Cervical cancer can be stopped, and Isabel Scarinci intends to deliver the knockout blow in Alabama

 

Cervical cancer can be stopped, and Isabel Scarinci intends to deliver the knockout blow in Alabama

The face of Operation Wipe Out is Isabel Scarinci, a behavioral psychologist and the vice chair of the Global and Rural Health Program in UAB’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Image credit: Charity Rachelle

By Sam Worley

Lily Mayner is about to take the stage, and she’s nervous: “I am so stressed out right now,” she says, practically humming with energy. A chatty 17-year-old wearing torn jeans and a nose ring, Mayner is slated to speak at the Back to School Bash, an annual event in LaFayette, a small town near Alabama’s border with Georgia. It’s late July, hot and overcast; kids and their parents wander between a bouncy house and a hot dog stand. Mayner’s phone is nearly dead — a problem, since that’s where her speech is stored. But she transfers the text to somebody else’s device, and the show goes on.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” Mayner says to a distracted crowd. “Today we’re spreading awareness about a virus that is very prevalent in our community. This virus is called human papillomavirus. We know that this can be a very difficult topic to broach, but today it’s very important for us to talk about it to prevent illness.”

HPV is a highly common sexually transmitted infection that can cause six kinds of cancer, including cervical cancer. The reason Mayner is talking about it is that Chambers County, where LaFayette is located, has the highest rate of cervical cancer in Alabama, which itself is near the top nationally in both incidence of and mortality from the disease. A high school senior who hopes to become a psychiatrist, Mayner has been part of a health sciences class that’s worked to reverse these numbers, one cog in a larger machine devoted to stopping cervical cancer in Alabama.

Caught early, cervical cancer is treatable. But more than that, it’s preventable. In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first HPV vaccine, which could be administered starting at age 9. Since HPV causes virtually all cervical cancer cases, this means people can basically immunize themselves against it. “We really can eliminate a cancer,” says Nancy Wright, director of the Cancer Prevention and Control Division of the Alabama Department of Public Health, which has set up a booth at the Back to School Bash. “It’s a miracle.”

This hopeful prospect means Alabama can stake its claim to another superlative, far sunnier than high mortality rates: It’s the first state in the nation to devise a comprehensive plan for the elimination of cervical cancer. Launched statewide in 2023, Operation Wipe Out is a collaborative effort between the Alabama Public Health Department, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and various partners, including the Rotary clubs of Birmingham and LaFayette.

The face of the initiative is Isabel Scarinci, a behavioral psychologist and the vice chair of the Global and Rural Health Program in UAB’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Sixty-two years old and a member of the Rotary Club of Birmingham, Scarinci has deep expertise in cancer prevention; she was recently tapped by the American Cancer Society to lead a task force developing a nationwide cervical cancer strategy. And she has deep personal experience that dramatizes the stakes of vaccination: As an infant in the early 1960s, Scarinci contracted polio when an epidemic struck the small Brazilian town where she grew up. When she was older, her mother took Scarinci — who, due to the infection, walks with a limp — door to door, exhorting her neighbors to immunize their children against the disease.

Now it’s Scarinci who’s spreading the word, with Operation Wipe Out aimed at multiple audiences. Young people and their parents, she insists, need to learn about vaccination. Before Operation Wipe Out went statewide, Scarinci coordinated an early version in Chambers County that boosted the full HPV vaccination rate among county school district students to 60 percent in 2024, including 82 percent at one of two high schools. The broader county vaccination rate in 2023 for all eligible young people was much lower: Only about 30 percent of those ages 9 to 18 completed their HPV shots.

At an Operation Wipe Out event in Alabama’s Chambers County, Scarinci worked alongside high school student Lily Mayner and Butch Busby of the Rotary Club of LaFayette. Image credit: Sam Worley 

Adult women, meanwhile, need regular testing to identify cell changes before they become lethal. At the Back to School Bash, Scarinci, wearing a blue Operation Wipe Out T-shirt, is stationed at the LaFayette Rotary club’s tent, trying to sign up women for screening appointments at an upcoming mobile clinic event. “When was your last cervical cancer screening?” she asks one woman who stops by. She gives the woman the rundown. “Oh, girl, let me tell you,” she says. “It’s the only cancer we can truly prevent.” Another woman, towing a couple of kids, has what appear to be needle marks on her arms. She has survived cervical cancer, she tells Scarinci, who offers to connect her to a cancer survivors support group.

