¡Tuvimos una sesión increíble gracias a Gaby!

¡Tuvimos una sesión increíble gracias a Gaby! Nos acompañaron dos personas maravillosas para platicarnos sobre la Fundación Luis Fe @undiagnosticoparafer y aprendimos muchísimo mientras nos divertíamos. ¡Qué gran experiencia! Felicidades, Gaby, por tu primera sesión, ¡seguimos aprendiendo y creciendo juntos!

#FundaciónLuisFe #Aprendizaje #PrimeraSesión #GraciasGaby

Source Link: https://www.facebook.com/Rotaract.Ags

 

Responding to a ‘friendship recession’

 

Responding to a ‘friendship recession’

Rotary members are finding ways to make connections they cherish

By Kate Silver

When Phil Clarke was in his early 70s, he set a goal: to make new friends. This was in 2021, and Clarke felt he’d drifted far from the days when he could turn to the next desk at work or school and find conversation and camaraderie. The writer and novelist does relish a bit of solitude for his creative work. But he’s also gregarious when he wants to be. He grew up with 10 younger siblings, after all. Yet, like many people his age, he was frustrated.

Why does something that once felt easy now seem so hard?

He wrote about the quandary in an online community section of The Denver Post, reflecting on an uncomfortable reality of older adulthood: Close friends grow apart, or even die, and replacing them feels daunting. He mused to himself jokingly that reversing that trend would have the ancillary benefit of increasing the turnout at his funeral. And then he set out on a friend-finding mission.

He browsed studies on the importance of social networks, pondered where he could find a pool of possible friends, and decided on the ideal criteria: a group that met regularly, welcomed people of all backgrounds and interests, stimulated his mind, and inspired action. Then he found a place that checked all the boxes: the Rotary Club of Highlands Ranch, just outside Denver.

Know someone who could use a friend? August is Membership and New Club Development Month for Rotary. Invite someone to experience Rotary at one of your club’s upcoming service projects. And visit rotary.org/membership for other tips and resources to help clubs build and sustain membership.

Phil Clarke, who joined Rotary on a quest for friendship, launched a film club that hosts screenings at a library. “I’m taking gradual steps to really get to know people on a deeper level,” he says. “That was my goal in the first place. And I think it’s working pretty well.” Images credit: Rebecca Stumpf

Since joining Rotary, Clarke, bespectacled with a slightly goofy grin, has worked with others to raise $500,000 to fund an endowed fellowship for pediatric mental health at a Colorado hospital system. He’s launched a film club that hosts screenings at a library; he’s formed a musical duo — called The Elderly Brothers — that performs at nursing homes and other venues; and at the weekly Rotary lunches, he feels a true sense of community. “I’m taking gradual steps to really get to know people on a deeper level,” he says. “That was my goal in the first place. And I think it’s working pretty well.”

Research shows how important friendship is to a person’s mental and physical health; it may even help you live longer. Scientists have found evidence suggesting that friends may influence our well-being as adults even more than family. And yet, in societies around the globe, things seem to be moving in the wrong direction. In what’s been dubbed a “friendship recession,” the number of close friends that adults have in the U.S. has declined over recent decades, affecting some groups — like men — more than others. The pandemic further aggravated our social isolation.

Reversing a friendship recession with Rotary

On the brighter side, scientists studying this phenomenon say that with some effort, individuals can turn the friendship recession into their own friendship boom. And, for many people, Rotary is just what the therapist ordered.

Kris Cameron was approaching retirement. After nearly 30 years as a teacher and teachers union leader, she was ready for it, but she knew she needed a plan. “I didn’t want to be one of those retirees who just sat around twiddling my thumbs and lost my social group,” Cameron says. Much like Clarke, she joined a Rotary club (Wenatchee Confluence in Washington state) in hopes of meeting new people and participating in projects to benefit her community.

Cindy Volyn was looking for a way to get more involved with community service projects. She decided to attend a Rotary meeting in hopes of connecting with like-minded people. There, she met Cameron and they quickly realized they shared a rather esoteric passion: a love of backyard chickens. Cameron has four and Volyn has 11. Both consider the birds pets, even family members. “They’re like our kids or our grandkids,” says Cameron. “It was so nice to meet someone else who had the same love and respect for her birds as we do.”

