Rotary news November

Vol.65, Issue 5

Annual Subscription Rs.420

November 2014

Building schools in Garhwal.

The Rotary Foundation Month

CONTENTS

16

22

24

7

From the Editor’s Desk

53

Rotary was there earlier

9

President Speaks

54

Taking Literacy to Rural India

10

First Thoughts

56

Spreading Cheer

16

Building Schools in Garhwal

62

India at The Asian Games 2014

20

White House honours

64

District 3131 shares Membership Secrets with District 1270

One Act of Charity

69

Dialysis made Affordable

Began A Revolution

70

A Spanish Sojourn

24

Rotarians reach out to the devastated J&K people

76

Connect to Collaborate

26

A win-win MoU

82

Very Briefly

27

Global Outlook

36

Focus - Happy Schools

38

The India Sri Lanka Tie-up

39

Lights On

41

The Giving Festival

42

World Round-up

44

Pune’s Jalpari

51

Water Harvesting

Women Rotarians

22

41

ADVISORY BOARD

TRUSTEES Chairman DG Ramesh Agrawal, RI Dist. 3052

RID

P.T. Prabhakar

RI Dist. 3230

Secretary DG Vyankatesh S. Metan, RI Dist. 3132

PRIP Rajendra K. Saboo

RI Dist. 3080

Treasurer DG Sanjay Khemka, RI Dist. 3250

PRIP Kalyan Banerjee

RI Dist. 3060

RI Dist. 2980

DG

S.P. Balasubramaniam

PRID Sushil Gupta

RI Dist. 3010

RI Dist.3000

DG

Jagannathan Paramasivam

PRID Ashok Mahajan

RI Dist. 3140

RI Dist.3010

DG

Sanjay Khanna

PRID Yash Pal Das

RI Dist. 3080

RI Dist.3020

DG

Dr. G.V. Mohan Prasad

PRID Shekhar Mehta

RI Dist. 3291

RIDE Dr. Manoj D. Desai

RI Dist. 3060

RI Dist.3030

DG

Dattatraya Shantaram Deshmukh

DG

Ramesh Agrawal

RI Dist.3052

RI Dist.3040

DG

Narendra Kumar Jain

DG

Vyankatesh Metan

RI Dist. 3132

RI Dist. 3051

DG

Jagdish B. Patel

DG

Sanjay Khemka

RI Dist. 3250

RI Dist. 3053

DG

Anil Maheshwari

DG

I.S.A.K. Nazar

RI Dist. 3230

RI Dist. 3060

DG

Ashish Ramesh Ajmera

PDG Rabi Narayan Nanda

RI Dist. 3262

RI Dist. 3070

DG

Gurjeet Singh Sekhon

PDG Radhe Shyam Rathi

RI Dist. 3053

RI Dist. 3080

DG

Dilip Patnaik

PDG Hari Krishna Chitipothu

RI Dist. 3150

RI Dist. 3090

DG

Pardeep Kumar Chehal

RI Dist. 3100

DG

Sanjiv Rastogi

RI Dist. 3110

DG

Ashok Jyoti

RI Dist. 3120

DG

Satpal Gulati

RI Dist. 3131

DG

Vivek Aranha

RI Dist. 3140

DG

Ajay Gupta

RI Dist. 3150

DG

Malladi Vasudev

RI Dist. 3160

DG

G.S. Mansoor

RI Dist. 3170

DG

Ganesh G. Bhat

RI Dist. 3180

DG

Dr. S. Bhaskar

RI Dist. 3190

DG

Manjunath Shetty

RI Dist. 3201

DG

P. Venugopalan Menon

RI Dist. 3202

DG

K. Sridharan Nambiar

RI Dist. 3211

DG

K.S. Sasikumar

RI Dist. 3212

DG

M. Ashok Padmaraj

RI Dist. 3230

DG

I.S.A.K. Nazar

RI Dist. 3240

DG

Swapan Kumar Choudhury

RI Dist. 3261

DG

Shambhu Jagatramka

RI Dist. 3262

DG

Ashok Bihari Mohapatra

RI Dist. 3291

DG

Pinaki Prasad Ghosh

COMMITTEES DG P. Venugopalan Menon - Chair, Finance Committee DG Dr. G.V. Mohan Prasad - Chair, Editorial Committee DG Sanjay Khanna - Chair, Marketing Committee DG G.S. Mansoor - Vice-chair, Marketing Committee

ROTARY NEWS ROTARY SAMACHAR Editor Rasheeda Bhagat Assistant Editors Jaishree Padmanabhan Selvi Kandaswamy

Send all correspondence and subscriptions to ROTARY NEWS TRUST 3rd Floor, Dugar Towers, 34 Marshalls Road, Egmore, Chennai 600 008, India.

Phone : 044 42145666 Fax : 044 28528818 e-mail : rotarynews@rosaonline.org Website : www.rotarynewsonline.org

Your Comments We’re with you Rotary News is very informative, educative and useful for all of us. In his column ‘President Speaks,’ the RI President’s appeal to all Rotarians to support the youngsters serving in Rotaract and Interact motivates us. After all, they are the Rotarians of Tomorrow. Grow by reading in ‘Literacy’ page gives knowledge to set up Library, and Holistic Thoughts ‘Your future begins today’ by Sri Mahatria Ra is truly inspiring.