Scarinci has been doing this kind of work in underserved Alabama communities for decades. Another program she spearheaded has connected thousands of Latina women with cancer screenings. Sitting beneath the tent, Scarinci remembers one of the first Spanish-language events she organized. Half the people with screening appointments never came. Her husband said to her: “Why are you killing yourself? They’re not interested.”

But the next morning she got a call: One of the few who made the appointment had been diagnosed with cancer — early-stage, totally treatable. A wry look spreads across Scarinci’s face, “And I said, OK, God, I got the message.”

A disease of poverty

A few days later, in her office in Birmingham, Scarinci is still thinking about the woman with needle marks on her arm. Most cervical cancer is a “disease of poverty,” she says. It’s preventable if people have access to vaccination and to reliable medical care. That’s part of the reason Alabama, a poor, rural state with a tattered social safety net, has been hit so hard. For Scarinci, though, Operation Wipe Out began not in Chambers County but across the globe in Sri Lanka, where she became involved in a similar project sponsored by the Rotary Club of Birmingham.

In the past 75 years, the medical understanding of cervical cancer and its prognosis have changed seismically. “Pre-World War II, more women in this country died from cervical [and uterine] cancer than from breast cancer,” says Warner Huh, a gynecological oncologist who leads UAB’s OB-GYN department. The 1940s saw the widespread adoption of the Pap smear, a test that collects cells from the cervix to detect potentially cancerous ones. But it wasn’t until around the turn of the 21st century that physicians came to a deeper understanding of the relationship between HPV and cervical cancer — and then, with the HPV vaccine, the means to sever that link. “People in the 2000s started making the connection,” Huh says. “If we screened well, with a better test, and vaccinated, there’s very little reason why any woman should develop cervical cancer.”

In 2018, the World Health Organization launched a global initiative to eradicate cervical cancer. That same year, before Scarinci had joined Rotary, she and a colleague, oncologist Edward E. Partridge, who belonged to the Rotary Club of Birmingham, began talking with his fellow club members about teaming up with counterparts in Sri Lanka on their own project. Sri Lanka is a small island and its people are relatively well-educated, the two reasoned. “We said, This is an opportunity,” Scarinci recalls. “This is a country that can eliminate cervical cancer.” She and Partridge suggested that the country’s Ministry of Health boost childhood vaccination and revise its screening guidelines, using not just Pap smears but also tests for HPV infection.

But they didn’t communicate this directly. “I think a lot of governments will resent the United States’ influence,” Scarinci says. Instead, she emphasizes a holistic approach to public health. Doctors and governments alone can’t heal society; they need buy-in from the people who make up that society, and from the institutions that can foment social bonds, like the local Rotary club. Scarinci could offer “evidence-based strategies”; it would be up to the Sri Lankans to take that information to their government.

Vaccination campaigns are nothing new to Rotary. The WHO introduced a global immunization program in 1974 that targeted six childhood vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio. But a decade after that, polio was still paralyzing a thousand children a day worldwide. The technology was there to combat the disease, but governments needed civil society to strengthen access to, and build trust in, the vaccine. Launched in 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative included governmental and nongovernmental bodies, chief among them Rotary International. According to the GPEI, global polio rates have declined 99.9 percent since the project’s beginnings.

The world today is in a similar position with cervical cancer: The technology is there; the disease can be eliminated. But Scarinci poses the question that must first be answered before all that can happen: “How do we get these tools in the hands of those that need them the most?”