It didn’t take long to realize they had other shared interests, including the environment: Volyn works as an environmental program manager at the Washington State Department of Transportation, and Cameron is the chair of the club’s environmental committee. Volyn decided to join Rotary and threw herself into different activities, working side-by-side with Cameron within the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group and its plant-rich diet task force. Together, they’ve participated in highway cleanups and pollinator garden plantings, hosted film screenings themed around the environment, and coordinated monthly plant-based potlucks.

Cindy Volyn and Kris Cameron became friends in Rotary and bonded over their shared love of raising backyard chickens. Image credit: Jovelle Tamayo

But their connection extends beyond Rotary activities: They’ve become best friends. It’s a status that neither expected to find, and both cherish. “I’m a bit of a loner,” says Cameron. “I don’t have a lot of close girlfriends. So to find a good friend like Cindy, that I actually enjoy talking to and feel a lot of kinship with, has been such a gift.” Volyn is quick to return the love. “I feel I’m always slightly guarded with people. But I’m never that way with Kris,” she says. “And it was that way immediately.”

The two are constantly texting and emailing, updating each other on themselves and their families and, of course, on their backyard birds. Recently, Cameron had an obligation away from home and couldn’t keep up her usual nighttime chicken ritual. She knew just who to call. “Cindy came and tucked them into bed,” she says.

Friendships like the one between Volyn and Cameron are special. And, sadly, they’re becoming less common. In 1990, 33 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup reported having 10 or more close friends, and just 3 percent said they had none. Compare that with 2021, when the number of people with 10 or more close friends had fallen to 13 percent and those with none rose to 12 percent, according to a poll by the Survey Center on American Life.

Even before the pandemic, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared that the world was suffering from a “loneliness epidemic.” (Read an interview with Murthy on the topic in this magazine’s August 2020 issue.) A 2023 advisory from Murthy’s office points to several contributing trends in the U.S.: declining social networks and social participation, a decrease in family size and marriage rates, less participation in community groups (such as religious groups, clubs, and labor unions), and technologies that replace in-person interactions.

The report also sheds light on the mental and physical impacts of loneliness, which is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, dementia, and premature death.

The truth about loneliness

While loneliness has been on the rise, it’s certainly nothing new. In fact, it’s an emotion that’s hardwired into our biology for survival, says Megan Bruneau, a therapist and executive coach in Nashville, Tennessee. She says loneliness makes us feel uncomfortable, and that’s meant to motivate us to seek out other humans for relief. “We wouldn’t be able to mate, obviously, if we were totally by ourselves,” says Bruneau. “And we also wouldn’t be able to get in on the kill, or ward off packs of wild animals, or stay warm at night.”

In modern times, however, finding a remedy to loneliness requires more than simply opting in to the nearest group. Often, people who feel lonely also feel ashamed, as though they’ve done something wrong to feel that way, says Bruneau, author of How To Be Alone (and Together): 72 Lessons on Being at Peace With Yourself. “Especially in the age of Instagram, when you look around and it seems like everyone else has a great group and is always being social, except for you,” she says.

When Bruneau talks to patients who feel lonely, she validates their emotions and emphasizes how common this emotion is. Then she works to understand what’s getting in the way of that person connecting with others. For some people, it could be related to past trauma that’s causing them to shut down and avoid intimacy or closeness. For others, it could be circumstantial, and they just need a little encouragement to make more of a social effort. For the latter, she recommends that they put themselves in situations where people have shared interests and interact consistently, an approach known as social prescribing.

“Sign up for an eight-week cooking or art class,” she says. “Join a book club or team. Volunteer. Bring a gift to your neighbor and see if they’d be up for a walk or coffee sometime. Join [an app like] Bumble BFF and go on ‘friend dates.’”

Friendship, it turns out, is the second most common reason people join Rotary clubs, according to a 2022 member survey. (Community service is number one.) For members who are 60 and older, friendship is the top reason they stay. In a follow-up to his community blog post, Clarke suggests readers consider joining Rotary too. With a touch of humor, he writes, “My sense of it is that this will not only beef up the attendance at your memorial service, but that your life will be improved by serving others in ways that, at present, you may only vaguely imagine.”

Sheds allow men to talk with, work with, and learn from other self-motivated men. — Ron Bowden, Rotary Club of Toowoomba East, Australia. Image credit: Monika Lozinska

Loneliness isn’t just an American phenomenon. A few years ago, the United Kingdom launched its first government loneliness strategy, encouraging doctors to write patients “prescriptions” to participate in social activities, and across the country, “chatty benches” are popping up to encourage strangers to talk to each other. In Australia, the “men’s shed movement” has been growing since the 1990s, with more than 1,200 tool-filled sheds doubling as community centers where men can work side-by-side and connect with one another in a low-stakes setting (some sheds are also open to women).