Rtn. Sachibhai RC Bhanjanagar RI District 3262

I thank Rasheeda Bhagat for introducing the readers to Achyuta Samanta, the founder of the amazing institutions KISS and KIIT. KISS provides residential care and education from KG to PG and even Ph.D., to thousands of tribal children coming from remote Odisha. Your versatility in the use of language is brilliant. I hope you will write about more such unsung Messiahs in the coming issues.

Rtn. Col. Gopinathan RC Wadakkanchery RI District 3201

Change for better The Holistic Thoughts by Mahatria Ra are an eye opener. As he rightly says there is no rewinding of time and our present and future are in our own hands to prove our abilities. So let us think about today and tomorrow positively, and change for better.

Rtn. B. Pasupathi RC Dalmiapuram RI District 3000

Heartiest Congratulations for being appointed as the Editor of Rotary News. Please accept my compliments for an excellent September 2014 issue. Your cover story: ‘A Life worth Living,’ ‘A Sunday Family Treat’ and your Editorial are very interesting. It’s also a matter of pride for us to have one of the Rotary awardees in the field of journalism on our board. You connecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inspiring speech with real life examples are really touching.

Rtn. Atul Bhide RC Thane Hills RI District 3140

Welcome new Editor I congratulate our RI President, Gary C.K. Huang for his new idea ‘Light up Rotary through celebrating Rotary Days’ and welcome the new Editor Rasheeda Bhagat and convey my appreciation to her and her team for an interesting September 2014 issue.

Rtn. Dr A.K. Das RC Malda RI District 3240

I appreciate the article on Sridhar Vembu in the September issue and his focus on democratisation of education. We want more articles of this type in Rotary News in future.

The Editor’s note on awakening the youth and making them more conscious about their role in our elections was inspiring.

Rtn. Arun Kumar Dash RC Baripada RI District 3262

We welcome your feedback

I am regular reader of Rotary News. The new look and design of the September issue made reading more interesting, specially ‘No Blind Moves’ by Jaishree and ‘Making Herbal Salt’ by Rasheeda Bhagat.

Hats off to the Editorial team; my club wishes you all the best.

Rtn Rajiv Saigal RC Bhusawal RI District 3030 Four-way Test Congratulations for an excellent layout and extensive coverage in the October issue, be it the Membership Seminars in the Districts or the projects in the clubs with excellent photographs and good text. Mahatria Ra’s column is welcome as I am one of his fans. The ‘First Thoughts’ of RID PT Prabhakar on the 4-Way Test has hit the nail on the head. The change to Rotary News is welcome, let it continue to change for the better.

Rtn. Nan Narayenen RC Madurai West RI District 3000 Unsung Heroes The write-up on DGN 2016–17 Meet in the October issue of Rotary News was excellent. The change in Rotary News content is obvious and impressive, specially the coverage of districts and special projects.

The editorial team deserves credit for the improved content. The DGN meet article covered a landmark meeting, which would inspire future leaders. However DGN 3140 Gopal Mandhania, DGN 3190 HR Anant and DGN 3090 Sanjay Gupta, also deserve a big round of cheer for their hard work to make this event a huge success.

DGN Dr Pramod Kumar RI District 3120

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

Our children deserve the best

F

or Rotary and Rotarians, constantly striving to improve the lives of fellow citizens, in whatever corner of the world, there is always enough and more to do. That much more in a country such as India where challenges abound on the development front in areas as varied as literacy and sanitation, health, housing and nutrition, and above all gender and child rights.

So just before undertaking a three-day journey to the Rudraprayag region in the Garhwal Himalayas where Rotarians are building schools that were devastated by the June 2013 flash floods, it was exhilarating to learn that Kailash Satyarthi, a child rights activist from Madhya Pradesh in India, and Malala Yusufzai, a Pakistani teenaged activist fighting for the girl child’s right to education, and already an international celebrity, had jointly bagged this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Satyarthi’s organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan has been fighting for decades to stop child trafficking and rescue children held in bonded labour and put them into schools. According to the 2011 census, there are 43.53 lakh working children in the 5–14 age group in India. Shocking though this number sounds, we were much worse — the 2001 census had put the number of working Indian children to over 1.26 crore. NGOs say the real number is far, far greater, if you include children working in restaurants and roadside chaishops, construction industry, homes and offices. It is no consolation that the official number has more than halved in 10 years. We can’t raise our heads and say with pride we are Indian unless we can get all our children into schools, and return their childhood to them.

Malala’s story has been well documented. Shot by the Pakistan Taliban through her head for daring to advocate on a BBC blog the girl child’s right to education, she was treated by a hospital in Birmingham, UK, where she is schooling now. Her grit and determination to work for girls’ right to education has influenced world leaders and her 16th birthday was celebrated by the UN as ‘Malala Day.’ After winning the Peace Prize, she touched our hearts by her simple speech in which she thanked her parents, specially her father “for not clipping my wings,

for letting me fly and achieve my goals. For showing to the world that a girl is not supposed to be a slave, she should have an identity, she has equal rights and she should be recognised as a voice.”