Visit :-

rotary.org/en/elimination-round

Clubs that lead in Rotary Foundation giving reveal secrets to year-round success

 

Clubs that lead in Rotary Foundation giving reveal secrets to year-round success

By Etelka Lehoczky

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In places where winter brings snow and ice, a classic Rotary club fundraiser is the polar plunge. It’s downright heroic to jump into an icy lake when the outdoor temperature is below freezing, so participants have little trouble getting their friends and family to pledge to donate. But what about when winter temperatures are far above freezing, as they usually are in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA? Do people still get excited — and open their wallets — for a less-than-icy plunge?

You bet they do.

“It’s a unique fundraiser here,” says Jeff Davis, the president of the Rotary Club of Alpharetta. “It’s not something you really think about a lot in the state of Georgia, so we usually get a segment on the local news. In 2020 we actually had snow. We’ve gotten a ton of use out of the pictures of that year’s snowy Polar Bear Plunge.”

This unconventional approach to fundraising has worked well for the Alpharetta club. Last year’s plunge raised more than US$150,000 for Rotary and other local charities, and that wasn’t the only benefit.

Last year, The Rotary Foundation received more than US$1.3 million on and around Giving Tuesday, with more than 2,600 donations made from 82 countries in less than 48 hours. More than 1,580 clubs had at least one member who gave, and the average total donated per club was US$567.

“It’s a great advertisement for Rotary,” Davis says. “Folks in the community get a better understanding of what Rotary does. It’s more visibility, which helps bring in more members and ultimately more donations.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Alpharetta was one of The Rotary Foundation’s top performers in online donations for Giving Tuesday in 2023. Observed on the Tuesday after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Giving Tuesday is a day in late November or early December when nonprofit organizations around the world solicit donations and publicize their causes.

But fundraising is a year-round activity for the clubs that raised the most money for The Rotary Foundation last Giving Tuesday. The Rotary Club of Taipei Nankong, Taiwan, asks all members to donate at least US$100 each year.

“We have a baseline for basic fundraising every single year,” says Johnny Hou, the club’s vice president and membership chair. “We also encourage members to donate to special campaigns, like polio [eradication,] and to specific projects.”

One of the club’s main projects this year was establishing a free health clinic in Changbin, a rural township in southeast Taiwan. It also collaborated with clubs in Myanmar to open a similar clinic there and is currently working to establish one in Thailand.

“We collected donations to fulfill those projects. Our members are motivated and very generous,” Hou says. “This year we might double or triple our donations compared to last year.”

Other clubs emphasize the importance of donating in November, which is Rotary Foundation Month. The Rotary Club of Toyohashi, Aichi, Japan, was another of the Foundation’s top Giving Tuesday clubs in 2023, excelling in the category of donor participation. This year, though, the weak yen has discouraged members from giving very much, says Tomoaki Kurebayashi, the club’s president. Still, he and the other club leaders haven’t given up.

“During Foundation Month, we hold informational meetings about The Rotary Foundation,” he says. “And we try to announce information about giving at all our meetings. We take care to properly explain the purpose of the donation so as not to overstep the bounds of the request and force the donation.”

One of the Toyohashi club’s signature projects dates back to 1998. The club works with the Rotary Club of Bangkok Benjasiri, Bangkok, Thailand, and members of Thailand’s Indigenous hill tribes to develop housing and educational resources for tribe members. Tying donations to specific projects also has been effective for the Rotary Club of Edmonton South, Alberta, Canada, another of The Rotary Foundation’s top Giving Tuesday clubs. One of the club’s main projects is building playgrounds and supporting education for girls in Belize.

“A number of our members have traveled to Belize to build these playgrounds. Their enthusiasm rubs off on other members and creates financial support,” says Brian Rothwell, who served as the club’s Foundation chair from 2021 through this year.

The key to successful fundraising, Rothwell says, is having a strong club whose members believe in Rotary’s ideals. He notes that his club’s 53 members are diverse in age and gender.

“They’re very willing to engage with the community and support international projects,” he says. “Our meetings are lively, with many good speakers. Members want to attend, and financial support becomes a natural consideration of belonging to the club.”