For Ron Bowden, a member of the Rotary Club of Toowoomba East in Australia, a shed offered community following the loss of his wife, who died from brain cancer. There, he could throw himself into projects and repairs or just tinker while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other tinkerers, as he processed his grief. “It replaced the backyard shed where, as a kid, I was taught to use my father’s tools,” says Bowden, who went on to help set up two men’s sheds in hopes of helping others. “Sheds allow men to talk with, work with, and learn from other self-motivated men,” he says. In recent years, the movement has expanded beyond Australia, and there are now an estimated 3,000 sheds worldwide, including in New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Kenya, South Africa, Canada, and the United States.

While loneliness knows no gender, men often experience it differently than women, and research shows that they’re struggling even more as they age. The Survey Center on American Life found that men tend to have fewer close friends than women, and between 1990 and 2021, men who reported having no close friends grew from 3 percent to 15 percent.

Bruneau says that could be because men tend to struggle more with feeling connected than women. “In order for us to really connect, we need to be vulnerable,” she says. “Men struggle with vulnerability because our society tells them to be strong and independent, not ‘needy’ or ‘emotional,’ and thus they feel shame when exhibiting the very behaviors required for the type of connection that relieves loneliness.” Plus, she adds, there are simply fewer opportunities to meet people as we get older and leave behind our regular routines like school, team sports, and work.

Filling a void and making a difference

For David Cochran, the Rotary Club of Alpharetta, Georgia, helped fill a void after spending his career working in leadership positions in global corporations. In 2017, Cochran was at a crossroads as he approached retirement age. He attended a symposium held in conjunction with the Rotary International Convention in Atlanta, at which Rotarian entrepreneur Jim Marggraff gave a speech about using technology to solve problems and connect for social good. Cochran introduced himself, and that sparked a friendship, as well as a partnership. After attending the screening of a virtual reality film from the convention that Marggraff helped develop, Cochran was inspired to join Rotary. Along with other Rotary members, they launched a nonprofit called the Global Impact Group to make a positive societal and humanitarian impact using technology.

Through this work, Cochran is finding fulfillment in ways he never expected. And he’s learned that satisfaction doesn’t just come from the output. “Not everything needs to be work,” he says. “It’s finding these crucial moments to enjoy one another, to open yourself up to different possibilities.”

When Tom Gump joined the Rotary Club of Edina/Morningside, Minnesota, in 2013, he, too, wanted to meet friends. What he found — in the midst of a tragedy that affected his household — was something even more profound.

Tom Gump with his son, Andrew, (right) and Rotary Youth Exchange student Paco Tebar Gomez. Gump found connections in Rotary far deeper than he imagined. Courtesy of Tom Gump

Gump and his family hosted a Rotary Youth Exchange student from Spain, Paco Tebar Gomez, at their home in 2017-18. During his stay, Paco’s dad died by suicide, and the family’s church in Spain wouldn’t perform a funeral service. Tom and his wife, Catherine, now a member of the Rotary Club of Edina, flew Paco’s mom and two siblings to Minnesota so that the family could grieve together.

When the Gumps put out a call for help, their Rotary friends answered. One had lost his own father to suicide and showed up to support Paco and to listen. Another brought his dog over to spend time with the grieving teenager. And, together, Rotarians helped plan a heartfelt memorial service for Paco’s dad.

The service was held at the Gump family’s church on the rainiest of nights. Nearly 300 Rotarians filed in, smiling at videos showing Paco’s dad — a juggler — tossing balls in the air. Eyes welled up as stories unfolded about a man who was, to most attendees, a stranger.

Gump looked around in awe. He’d joined Rotary to meet friends. But the love and support he felt in this moment were beyond anything he could have imagined. “That’s when I realized Rotary is more than a club,” he says. “It’s a family.”

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

The art of making friends

Hope Kelaher, a therapist, and the author of Here to Make Friends: How to Make Friends as an Adult shared these tips with Rotary.

1. Become a regular.

   “Sit at a cafe for a couple of hours on the same day at the same time, and you will start to become a regular,” Kelaher says. “Put yourself out there by starting up conversations and see where it takes you.”

