It was a warm end-of-summer evening on the water in the Vancouver harbour. 35 Rotarians were invited to the September 4th dinner cruise for their contributions to The Rotary Foundation. The “cruise” included a delightful group of people, sharing laughs and a tasty dinner while enjoying the passing view of beautiful Vancouver.
What sticks in my memory most, however, is the sharp contrast between the comfort of our excursion and what we learned about the dire need of desperate people half way around the world.
On board was Past Rotary International President Jennifer Jones, Chair-elect of The Rotary Foundation Board of Trustees, with her husband Nick Krayacich. They made the event extra special. She and two other Foundation leaders shared stories about the “impact” of the Foundation where people have been in great need.
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| Dinner on board the Vancouver harbour cruise | Chris Offer, Jennifer Jones and Tim Shields share stories about some Areas of Focus and the work of The Rotary Foundation |
Fighting Disease Area of Focus
As RI President in 2022-23 Jennifer set off on what she called her Impact Tour. The first stop was in Pakistan. In thanking the front line, female health workers for risking their lives to deliver polio vaccines door-to-door to young children she joined a team in a slum outside of Karachi. It was heartbreaking to witness one family’s harsh, shared life together in cramped, squalid conditions with dirt floor, no beds, a bench where sat grubby little boys with runny noses and swirling flies. Yet she imagined that these little boys, despite many challenges ahead of them, would not be hampered by a lifetime of crippling polio which could well leave them impoverished.
Education & LIteracy Area of Focus
In travels with his wife, Tim Shields, major gift advisor for Zone 28 on Education and Literacy Area of Focus, said he visited communities where often young girls had to stay home instead of going to school so that they could fetch water, stoke fires, look after other babies and, as in a few countries, get married at the age of 12 or 13, living the rest of their lives in poverty.
For instance, in Malawi, where nobody has paid taxes for decades, a family must pay for education past grade 8. Many families don’t see the point in paying to educate a girl when they are just going to get married and have babies, even with men with AIDS who at least could feed them in what they knew would be their short lives.
In response to an appeal for help from a young woman who wanted to build a high school for girls, Tim’s family funded the very first classroom. From that one original classroom and 80 girls enrolled, all on Rotary District scholarships, the school now has 10 classrooms, five dormitories and on site housing for teachers, educates 400 girls a year and is self-sustaining. Many of the 1,100 graduates have gone on to college or technical school with a much better life ahead of them.
Environment Area of Focus
Past District 5040 Governor Chris Offer, major gift advisor for Zone 28 on the Environment Area of Focus, said that during apartheid in South Africa an entire community of "coloured" residents (members of multiracial ethnic communities) was removed from Cape Town. Many of those displaced people formed the community of Atlantis, in desert 60 km north of Cape Town. Chris visited the Rotary Club of Atlantis in December 2024. In the impoverished community with 40% unemployment he helped serve children lined up daily for a small helping food, often their only meal of the day, which he found “humbling and sad”.
Chris’s Rotary Club of Ladner donated funds, including a District Grant, through Atlantis Rotary to feed the children, renovate kitchen and toilet facilities, also to develop school gardens to provide food and teach the students how to grow vegetables. The children grow vegetables to supplement their food. Working in the garden they learn about the environment and water drip irrigation as they try to grow crops in the desert and preserve water.
Education Area of Focus
As an added story on Education & Literacy, The Rotary Foundation’s senior major gift officer Carolyn Ferguson, who supports 14 districts, included our District 5040, and Zone 28 told the guests about he late Hilda Cliffe a Rotarian from the Vancouver area who passed away at the age of 91 in 2021. She had a vision which started when a teacher where she grew up in the United Kingdom asked her and her classmates to imagine their future and write it down. Pursuing that vision Hilda moved to Canada and her career as teacher and eventually as school principal. Education and Literacy aligned well with her vision and values for how she wanted to see positive change in the world. It inspired her to name a gift to the Rotary Foundation and on her passing in 2021 the Hilda Cliffe endowment for basic education and literacy was established.
So there were three stories of desperate need and a role The Rotary Foundation is playing in improving lives in each case, plus a fourth. But overall the stories collectively were about our Areas of Focus and how they all intertwine in a large integrated system of humanitarian service made possible by Foundation funding and hard work of volunteers.
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| Thomas and Magdalen Leung, members of the Arch Klumpf Society, with Jennifer Jones and Nick Krayacich | Carolyn Ferguson with Peter Roaf |
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A beautiful view of the Vancouver harbour under the moon to end the cruise | |
Peter Roaf
Major Donor Level 1
Assistant Governor Richmond and Delta 2023-2026
LINKS:
The Rotary endowment: https://www.rotary.org/en/rotary-endowment
Protecting the environment https://www.rotary.org/en/our-causes/protecting-environment
Basic education and literacy https://www.rotary.org/en/our-causes/supporting-education