While these activists have put children’s education on centrestage, there are millions of Indian schoolchildren who have no such ‘saviours.’ We can wax eloquent on quality education, but what about those children who don’t even have a basic classroom with a safe roof above their heads? Where children study in the open because their parents are terrified that the damaged roof might collapse on their little heads anytime? This happened in Uttarakhand after the flash floods of June 2013 devastated many schools in Uttarkashi, Rudraprayag and other areas in the Garhwal Himalayas.

Rotary has swung into action and is now engaged in building several such schools, which are designed and built taking safeguards against earthquakes and landslides (page 16). With the Rotary Uttarakhand Disaster Relief Trust formed last year, District 3080 started to implement their plans and model schools are coming up in remote villages of the State. I visited a couple last fortnight, one requiring a one-hour hike on the hills, and could see the contrast between the ramshackled schools these bright-eyed and shiny-faced children attend now and the new Rotary schools being built from a corpus of Rs 5.12 crore. All the money, except a few lakh of rupees, has been collected from India.

Rotarians acted immediately in Jammu & Kashmir and are continuing to send the much needed relief material (Page 24). In Pune, Distrct 3131 has done exemplary work for rejuvenating a dry stream and given hope to the farmers of three villages (page 44).

When you give for such causes, you open not only your purses, but also your hearts.

Rasheeda Bhagat

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 7

HOLISTIC THOUGHTS

It seems the heart of a man told the man, “I began beating when you were in the womb of your mother and I will keep beating till you reach the tomb.

Relentlessly I keep working with so much intensity and enthusiasm. And,

Get enriched with inspirational thoughts reproduced from renowned new-age life guru and spiritualist, Shri. Mahatria Ra. He is also the founder of Alma Mater, an organisation dedicated to self-mastery and holistic personality. His spiritual foundation, Infinitheism encourages a path that inspires breakthroughs in people by thinking abundance in all spheres of human endeavour.

I know ‘I Can’ till the end. After all, if not, that will be the end. If this is what I can do as just an organ of your body, hey man, as the master of this body, is it not possible for you to work with relentless intensity and enthusiasm in whatever you do, if only you too believe, ‘I Can’.”

It seems the hand of a man told the man, “I dirty myself to keep the other parts of the body clean. If anybody tries to hurt any part of the body, I volunteer to take the hurt unto myself, and protect the other parts of the body. I know ‘I Can’ and I take responsibility for every part of the body. If this is what I can do as just a part in your body, hey man, is it not possible for you to assume responsibility for the welfare of all your near and dear ones, if only you too believe, ‘I Can’.”

It seems the leg of a man told the man, “I take you wherever you want to go. I help you to reach whatever be the destination. I always believe, ‘I Can’. If this is what I can do as just a part in your body, hey man, is it not possible for you to achieve every goal you set for yourself, accomplish every ambition of yours, and fulfill every dream you have dreamt for yourself, if only you too believe, ‘I Can’.”

It doesn’t matter whether others believe in you or not, you got to believe ‘I Can’, and if you do, you can become whatever you want to become. It doesn’t matter even if everybody believes in you, even God cannot help you, if you don’t believe in yourself.

Don’t ever let someone tell you, you can’t do something. You want something; go get it.

8 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER JUNE 2014 2014

Dear Fellow Rotarians, Four months into this year of working to Light Up Rotary, I am more excited about Rotary than ever before. I’ve been to 22 countries, visited dozens of cities, and met thousands of Rotarians. I’ve seen amazing projects and been inspired over and over again by the terrific work Rotarians do all over the world. And I’ve been privileged to be part of all kinds of Rotary events, from club meetings to Rotary institutes, from Rotary Days to Foundation dinners.

Every event is memorable. I feel especially honoured when I am invited to share in club celebrations. To me, taking part in a Rotary club celebration as Rotary International President is like being invited to a family event as an honoured guest. Indeed, Rotary is the biggest family in the world.

You could say that Rotary is built of service: Each project is another brick in the big building that is Rotary. If our service forms the bricks, then there is no question that friendship is the mortar that holds those bricks together. I see this every day, but nowhere more clearly than at some of the most special Rotary club events: their centennial celebrations.

Being President of Rotary International in its 110th year, I’ve been lucky to take part in a number of these. It is natural, when visiting long-serving clubs, to want to know what their secret is — because I have always noticed that the longestserving clubs are also some of the most productive. They are large, they are active, and they do great work. Not only that, but they have a great time doing it.

Of course, that is their secret: In Rotary, strong friendships and great service go hand in hand. When we enjoy our work, we want to do it. We want to work harder, and we want to work better. We look forward to Rotary meetings. Even when our lives are busy, we make Rotary a priority — because we want to see our friends, and we want to serve.

That is why Rotary is still here, after more than 109 years. In Chinese, we say:

A life without a friend is a life without sun.

Our Rotary friendships give light to our lives, and it is Rotary friendship — as well as service — that lets us Light Up Rotary.

Gary C.K. Huang President, Rotary International NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 9

First Thoughts Rotary Day at the White House!

Rotarians excel in service, thanks to their spouses District Seminars and meetings galore Participation soared in Chapter Four!

My dear partners in service, November brings the smell of monsoon, feel of festivity, sight of lights ... sound of laughter. Let’s add these to the touch of generosity that Rotary’s Foundation Month brings, and create a grand celebration of love and life!

No better examples can be cited than The Rotary Foundation (TRF) projects to define RI President Gary Huang’s theme this year — Light up Rotary.