2. Examine your social network.

   Think about the people you already know you like. Talk to a neighbor. Host a dinner and ask guests to bring one or two friends you’ve never met.

3. Watch your body language and try a little small talk.

   If you’re smiling and relaxed, it will come across as more welcoming than, say, frowning and staring into your phone. Kelaher advises practicing small talk with someone you run into frequently so you’re more comfortable in a social situation.

Making new friends takes time and effort. Kelaher compares it to investing in your retirement account: “You have to start early,” she says, “and you have to keep working at it.”

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/responding-friendship-recession

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

Sangkoo Yun is selected to be 2026-27 Rotary International president

 

Sangkoo Yun is selected to be 2026-27 Rotary International president

By Etelka Lehoczky

Sangkoo Yun, of the Rotary Club of Sae Hanyang, Seoul, Korea, is the selection of the nominating committee to become Rotary International’s president for 2026-27. He will be officially declared the president-nominee on 15 September if no other candidates challenge him.

Yun received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Syracuse University School of Architecture in the U.S. and an honorary doctoral degree from The University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the founder and CEO of Dongsuh Corp., which engineers and markets architectural materials, and the president of Youngan Corp., which operates in real estate and financial investment. He is involved in many civic organizations and has a special interest in the preservation of cultural heritage.

A Rotary member since 1987, when he was a charter member of the Rotary Club of Sae Hanyang, Yun has served Rotary International as a director, trustee, committee member and chair, and RI learning facilitator. He served for eight years as co-chair of the Keep Mongolia Green Project, by Korean members of Rotary. His RI committee roles include the Board Administration Committee (2013-15, vice chair 2014-15), the International Assembly Committee (vice chair, 2020-21), and the End Polio Now Countdown to History Campaign Committee (regional vice chair, 2023-27). He also served on The Rotary Foundation’s Executive Committee (2019-22, chair 2020-21) and Programs Committee (2019-22, chair 2020-22).

Yun received The Rotary Foundation’s Distinguished Service Award in 2021-22. He was appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, awarded the Friendship Medal by the president of Mongolia, and recognized for distinguished services by the president and prime minister of Korea. He is a veteran of the Republic of Korea Army and an emeritus elder at Andong Presbyterian Church.

Yun and his spouse, Eunsun, are Rotary Foundation Benefactors, Major Donors, and members of the Arch Klumph Society, the Paul Harris Society, and the Bequest Society. They have two children.

To learn more about Yun, read his interview and vision statement, which outline his goals for Rotary.

The members of the Nominating Committee for the 2026-27 President of Rotary International are:

Jessie H. Harman (chair), Rotary Club of Wendouree Breakfast, Victoria, Australia; Francesco Arezzo (secretary), Rotary Club of Ragusa, Italy; Per Høyen, Rotary Club of Aarup, Denmark; Jeremy Hurst, Rotary Club of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; Jan Lucas Ket, Rotary Club of Purmerend, Netherlands; Urs Klemm, Rotary Club of Aarau, Switzerland; Sam Okudzeto, Rotary Club of Accra, Ghana; Bharat S. Pandya, Rotary Club of Borivli, Maharashtra, India; Julia D. Phelps, Rotary Club of Amesbury, Massachusetts, USA; José Alfredo Pretoni, Rotary Club of São Paulo-Sul, São Paulo, Brazil; Dean Rohrs, Rotary Club of Langley Central, British Columbia, Canada; Kenneth Schuppert, Rotary Club of Decatur, Alabama, USA; Johrita Solari, Rotary Club of Anaheim, California, USA; Katsuhiko Tatsuno, Rotary Club of Tokyo-West, Tokyo, Japan; Guiller E. Tumangan, Rotary Club of Makati West, Makati City, Philippines; Kamal Sanghvi, Rotary Club of Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India; Chang-Gon Yim, Rotary Club of Daegu West, Daegu, Korea

Visit :-

https://www.rotary.org/en/sangkoo-yun-is-selected-to-be-2026-27-rotary-international-president

Long overlooked, farmers are finding supports tailored to the stresses of rural life

 

Long overlooked, farmers are finding supports tailored to the stresses of rural life

By Elizabeth Hewitt Photography by Kathryn Gamble

Dorothy and Don Harms with their dog Max in the pasture to move beef cattle.