Rothwell has tried to get as many members as possible to contribute even a small amount to The Rotary Foundation every year, and he found testimonials from contributing members to be useful. But he cautions against placing too much emphasis on fundraising. Instead, he says, club leaders should focus on building a strong, nurturing culture.

“Clubs should avoid a hard sell when it comes to contributions. We use a gentler approach,” he says. “If the club is strong and supportive of its members, the money will come.”

Donate to support Rotary’s causes on Giving Tuesday, including the PolioPlus Fund, Disaster Response Fund, or World Fund.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/giving-tuesdays-top-rotary-clubs-share-fundraising-tips

Fend off financial fraud

 

Fend off financial fraud

How to protect yourself and your Rotary club from becoming victims

By Amy Hoak

Don Griffing realized something was wrong when he received a text from a fellow Rotarian asking: “Is this really you?”

The question was about an email that appeared to have been sent by Griffing asking for help, but the wording seemed off. As a retired software developer, Griffing immediately suspected he was being impersonated by a scammer trying to swindle money from his network and alerted his contacts not to respond to the request.

His suspicions were bolstered when he learned that another Rotary district leader had likely crossed paths with the same scammer requesting Amazon gift cards. “I’m a retired IT person; I’ve been down this path. I know what to do. But I still had that little bit of a pit in the stomach, an ‘OK, here we go again’ kind of thing,” says Griffing, a past governor of District 6270 who lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

This wasn’t Griffing’s first or last brush with fraudsters.

In the early 2010s, someone claiming through Facebook to be his uncle said he was in Europe and needed Griffing to send money — something he quickly debunked by checking with his cousin. In retrospect, he says, it was an early version of the popular “grandparent scam,” in which someone posing as a distressed relative, often a grandchild, asks for money.

More recently, he received a questionable email sent to Rotary club and district leaders asking for project funding. After some digging around, he couldn’t confirm that the person who sent the email was even a Rotary member.

With the impersonator emailing his contacts, here he was again, an IT expert, having to send a warning to members throughout his district. He worried a little about causing annoyance by adding another fraud alert to the inboxes of people who receive so many emails each day. But he knew how important it was to protect his network from fraudsters and quickly brushed his hesitations aside.

Scammers’ tools – from text messages to AI

The number of scammers on the prowl is proliferating.

Americans lost a record $10 billion to fraud schemes in 2023, an increase of more than $1 billion compared with 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The most money was lost through investment scams: a total of $4.6 billion that year. Impostor scams had the second-highest reported losses, totaling $2.7 billion in 2023.

But even these big numbers are an underestimate, experts say.

“We know that fraud and scams often go unreported because people may be ashamed or embarrassed, or not know where to report,” says Lisa Schifferle, senior policy analyst in the Office for Older Americans at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a U.S. government agency. “This is really just the tip of the iceberg.”

Image credit: Mojo Wang

Criminals usually get away with the cash they’re able to take through fraudulent phone calls, emails, texts, and social media interactions, experts say.

“Fraud complaints continue to go up because the crime is so lucrative and so low risk for the criminals who perpetrate it,” says John Breyault, vice president of public policy, telecommunications, and fraud for the National Consumers League. “The vast majority of fraud goes unpunished. So unfortunately, when we talk to consumers, most of the time, we simply have to say, ‘Your money’s gone.’”

Moreover, it’s getting more difficult to spot fraud, as scammers use artificial intelligence to appear legitimate. People hawk tools through the dark web with names like FraudGPT, a deviant cousin to the popular AI tool ChatGPT, Breyault says.

Consumer advocates like him are watching carefully to see how criminals use AI to come up with well-worded messaging or deepfakes that impersonate someone’s voice or likeness in their schemes, he says. The technology also could help criminals develop targeted lists of potential victims, based on location, income, and other demographics, he adds.

“I can imagine punching [a query] into an AI that says, ‘I need a list of 100 women with net worths of more than $250,000, who recently lost their significant other and live alone … and their phone numbers.’ And an AI could spit that out for you,” Breyault says. “We’re dreading seeing the data starting to roll in as these tools become more accessible.”