Nearly 98 years ago the then RI President Arch Klumph had a vision. He nurtured it with passion, articulated it with conviction, matched it with action and drove it to fruition.

At the culmination of that vision lay the beginning of TRF, which today stands as a testimony to Rotary’s spirit of service and concerns and commitment to the entire world.

In his address at the 1917 convention of the International Association of Rotary Clubs, President Arch Klumph called the attention of the organisation to the possibility of a future endowment fund “for the purpose of doing good in the world, in charitable, educational or other avenues.”

If Klumph were alive today he would indeed be proud of the “endowment” he inspired.

From a humble beginning of $26.50, TRF has grown into a colossus, making its presence felt in millions of lives spread across numerous geographical regions. It deserves and is in need of all the help and support it can receive from each and every Rotarian. In this connection, the profound words of Kahlil Gibran spring to mind: “Beauty is that which loves to give — that which loves to give and not to receive.”

The Rotarians of the world have made a wonderful beginning towards this end by mastering the Art of Giving!

“Rivers do not drink their own water, nor do trees eat their own fruit, nor do rain clouds eat the grains reared by them.

The wealth of the noble is used solely for the benefit of others!” Even after accepting that giving is good and that one must learn to give, several questions need to be answered.

Question 1: When should one give?

We all know the famous incident from Mahabharat: Yudhistira asks a beggar seeking alms to come the next day. Hearing this, Bheem rejoices that his brother Yudhistira has conquered death! For, he is sure that he will be around the next day to give. Yudhistira gets the message.

One does not know really whether one will be there tomorrow to give! The time to give, therefore, is now.

10 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Question 2: How much to give?

One recalls the famous incident from history: Rana Pratap was reeling after defeat from the Moghals. He had lost his army, his wealth, and most important, hope and the will to fight. At that time, in his darkest hour, his trusted minister Bhama Shah came seeking him and placed his entire fortune at the disposal of Rana Pratap. With this Rana Pratap raised an army and lived to fight another day.

So the answer is: “Give as much as one can!”

Question 3: What to give?

It is not only money that can be given away. It can be a flower or service with a smile. It is not ‘how much,’ but ‘how’ one gives that really matters. When you give a smile to a stranger that may be the only good thing received by him in days and weeks!

You can give anything but you must give with all your heart!

One also needs answer to this question: Whom to give?

Obvious answer for Rotarians: Give to TRF. Question 4: How to give?

On the manner of giving, please ensure the receiver does not feel humiliated, nor the giver feels proud by giving. In giving, follow the advice ‘Let not your left hand know what your right hand gives.’ Charity without publicity and fanfare is the highest form of charity. Give quietly!

While giving, let not the recipient feel small or humiliated. After all, what we give never really belonged to us. We come to this world with nothing and will go with nothing.

The thing gifted was only with us for a temporary period.

Why then take pride in giving away something which really

did not belong to us? Give with grace and with a feeling of gratitude.

Question 5: What should one feel after giving?

We all know the story of Eklavya. When Dronacharya asked him for his right thumb as Guru Dakshina, he unhesitatingly cut off his thumb and presented it to his guru.

There is a little known sequel to this story. Eklavya was asked, when he was dying, whether he ever regretted the act of giving away his thumb. His reply has to be believed to be true. He said, “Yes, I regretted this only once in my life. It was when Pandavas were coming to kill Dronacharya who was broken-hearted on the false news of the death of his son, Ashwathama, and had stopped fighting. It was then that I regretted the loss of my thumb. If the thumb was there, no one could have dared to hurt my Guru.”

The message is clear: Give and never regret giving!

Last Question: How much should we provide for our heirs?

Ask yourself: “Are we taking away from them the gift of work — a source of happiness?”

Investment guru Warren Buffett has the best answer: “Leave your kids with enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing!”

I would conclude by saying: Let us learn the Art of Giving. Quoting Saint Kabir: “When the wealth in the house increases, when water fills a boat, throw them out (for good causes) with both hands!” This is the wise thing to do!

The RI board has recognised TRF as “Rotary’s major instrument for charitable work in its quest for international understanding and peace.” It has also noted that the Foundation “does not get the priority it deserves among some clubs and individual Rotarians.”

This year, let each and every club in our zones help change this perception.

Many of us consider the gift of US $1,000 — which is recognised with a PHF certificate, pin and medallion, as generous and the end of our support to the Foundation. But the Paul Harris Fellow recognition should only be considered as our first serious commitment to TRF, rather than the last; a beginning and not the end.

Each year, we must make some contribution to TRF — not necessarily at the level of a PHF contribution. Every gift helps support the splendid TRF programmes ... be it only $25, 50 or 100.

An annual gift would be a wonderful ongoing expression of our continued support to TRF, which is rated as one of the best run foundations by ‘Charity Navigator,’ an organisation that rates US NGOs. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is what

“From a humble beginning of $26.50, TRF has grown into a colossus, making its presence felt in millions of lives spread across numerous geographical regions. It deserves and is in need of all the help and support it can receive from each and every Rotarian.” are you doing for others,” said Martin Luthur King.

The Rotary Foundation has many befitting replies to this question. Its PolioPlus programme is a perfect example of selfless service.

This potent mix of money and man-hours combined with the magnificent leadership and direction provided by TRF has proved lethal for the polio-virus.

