In the April 25,2024 Global TV segment, "This is BC", the feature, "Volunteers help patients worldwide" focused on Rotary World Help sponsored and managed by Rotary clubs in BC. Rotary World Help is a non profit organization aimed at collecting and distributing medical equipment and supplies, dental, optical, education & sports equipment and disaster relief supplies to international recipients in need. It is a non-religious, non-political charity run by local Rotary clubs.
Rotary International President 2022-23 Jennifer Jones, now Rotary Foundation Trustee 2023-27, believes in the power of storytelling to move the world forward. Here is her story, as part of her presentation at Pacific North West PETS (Presidents Elect Training Seminar) in Seattle in February 2024, about her first hand experience with a polio vaccination team of women visiting a home in an impoverished community of Pakistan during her year as President. She also finishes with Rotary's determination to achieve a milestone in building The Rotary Foundation's endowment fund to $2.25 billion -- which supports many of Rotary's projects worldwide -- likely to be reached in time for the international convention next year in Calgary.
Many Burnaby elementary children do not have proper footwear for the winter months. The lack of boots during the winter months can affect a child's health and result in poor attendance at school if a student cannot walk to school in poor, wet weather with proper footwear.
The $6,000 Boots for Kids program initiated by the Rotary Club of Burnaby Deer Lake provided new boots and socks to 255 needy children at eight elementary schools in Burnaby in with support of a $2,000 District Grant from The Rotary Foundation.
A small tree grown from the seed of a Gingko tree which survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 came to Vancouver with a Hiroshima survivor and a group of Japanese Rotarians for the Rotary Presidential Conference on Peace and Environmental Sustainability in February 2018. The group presented the sapling to then Rotary International President Ian Risely attending the conference from Australia (shown here). The Rotary group, including President Ian and District Peace Chair and Past District Governor John Anderson, then planted the tree right after the conference in Vancouver's VanDusen Gardens. Now, more than six years later, as Rotarian Kaz Kadono says, the tree, "stands as a living testament to our shared aspiration for a peaceful and nuclear-free world."