Courtesy of Dorothy Harms

For almost four decades, Dorothy and Don Harms tethered their lives to the needs of their dairy cows. Twice daily milking. Seasonal races to plant and harvest corn and alfalfa for feed. The fourth generation in his family to run the Reedsburg, Wisconsin, dairy farm, Don Harms knew each of their 130 cows by name. For many people who work in agriculture, Dorothy Harms says, farming is part of their identity. “It’s not their job,” she says. “It’s who they are.”

But the grueling schedule took a toll, so they gradually transitioned, launching a farm-stay tourism business, switching to beef cattle, and selling off their dairy herd little by little until they parted with the last 25 cows five years ago. In the weeks that followed, the couple grieved. Dorothy Harms’ body, so used to hard but rewarding work, yearned to go to the barn. Her husband struggled with anxiety and self-medicated with alcohol. “It was not an easy year,” she says.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health emergency, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the U.S. by calling or texting 988 or going to 988lifeline.org. If you are outside the U.S., visit findahelpline.com to get connected with a service in your country.

Around the same time, another farmer in their community, a close friend of the Harmses, took his own life. As the community rallied around his family, another farmer shared candidly how he had struggled with suicidal thoughts. At one of those community gatherings, Dorothy Harms learned about an opportunity to try counseling with a voucher from the Wisconsin agriculture department, and the couple found the experience somewhat helpful for processing their emotions. In the agricultural town of Reedsburg, the subject of mental health, so often kept private, was suddenly in the spotlight.

The conversations led people in this area of south-central Wisconsin to start the Farmer Angel Network, an organization that connects farm industry professionals and their families with mental health resources. The group builds a sense of community through events like drive-in movie nights and trains health providers to better understand agriculture’s unique pressures. Dorothy Harms, co-founder and board president, says the network is a resource that people know they can turn to if they need help. “There’s so much isolation, oftentimes, in farming,” she says. “By having an opportunity for fellowship and people getting to share what’s going on, it just opens the doors for possible further discussion, deeper discussion.”

Farmers’ livelihoods are shaped by many factors beyond their control, from fluctuations in global markets to extreme weather that can derail an entire growing season. These stressors are contributing to a mental health crisis in agriculture. The suicide rate among male farmers and ranchers in the U.S. is about 60 percent higher than that of all working-age men, and farmers have higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide risk than the general population.

Amid this crisis, efforts are growing to break down stigma and improve access to mental health supports. Crisis hotlines and teletherapy are working alongside grassroots initiatives, like the Farmer Angel Network, to open conversations about mental health among farmers and neighbors.

“What we’re trying to do is acknowledge that there’s a spectrum of need and comfort,” says Josie Rudolphi, an assistant professor and extension specialist with the University of Illinois who has researched farm stress. “We’re trying to provide a menu of resources along that spectrum.”

FOR MANY FARMERS, BUSINESS IS PERSONAL. On family-run farms, there’s often no clear separation between work and home life, according to Remington Rice, who leads Michigan State University Extension’s Managing Farm Stress project. He grew up on his family’s cattle farm, where his dad can still see the cows from his bedroom window. “Agriculture can be more a way of life than a 9-to-5 job,” he says.

This makes the unique stresses of farming difficult to compartmentalize, Rice says. Those uncertainties are significant: Anything from a late-season frost to a shift in global commodity markets can affect the farm’s financial security.

(From left) Kathy Fahy, a longtime Rotarian, on her farm in Bancroft, Iowa. Farmers Tim Bernhard (left), a member of the Rotary Club of Bancroft Area, and Tony Heldorfer, Fahy’s brother.

A 2018 survey of young farmers and ranchers in the Midwest found that more than half of respondents met criteria for depression, and 71 percent showed signs of generalized anxiety disorder. The U.S. is not alone. In India, where climate change-driven weather extremes are diminishing harvests, about 30 farmers and farmworkers took their own lives every day in 2022.

But many farmers avoid talking about their struggles, a discomfort Rice attributes to a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality. “I never heard my grandpa say that he was stressed or that he was sad,” Rice says. “Even though it was apparent to all of us that he was struggling at times, he never vocalized that.”

That may be changing. As awareness of rural mental health issues grows, so does the number of initiatives to confront them, including funding through the 2018 federal farm bill to build out a network to support farmers through regional centers. Rice is optimistic this mosaic of efforts is making a difference. In a 2021 Farm Bureau poll, a majority of rural adults said there was still stigma around mental health in the agriculture community, but 92 percent of farmers and farmworkers felt comfortable talking with a friend or family member about mental health, an increase of 22 percent over 2019.