These past few months as I travelled all over our country, meeting Rotarians, visiting projects, and presiding over functions, I’ve realised that I was only a messenger — a spokesman, an insignificant person drawing significance from the organisation and the cause it represents.

However, this significant phase in my life has made me aware of my role in the continuity of Rotary and its pursuit of service ideals. Time is fleeting and so much more remains to be done. Let us take up the challenge and act in the living present.

We are not sure of sorrow And joy was never sure Today will die tomorrow Time stoops to no man’s lure.

Let’s fill our present with action And strengthen The Rotary Foundation Let’s make our generous thoughts Flow into beseeching hands and hearts!

Yours in Rotary,

P.T. Prabhakar Director Rotary International (2013–15) NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 11

District Wise Contributions to The Rotary Foundation as on September 30, 2014 (in US Dollars)

District Number 2980 3000 3010 3020 3030 3040 3051 3052 3053 3060 3070 3080 3090 3100 3110 3120 3131 3132 3140 3150 3160 3170 3180 3190 3201 3202 3211 3212 3230 3240 3250 3261 3262 3291 India Total

APF

24,187 5,859 8,005 20,251 1,240 (3,867) 0 (72,500) 2,026 21,158 7,951 31,260 17,408 22,829 23,773 10,943 35,537 1,929 2,10,907 16,476 1,856 8,967 41,320 2,014 13,745 19,730 9,434 9,380 42,152 27,839 64,995 3,965 15,921 1,328 6,48,015

PolioPlus*

Other Restricted

India 6,217 0 561 500 305 0 0 0 0 0 300 9,727 0 0 1,614 0 1,544 0 200 0 0 150 0 100 624 949 1,000 2,608 203 1,597 0 0 0 0 28,201

Endowment Fund

Total Contributions

0 0 2,700 3,000 0 0 0 0 4,000 4,385 1,329 18,279 0 0 0 0 3,51,409 0 69,592 18,076 0 0 6,000 4,040 0 0 0 0 0 3,000 105 0 0 23,768 5,09,683

0 0 1,000 0 0 593 0 83,136 0 8,492 0 3,898 0 0 0 0 24,042 0 1,300 2,000 0 0 0 0 0 1,017 6,000 0 16,552 25 7,245 0 0 0 1,55,300

30,404 5,859 12,266 23,751 1,545 (3274) 0 10,636 6,026 34,034 9,580 63,166 17,408 22,829 25,386 10,943 4,12,532 1,929 2,81,998 36,552 1,856 9,117 47,320 6,154 14,369 21,696 16,434 11,988 58,908 32,461 72,344 3,965 15,921 25,095 13,41,199

48,222

Sri Lanka 1,100

0

5,000

54,322

3271 3272

2,414 500

Pakistan 12,345 4,705

0 (816)

0 0

14,760 4,389

0 0

6,000 0

63,436 2,400

Nepal 50 500 57,411 5,09,367 42,25,371 34,27,298

0 1,66,300 30,45,874

7,632 14,88,138 3,14,34,055

3281 3282 3292 South Asia Total World Total

46,426 2,400 7,082 7,55,060 2,07,35,511

* Excludes Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Rotary Social Media www.rotary.org/socialnetworks

More Online Resources books www.rotary.org/rotarian

www.rotary.org/rotaryminute

Rotary Images www.rotary.org/rotaryimages

3220

Bangladesh 11,010 0

Bookmark Rotary

Source: RI South Asia Office

Rotary eNewsletters www.rotary.org/newsletters

XXXXXXXXX MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

Help us promote peace

I

t is surely the wish in all our hearts that there is peace in our world.

Our Rotary Foundation is endeavouring to advance this with the establishment of Rotary Peace Centres in various parts of the globe.

The Rotary Peace Centres are the premier educational programme of the Foundation, and this year I am asking Rotarians to foster world understanding, goodwill and peace by promoting and publicising the programme so its work is enhanced.

Rotary Foundation Award Winners The 2013–14 recipients of The Rotary Foundation Distinguished Service Award and Citation for Meritorious Service have been announced. The Distinguished Service Award is the Foundation’s highest recognition of active service, which must reach beyond the district and last for an extended period. Rotarians become eligible for the award four years after receiving the Citation for Meritorious Service, which recognises individuals who have provided significant active service to the Foundation for more than one year.

Although anyone may nominate a candidate for the citation, District Governors must approve each nomination.

Distinguished Service Award RI District

Name

3020

Sam Movva

3040

Ramesh Chandra Tiwari

3060

Ashok Panjwani

The programme funds upto 100 Rotary Peace Fellowships per year, for fellows to study at one of the Foundation’s specially chosen universities. Fellows can earn a master’s degree in peace and conflict resolution or a related field at Duke University and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the United States; University of Queensland in Australia; Uppsala University in Sweden; University of Bradford in England; and International Christian University in Japan. Additionally, our professional development certificate programme in peace and conflict resolution is offered through Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.

3131

Vinay Kulkarni

3140

Bharat S. Pandya

3150

Ranga Rao Jashti

3170

Ravi N. Deshpande

3190

Prabhashankar Khokale Narayana Rao

3201

Kesava Sankara Pillai

3240

Narendra Nath Dutta

3261

Subhash Sahu

3291

Rajkumar Rajgaria

The idea of the Rotary Peace Centres is to create a cadre of individuals who are dedicated to peace and conflict resolution, and who have been given the tools to succeed in their efforts. Since the programme began in 2002, nearly 900 peace fellows have been engaged in peace activities throughout the world, working for non-governmental organisations, government agencies, the World Health Organisation, World Bank, and others.