Choosing targets

A common misconception is that scams primarily affect older people, but young people too report losses, especially to online shopping fraud and bogus offers of work-from-home jobs or help starting a business. Instead of earning a paycheck, you end up paying for useless training kits or certificates. Scammers also target people who are vulnerable by the nature of their work or circumstances: those recovering from natural disasters, for instance, or those involved in humanitarian service who regularly see appeals for aid.

How to report fraud

To report fraud in the U.S., visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website. In Canada, visit the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

Another channel for reporting fraud in the U.S. is AARP’s Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360, where trained volunteers across the country also can help consumers — even as the fraud is in progress. The helpline fields 400 to 500 phone calls every day.

At the heart of Rotary’s mission is the goal of serving others and fostering goodwill throughout the world. That’s exactly what puts Rotarians at an elevated risk of fraud, members say.

“As Rotarians, we’re such trusting, giving, warm-hearted people. We want to help,” says Amelia Stansell, governor of District 7610 in northern and central Virginia. That makes Rotary members an easy target for people looking to profit from phony charity appeals, she adds.

Recently, members of the Rotary Club of Herndon-Reston, part of Stansell’s district, suspected they had been targeted by a scam. A person identifying himself as a Rotarian on Facebook bombarded people with messages requesting help.

But interactions with this person felt suspicious. And the misspelling of “Rotary” on his profile seemed like a red flag to people who took the time to closely inspect it.

When Stansell found out about the situation, she notified members to not only unfriend this person but to report the account to Facebook.

In another case, at the beginning of the Rotary year in July, Stansell received an email that a Rotary Foundation global grant was approved — a message that included instructions on how to wire funds for the project.

“It was not a real global grant number. It was totally not legit,” she says. But an inexperienced Rotarian giving the item a quick read could easily be tricked, Stansell adds. “It’s the beginning of the year, all of a sudden districts have money for grants. All this stuff comes in July, August, September. And you have new leaders who are eager to get things done, don’t have that experience, and may not have that Spidey sense,” she says.

Stansell’s Spidey sense is finely honed; she only agreed to an interview for this article after confirming that the request was legit and not part of a scam.

‘A double punch in the stomach’

All around the world, senior leaders of Rotary are routinely impersonated on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, says Andy Sternberg, manager of social media and audience development at Rotary International. Once the impostor is a contact in your network, a direct message often follows.

“It seems like members might be talking to the president, but then after a few messages, the scammer would say: ‘You know, I’m in a bind. I need some money. Can you send me money via Cash App or via PayPal?’” he says. “If you receive a direct message or even a text message from someone claiming to be our president or our general secretary, that immediately should be a red flag,” he says. This is not how senior leaders would reach out to people for the first time.

Even if a fraudster doesn’t fool you into parting with money, allowing the person into your social network gives them access to other members, and more potential victims. That’s why it’s important to carefully evaluate each friend request you receive.

“Last year, I almost got caught with a scam of somebody trying to impersonate Gordon McInally,” Griffing says, referring to the 2023-24 Rotary president. But upon closer examination, he saw that McInally’s last name had been misspelled. “Something that I try to do more of, is just practice pausing,” he says.

For charitable donations, create a giving plan at the start of the year and stick to it, so as not to stumble into scams when they arise, says Amy Nofziger, director of fraud victim support for the AARP Fraud Watch Network. Criminals can exploit GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sites, so people should only give to one of these accounts if they personally know who’s behind it and can verify its legitimacy, Nofziger says.

Taking these extra steps could protect your money — and your heart.

When “giving-hearted” people get taken advantage of, “it’s like a double punch in the stomach,” says Derrick Kinney, a personal finance educator, author, and Rotarian from Arlington, Texas. “It’s not just I got money taken from me. It’s money that I wanted to also give to help other people, and now I feel almost doubly bad.”

Warning signs

While the median amount that Americans lost through an individual scam was $500 in 2023, according to the FTC, some people lose much more.