WHEN FARMERS DELIVERED corn and soybean harvests to local cooperatives in Dickinson County, Iowa, in 2022, many left with something unexpected: a goody bag. Each bag contained a cookie, a granola bar, a bottle of water, and a small card that read: “Work in Agriculture Can be Stressful. It’s Okay to Ask for Help.” On the other side was a QR code to access a list of local mental health resources.

That fall, 760 of the goody bags were distributed by the Rotary Club of Iowa Great Lakes (Spirit Lake), which was part of a coalition including local health providers, school officials, and county resource officials aiming to connect residents with mental health supports.

Farmers seemed like an obvious place to start, says Kathy Fahy, a longtime Rotarian who helped lead the effort. Fahy grew up on her family’s farm, about an hour’s drive from Spirit Lake, during the 1980s agriculture crisis when high debt rates and low crop prices forced hundreds of thousands of farms to shut down. She now runs the 800-acre soy and corn operation with her brother. Each season requires big investments of time and money to get started. This spring, the wet weather kept them waiting to get their crops in the ground. “The stresses of farming are real,” she says.

(From left) Rotarians Tim and Carole Bernhard of the Rotary Club of Bancroft Area met up with Kathy Fahy and Katy Carey of the Rotary Club of Iowa Great Lakes (Spirit Lake) at an event to distribute goody bags with mental health resources.

One day in 2005, Fahy’s mother — whom Fahy calls a “strong farm woman” — went missing. The next day, as community members gathered to help search the farm, Fahy’s mother tried to climb out of the loft door high up on the huge barn.

Fahy dashed into the barn and scrambled up hay bales to pull her mother back from the edge. When Fahy asked what she was doing, she responded she wanted to be with her mother, who had died months earlier. Fahy had no idea what a hard time her mother was having.

There is a culture of keeping quiet about emotional struggles among many farm families, Fahy says. “We had to get through to her that it’s OK to talk.”

Fahy’s mother got mental health treatment, which helped her process her grief and led the entire family to adopt a more open approach to emotional health. Those experiences helped inform the discreet approach the Iowa Great Lakes club took when reaching out to farmers. The club has since worked on other initiatives to connect people with mental health services, including events through schools. By starting conversations with young people, they hope the effects will ripple through families to reduce stigma. In the meantime, distributing goody bags from grain coops and farm machinery dealers offered a quiet way to get resources directly into the hands of farmers and farmworkers. “We didn’t want to scare people away,” says Fahy.

The QR code from the goody bags has been scanned about 200 times, connecting people with a website (letstalkdickinson.org) with information about symptoms of farm stress, links to resources like hotlines, and a guide to finding a mental health care provider.

GROWING ACCESS TO MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES has emerged as a priority for rural areas. Some states offer programs that make services free for farmers. Even so, finding providers can be a challenge. As of 2019, 70 percent of nonmetropolitan U.S. counties did not have a psychiatrist, and almost half did not have a psychologist.

Teletherapy is helping, according to Rice of MSU, which connects Michigan farmers to free online mental health services. The online sessions also help overcome stigma because they make meeting privately easy and don’t require taking time off to leave the farm.

Demand in Michigan has grown since the program started in 2020, when 20 people reached out. That climbed to 53 by 2022 and has held steady.

Another approach has been telephone hotlines, an effort funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In recent years, the Iowa Concern hotline has been expanded to serve 12 Midwestern states with around-the-clock support, as well as legal and financial resources, for farmers dealing with stress.

A postcard promoting mental health resources for rural agriculture workers.

Relationships with family and neighbors are also important. Farm stress initiatives have focused on training community members in basic mental health awareness.

Norlan Hinke, a financial specialist at Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, has distributed thousands of mental health pamphlets throughout Iowa. A Rotarian since 2004 and the District 6000 governor-elect, Hinke has spoken with Rotary clubs and incorporated the agriculture-focused campaign into the work of the district’s chapter of the Rotary Action Group on Mental Health Initiatives.

He has passed out information to people with jobs linked to agriculture, like veterinarians, bankers, and machinery suppliers because they are well-positioned to hear when farmers are struggling. One equipment dealer Hinke spoke with was enthusiastic to share the pamphlets about farm stress with his staff. “His salespeople told him they were spending as much time just listening and counseling as they did selling merchandising equipment,” Hinke says.