RI District

To fund the programme, the Rotary Peace Centres Major Gifts Initiative has set a target of US $125 million by the end of this Rotary year. This is a programme pertinent to the 21 st century, and one worthy of all Rotarians’ support.

In these days of uncertainty in our world, it is important to remember that the brotherhood of man transcends the sovereignty of nations.

John Kenny Foundation Trustee Chair

Citation for Meritorious Service Name

3010

Ramesh Aggarwal

3020

Patibanda Sundar Rao

3030

Rajiv Sharma

3040

Nalini Langer

3051

Ashish Kantilal Desai

3052

Nirmal Kumar Singhvi

3053

Kranti Chandra Mehta

3060

Sunil C. Vakil

3080

Madhukar Malhotra

3090

Suman Gupta

3100

Vinod K. Agarwal

3131

Abhay Gadgil

3140

Vijay K. Jalan

3150

Murti V.R. Tanikella

3190

Suresh Nanjunda Manandi

3240

Samir Kumar Choudhury

3261

Shashi Varvandkar

3262

Narayan Mishra

3291

Rajendra Khandelwal Source: The Rotarian

The Key to Heaven Dada J.P. Vaswani

A man once had a dream in which he saw that he stood at the gates of Paradise.

And in the dream he saw a learned Rabbi who said, “I long to enter Heaven.

I studied the Holy Books day and night!”

“Wait!” said the Angel. “We shall know from your earthly record if you studied the Books in reverence for the prophets or for the sake of social applause.”

Then in the dream appeared another learned man.

He said, “I long to enter Paradise. I fasted much.”

“Wait,” said the Angel. “We shall first enquire if your motives were pure.”

Then appeared in the dream another man. Simple was he. He said, “I long to enter Paradise. A few fragments of my bread I shared each day with a man who limped and could not earn his daily bread, and I swept his floor and I filled his water-jar every day. And I prayed, “O Lord! Make me a servant of those who suffer and are in pain every day!”

And the Angel said, “Blessed amongst mortals art thou! Thou hast attained the Abode of the Immortals. The gates of Heaven are opened unto thee!”

Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahlajrai Vaswani, is a spiritual leader and heads the Sadhu Vaswani Mission, that has its centres spread out across the world. A recipient of U-Thant Peace Award, he has addressed the British House of Commons, the World Parliament of Religions, Chicago and the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations, New York, and several other gatherings.

Give, give, give! Share what you have with others, and you will be richer in material and spiritual terms.

By the Law of Attraction, if you believe in it, the universe is replying to you with your own voice.

Say, “I want more” and the universe will say, “I want more!”

Try saying and doing: “I want to give more!” and trust that the universe will also say to you, “I want to give more!”

A friend said to me, “You know Dada I think what Sadhu Vaswani said to us is scientifically accurate.”

“Please explain it to me,” I requested him.

“When you give, it creates a vacuum in the space of your wealth. By the law of Universe, we know nature absorbs a vacuum. In no time, the empty space will be filled up. God will send us more wealth.”

After a pause he asked me, “Do you agree?”

“How can I disagree with the voice of experience?” I replied with a smile.

“You have given away your wealth to help others, and you have had your vacuum filled. You know it, because you have experienced it.”

Giving to others actually connects you to greater source of abundance and prosperity.

14 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

COVER STORY

Children at the Rotary school under construction in Siddhanagar.

Building schools in Garhwal

by Rasheeda Bhagat

D

riving along the picturesque route from Dehradun towards Devprayag in the Garhwal Himalayas (sangam of the rivers Bhagirathi and Alaknanda) and then upward towards Rudraprayag (meeting of Mandakini and Alaknanda), who can even imagine the nightmare this region had become in June 2013, thanks to the angry waters of the Mandakini?

Nature’s fury or what the locals call the ‘Himalayan tsunami’ in Kedarnath, Uttarkashi and Rudraprayag also destroyed the region’s schools. Luckily, as the waters came crashing down on June 16 and 17, 2013, bringing with them huge rocks, silt, foliage and rubble, destroying ruthlessly whatever came in its way, the children were on a summer break. They returned to find their schools either gone or damaged badly.

Rotary’s response in this disaster too was fast. “We learnt of it before 16 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

the government; the CM was not here; the Rudraprayag Collector was hospitalised,” recalls Prem Bhalla, Rotarian of 52 years, and Past District Governor 3080. A meeting was convened on June 17 in Dehradun, the news was flashed to all the 82 clubs in the district and austerity measures were

This building can last 20 to 25 years, but it has to be maintained.

SANGEET SHARMA

declared for the July 1 installation of new teams. Dinner meets were turned into tea meetings, and the money thus saved, along with more collected from all over India went to a common pool to help the Uttarakhand victims.

The Rotary Uttarakhand Disaster Relief Trust was formed with Past RI Director Yash Pal Das as one of the Trustees and Treasurer. Giving details of the project to rebuild schools in Uttarakhand, Das says that the Trust has till now collected Rs 5.12 crore, almost all from India, with barely Rs 3–4 lakh coming from overseas.