Experts say that instead of trying to spot specific trickeries, people should look for common red flags that span the universe of deceptive plots.

One of those warning signs is a sense of urgency, Schifferle says. “Scammers try to push people into getting in a state of frenzy,” she says. They try to convince you that you must act immediately.

Don’t fall for it. If you aren’t sure what you should do, call the AARP fraud helpline or a friend you trust for some advice.

Another tip: Pay close attention to what’s being requested, Nofziger says. “If they’re asking for a prepaid gift card or directing you to go to a crypto ATM machine, if they’re asking for money through Venmo or Zelle, if they’re asking for your Social Security number, your Medicare number — it’s, let’s say, 99.9 percent of the time a scam,” she says.

In the U.S., methods of payment including cryptocurrency, gift cards, and peer-to-peer networks like Venmo and Zelle aren’t protected in the same way as credit and debit cards. And when people lose money through these channels they’re likely to incur a higher financial loss, experts say. In contrast, credit and debit cards have stronger consumer protections. “Groups like mine have been very vocal in saying we need the services that scammers are relying on to defraud consumers to have more skin in the game,” Breyault says.

With credit and debit cards, the financial institutions can be on the hook if someone steals your account number and runs up charges, thanks to U.S. laws that hold the companies accountable for charges they authorize. “Most of the banks and credit card companies have adopted zero-liability policies that basically say you’re not liable for anything, as long as you report it,” Breyault says. “Consequently, the banks and the credit card networks invest a tremendous amount of money to identify fraud.” That’s also why you will get a call from your credit card company to alert you when fraudulent activity is detected, he adds.

Mitigate risk

There’s no way to stop fraudsters completely, says Joe Ruskey, a cybersecurity expert who owns a technology protection firm and a Rotarian in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. But there are ways to mitigate the risk.

The question experts want people to consider is: “How can we slow it down as much as possible, or make sure that when it does happen it’s not as much of a disaster?” he says.

Ruskey has given presentations on the subject to Rotary clubs, underscoring how important it is to verify contacts, properly vet pleas for donations, and use multifactor authentication for communication and financial websites, requiring more than just a password. For Rotary members to follow The Four-Way Test, they need a system of evaluating requests from people to ensure that those inquiries aren’t fraudulent, he says.

Keep in mind, criminals will often lurk for a while, watching how you communicate with people in your network and even learning nicknames before they strike — which can make them very convincing, Ruskey adds. They’re also indiscriminate, targeting people of all ages and income levels.

“You also have to understand that nobody is too small. They’re coming after everybody,” he says. “They’re coming after you because you’ve got very valuable data.”

In the end, Griffing doesn’t know of anyone who lost money during the scams he has dealt with. But even when there are no financial losses, the experience comes with some amount of stress and headache. The fact that people must carefully vet everyone also says something about the realities of modern communication and how little faith we can afford to have in new interactions, he says.

“Without getting too philosophical or anything, it goes to the eroding of trust we have going on in society right now,” Griffing says. “Getting everybody to pause and take a breath before they respond to an email, that’s really all we can do. Calm down and prevent damage going forward.”

This story originally appeared in the January 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.

The most common scams

1. Text message scams that lure people to click on a link, perhaps tricking the recipient into thinking it’s related to a package that wasn’t delivered to them.

2. Romance scams that often begin on dating sites or social media apps, with a scammer nurturing a sham relationship to take advantage of someone looking for companionship — right up until the deceiver gets money, personal financial data, or both, then disappears. “This is not just financially devastating; it’s emotionally devastating as well,” Nofziger says.

3. Wrong-number texts that start with an innocuous message, perhaps what time someone is coming to dinner. After the recipient tells the person they have the wrong number, a back-and-forth conversation starts, a sort-of friendship ensues, “and the next thing you know, they’re asking you to invest in crypto-currency,” Nofziger says.

4. Impostor scams including ones that involve people pretending to be entities such as Amazon customer service or the Internal Revenue Service. The popular grandparent scam involves the scammer posing as someone’s grandchild on the phone, pretending to be in trouble and asking for funds.

