary’s voortdurende toewijding aan vrede vieren, laten we ook de rol erkennen die ieder van onze 1,2 miljoen leden speelt in het tot stand brengen van deze magie door middel van dienstbaarheid. Samen kunnen we onze impact vergroten, nieuwe generaties leiders inspireren en bouwen aan een betere, vreedzamere toekomst.

STEPHANIE A. URCHICK

President, Rotary International

Visit for more details :-

https://www.rotary.nl/magazines/202502/International%20president/