In September, an MoU was signed with the Uttarakhand Government to repair 120 damaged schools and construct 55 schools in Uttarkashi and Rudraprayag districts.

Work on three schools in the Agastyamuni block has almost been completed; this was done with Rs 38 lakh that came in from the Bharat

A school being constructed in Siddhanagar; Labourers carry bricks on the steep incline to this school.

Dalmia Foundation which entrusted the work to the Rotary Uttarakhand Disaster Relief Trust. The total corpus fund includes Rs 31 lakh from the Inner Wheel Association of India.

A scenic journey I set out on a bright morning to see this high-profile “school project” in remote villages of Uttarakhand, along with District 3080 Governor-elect David Hilton and Assistant Governor Sangeet Sharma. We cover the 180odd km distance from Dehradun to Rudraprayag in seven hours, check into a very basic Hotel Mandakini — better hotels are full — and set off for the first school nearing completion in Kyunja, about 35 km from Rudraprayag.

Closer to Devprayag and beyond, one can clearly see telltale symptoms of last year’s fury. Sharma points out half destroyed houses hanging perilously on the mountains. Every couple of kilometres multipurpose excavators-cum dumpers are stationed to clear landslides — the earlier day has seen some rain, and at one point we have to wait, mercifully only for 15 minutes, for the road to be cleared.

As our Innova winds its way through the 23 km stretch of the service road towards the Kyunja village school, we jump over potholes. The priority in these hills is clearly for the main road going to Kedarnath, but at least a service road allows passage of

two wheelers and private jeeps. A ride to Rudraprayag in a jeep costs Rs 50.

Soon the spanking new green roof and whitewashed walls of the school are visible. A final coat of paint and the primary school will be ready in a week for the 51 smartly dressed students, now taking lessons in an adjoining ramshackled hall, to cross over.

A kitchen, two toilets, a principal’s room … the Rotarians are ready to build anything the school authorities want, except handing over cash.

More girls than boys I’m delighted to find 39 girls in the 51-student school. This is also the case in the other two schools we visit.

Whether the boys are going to a better or private schools is not within the scope of this article!

The contrast between the spanking new robust hall, and the passable one

Queuing up at their new school in Kyunja.

the children are now using, it is easy to understand why people from surrounding villages are asking Rotarians to build their village schools too. “In one of the schools we pulled down, we were shocked to find barely 12–15 steel sariyas (tor steel) on the roof, when there should have been at least 100 or more,” says PDG Bhalla.

As I talk to some parents, Sharma tells other parents and teachers: “This building can last you 20 to 25 years, but you have to maintain and keep the school clean.”

Das says at the outset the Trust had got an independent analysis on the damage caused to the schools on the list by its own engineers and 30-odd students from IIT Rourkee,

View of a newly constructed school at Chameli.

and then chalked out its construction programme.

But the continuing rains were a huge problem. But he and other senior Rotary leaders such as Past RI President Kalyan Banerjee have visited their sites to watch the progress. Continuing rains till March have pushed back the project.

At the Kyunja school, which will be handed over after Diwali, Rotary site engineers Arvind and Manish Diwedi are all smiles as their work is admired by surrounding villages. Arvind claims that “many people can’t believe this is a

Your children and mine...

PRIP Kalyan Banerjee (Top right) and PRID Yash Pal Das along with the children in one of the older schools.

T

he design for the schools that Rotary is building in Uttarakhand has been given by the Government’s Central Building Research Institute at Rourkee, taking into account safeguards against landslides and earthquakes.

On Rotary’s experience in building schools, Trustee and Treasurer of the Rotary Uttarakhand Disaster Relief Trust Yash Pal Das says, “We had prior experience from building schools in the Kutch region of Gujarat after the 2001 earthquake. So we readily agreed to the government’s request to repair/build these devastated schools. But we did not realise the challenges of hill construction.”

But slowly his team is overcoming these challenges; three schools are done, six are in the making and “now we are fully geared, more or less in an assembly line kind of way, to build more schools.”

But the original project has been altered because in March, the Uttarakhand Government asked the Rotarians to stop the project saying it had collected Rs 10 crore and would itself repair or build the schools. But it requested the 18 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014 schools it had started.

Trust to complete the three

But by August 2014, while the three schools were coming up in Agastyamuni, the village pradhans and local leaders in the Block requested the Rotary Trust to build 14 schools in their villages. As these requests were endorsed by the Education officers concerned, “we said we’ll do it as we have the funds.”

Of the Rs 5.12 crore collected, nearly Rs 48 lakh has been spent. Each school costs about Rs 13–14 lakh and the children get covered area of 1,500 sq ft.

Recalling Rotary’s experience in building classrooms for schools devastated in the Kutch region of Gujarat by the 2001 earthquake, Past RI President Kalyan Banerjee says, “That time, when we volunteered, the Gujarat Government sought our help to build classrooms in primary schools.”

In that massive project, one, two, or three classrooms were built according to the requirements; the project took three years (2004–07) and 709 classrooms were built, each at a cost of about Rs 1.6 lakh. The project cost about Rs 11.34 crore, with half the money raised by Rotarians and the other half coming from the Gujarat Government.