A YOUNG FARMER WAS GETTING READY to inherit the family farm. The person had been involved with farming and invested in farm equipment. But the parents, in their 70s, simply wouldn’t talk about a plan for the future.

The young farmer shared the stress caused by this precarious situation at an online “resiliency circle” event to help people in agriculture navigate farm transitions. Led by a counselor, 20 participants each month share their experiences and worries in writing and by speaking anonymously, without using video or identifying details. The sessions help people manage the practicalities of farm transitions and the complex accompanying emotions, like loss and grief.

While therapy appointments and crisis hotlines are important mental health options, says Monica McConkey, a Minnesota-based counselor who specializes in agriculture and leads the circles, these online support-group-like spaces can be more approachable. People listen in while driving a tractor or doing farm chores. “It’s a no-barrier option,” she says. “You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to pay anything.”

These resiliency circles are run by the Cultivating Resiliency for Women in Agriculture project of the Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center. The project launched virtual “coffee chats” in 2019 to give farmers an outlet to talk among peers about problems. The resiliency circles — focused on farm transitions and the particular pressures facing women in farming — started in 2022. These programs have grown to reach nearly 900 participants, most of them women, from almost every U.S. state, five Canadian provinces, and multiple other countries. “There’s just not enough support in rural areas,” says Doris Mold, a Wisconsin dairy farmer who co-leads the Cultivating Resiliency project. “So we’re just trying to offer additional services.”

Scenes from Kathy Fahy’s farm.

Peer support can also be more comfortable for farmers than speaking with mental health providers, who don’t always understand the pressures and lifestyle of farmers. Mold has heard of counselors advising dairy farmers that they should take a few weeks off work, a near impossibility for a farm operator. Cultivating Resiliency programs fill the gaps. One woman told Mold the program had “saved her life.”

Efforts to support farmers are also looking beyond symptoms of stress to address root causes. Another organization that focuses on women in farming, Annie’s Project, offers courses that teach skills in managing farm finances and marketing. The program has proven particularly valuable for the networks it builds among women farmers, according to Karisha Devlin, who co-leads Annie’s Project with Mold.

Devlin, a longtime member of the Rotary Club of Knox County in Missouri, says those relationships help farmers navigate stressful situations. “Being able to make those connections and have that peer group is really powerful for women,” Devlin says.

MSU Extension also aims to address the deeper causes of stress, offering links to teletherapy alongside guides to farm budgeting and strategies to manage aspects of extreme weather, like harvesting frost-damaged soybeans. Rice often gives suicide prevention presentations at more general gatherings, like farm succession planning events or Farm Bureau meetings. Intertwining mental health and farm resources makes people more likely to engage.

For some farmers, addressing the root causes of stress can mean finding other ways of bringing in income. The expansion of renewable energy across the Midwest has offered some farmers opportunities to establish a steady cash flow by siting wind turbines on their land.

Around 2009, when the Michigan utility Consumers Energy was looking for wind turbine locations in Mason County, Ralph Lundberg signed up his family’s farm, which he had run since 1980.

Wind turbines can provide farmers with a steady source of income.

“We’re not gamblers,” Lundberg says. “But this spring between the seed corn and the herbicide and the fertilizer, we’re going to put $150,000 in the ground and then sit back and wait and hope we get enough rain, enough sunshine for the crops to be raised.

“So in that sense, we are gamblers.”

But Lundberg also has five turbines on his land that generate an annual royalty of $10,000 to $25,000. The income just about covers the property tax bills.

Diversifying income is not always easy or cheap for farmers, says Rudolphi of the University of Illinois. But such opportunities for stable cash flow can reduce the pressures. “It’s providing some consistent income that a lot of farm families have never known,” she says.

The Harmses, in Wisconsin, have settled into life without their dairy cows. The beef cattle they raise now are less labor intensive, and they sell the meat directly from their farm, giving them more financial control than they had in the milk commodity market. Their oldest daughter and her husband are preparing to take over the farm.

And Farmer Angel Network’s influence has grown. Not only is the group reaching farm families across the county through events including ice cream socials and county farm breakfasts but it’s also inspiring mental health networks in other places. Another chapter launched recently in northwest Wisconsin. These grassroots networks build connections and a sense of belonging. “There’s room for everybody in this,” says Rudolphi, “and we need everybody in this.”

This story is a collaboration between Rotary magazine and Reasons to be Cheerful, a nonprofit solutions journalism outlet.

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

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