5. Tech support scams where criminals allege the victims have viruses on their computer when they don’t, then make them pay for a worthless software package. “They say you’re going to lose all your data or all your photos, or your computer will be blocked, but oftentimes you just turn your computer off and on, and it’s fine,” says Schifferle, of the CFPB.

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/fend-off-financial-fraud

Specialists in the field

 

Specialists in the field

You learned of a need in a community. Now deploy the experts: a vocational training team.

By Arnold R. Grahl

Ramona Delmas shares a photo of a tiny infant on its back, bathed in the blue light of a therapy cradle used to treat jaundice. The device was donated through a long-term initiative that has revolutionized maternal and pediatric care at a hospital in Ángel Albino Corzo in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

The Rotary Club of Bishop Sunrise in California provided the machine to the facility. “Within three days, we had our first baby,” beams Delmas, a club member. “That machine turned this into a regional pediatric hospital in addition to an OB-GYN hospital.”

The global grant project, sponsored by the Bishop Sunrise club and the Rotary Club of Oriente de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, included multiple vocational training team visits to Chiapas over several years beginning in 2019. During the initial visit, medical professionals from California taught local doctors, midwives, nurses, and medical students emergency obstetrics skills and supplied equipment to support maternal care.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a pause in the project, yet many doctors learned of the new equipment at the hospital and began traveling from all over to perform their surgeries there. As a result, the California team scrapped a plan to perform elective surgeries during a return visit because the abundance of local doctors made it unnecessary. The project shifted instead to creating a pediatric unit after a new community assessment.

The Rotary clubs of Bishop Sunrise, California; and Oriente de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico, organized vocational training team visits to Chiapas over several years beginning in 2019

Courtesy of Ramona Delmas

Delmas praises this ability to pivot and notes the lasting relationships that have resulted from the team visits. “The doctors, nurses, and midwives there can talk to our doctors in Bishop any day of the week,” she says.

By organizing vocational training teams, Rotary clubs can arrange for a group of professionals to visit another country to teach local professionals in a particular field or learn more about their own. Teams should have at least three members, including a team leader who is a Rotary member. Everyone on the team should have at least two years of related work experience.

The team’s activities must align with the goals of an area of focus and adhere to The Rotary Foundation’s conditions to qualify for a global grant. In addition, the team should address a need identified by the local community.

Preventing wildfires in Portugal

That was a priority for Gary Morgan, a member of the Rotary Club of Ballarat South, Australia. A decorated member of Forestry Australia, Morgan is well connected in the international fraternity of forest fire management. At the request of district officers, he explored setting up a vocational training team to help prevent wildfires overseas. He decided to focus on Portugal, where a devastating fire season in 2017 had caused widespread damage and loss of life. Politicians were demanding a change in fire management practices.

“I’ve known the people in charge there [Portugal] for quite some time, and that made it easy,” Morgan says. “We had many online conversations before I even approached people for a team to make sure we really understood the situation, what they wanted, and why they wanted it.”

The team, supported by a global grant co-sponsored by the Rotary Club of Ponta Delgada S. Miguel (Açores), focused on methods of prescribed burns to mitigate wildfires, particularly in areas with eucalyptus, highly flammable trees native to Australia that also grow in rural Portugal.

Morgan recommends that teams be a manageable size and include people with the variety of skills needed to deliver on the objectives. His team included individuals with practical experience in fire suppression, an ability to manage people, a background in research, and an understanding of the policy side of fire management. He kept the team to four so all members could fit into one vehicle during trips into the field.

Delmas and Morgan both have found value in including professionals who are not members of Rotary. As the only Rotarian on her team, Delmas says nonmembers opened the project to greater funding and publicity.

“They learned so much, they became ambassadors for Rotary,” she says. “The next thing I knew, they were talking about Rotary to everyone. As a result, we received funding from organizations that we might not have.”

Delmas says vocational training teams enhance any grant project. “It’s hard for me to visualize a Rotary project without one.”

This story originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.

Visit :-

rotary.org/en/specialists-field