Das says that with their current corpus, this Trust can construct in addition to the three schools completed already, “another 33 schools. Currently we have requests from 14 schools in the Agastyamuni block, of which six are under construction.”

At the end of the day, Rotarians like Banerjee and Das are happy to participate in such projects. Adds Das about the ongoing project, “This is such a great and noble project … these children were sitting on the floor … now we’ll give them tables and benches. Sometimes they sit in the open because their parents are worried about their safety in damaged buildings. After all these children are just like yours and mine and we owe them decent education in a clean and safe environment.”

As of now, he adds, there are sufficient funds to build 14 more schools. As more schools come up, more requests are bound to come and the Trust will take a call on further plans.

school; they think a Government bungalow is being built.”

That is clearly stretching things, but the satisfaction in the eyes of Bijender Lal, who grows wheat, rice and vegetables on his half-acre plot, while doubling up as a labourer, is evident. A father of five, four of his children, including three daughters Aarti, Manisha and Sada, are students here.

The youngest is only two; the eldest is in Class V and he is getting ready to send her to a secondary school nearby.

Terrain challenges Hilton explains the challenges in moving the building material in the hills; many a times after the transporter has dumped the material — most of it pre-fabricated — on the road, they’ve had to wait for days to find decent weather and labour — both at the same time — to move the material to the site. Adds Sharma, “A lot of material we use is pre-fabricated in Dehradun; to depend on local masonry would be hell!”

They don’t have to explain for too long the challenges; I face one soon enough at the school site in Siddhanagar village — a steep trek exceeding one kilometre along a path that often narrows down to demand skills of a tight-rope walker. Hilton explains the ordeal they faced in moving up the 400-kg generator here.

“It took 12 Nepali porters two days

to carry it up this path. Even bricks, cement, etc., have to be moved up either through porters or mules.”

And then, adds Sharma, comes the challenge of finding labour. Even at Rs 450 a day, labour is hard to come by as they opt for the Government project of rebuilding the main Kedarnath route, at a whopping Rs 950 a day.

At Siddhanagar, where the iron frame of the roof of the Rotary school is ready, and the walls coming up fast, Hilton shows me some rusted steel wires kept on the side. “This was all that we found in the roof; how could such a structure survive,” he wonders. In the small hall where classes are held there are only 14 school children; 10 are girls!

Says Mohammed Zakir, their teacher, “Once the new Rotary school is ready I am sure we’ll get 30–35 children.

Right now parents are scared to send their children to this school as they feel it is unsafe.”

After Class 5, they will shift to the senior school at Agastyamuni which is 4 km away. The story for girls is the same, a dearth of separate toilets. As one toilet is already there in the schools identified, at least one more will be built so that girls have their separate toilets.

DGE David Hilton with the students.

Amazingly, the children do this steep trek every day, but “it takes them hardly 15 minutes to run up the hill; they are used to the terrain,” adds Zakir.

On a good day, opposite the Chameli school the snow-covered Chaukhamba peak is visible. As we leave for the plains the next day, the copious rainfall has given an enchanting green cover to the mountains.

Whether it is the towering pines, the oaks, Indian red and other timber and water bearing green trees, the leaves are sparkling and as summer gives way to autumn, the colours are changing and Himalayan flowers are blooming.

Near Kaliya Saur, about 12–15 km after Rudraprayag, our driver Sanjay recounts the tale of the local belief in how this “tsunami” was triggered.

Pointing to a temple on the banks of the Mandakini, he says that as their temple was getting submerged in the river, the locals built a new temple and shifted the deity there. “After a day or two the floods came; the timing was not right for shifting the goddess, aur Ma ko gussa aa gaya.”

Pictures: Rasheeda Bhagat David Hilton:davidjhilton@gmail.com Sangeet Sharma: + 91 9412075884 NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 19

White House honours Women Rotarians

by RI Director P.T. Prabhakar

I

had the privilege to participate in Rotary Day at Washington DC on October 7. Senior Rotary leaders had gathered at the White House to honour 10 women for their service projects. The event was attended by members of the US President Barack Obama’s senior staff. President Gary Huang and Corinna, President Elect K.R. Ravindran and Vanathy and several senior leaders attended this memorable event. Several Rotary projects were presented here hoping for greater government partnerships and support.

“This is recognition of the great work that they do and it also serves as a great vehicle to inspire others to do similar kinds of things,” said Rotary General Secretary John Hewko. “And we’re doing a better job of sharing our story with the non-Rotary world.” The 10 women honoured were from US Rotary clubs but their projects touch lives across the globe.

Carolyn Jones, of Anchorage, Alaska, has served numerous times as a Rotary volunteer in Russia, three times as a preschool teacher for developmentally delayed children in

‘

Carolyn Jones related a moving story of a child sold in Russia for a bottle of vodka, and vowed to use her recognition as a stepping stone to save more lives.

’

orphanages. During her presentation she related a moving story of a child sold in Russia for a bottle of vodka, and vowed to use her recognition as a stepping stone to save more lives.

Jacqueline Parsons, a licensed professional counselor from San Antonio, Texas, works on projects in her community and abroad, including

Women Rotarians along with Rotary dignitaries at the White House.

20 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

the FLAG (Fitness, Literacy, Attendance and Grades) programme, which provides incentives to students to go to school, giving them bikes, sports equipment and other items.

Ginger Vann from Baker, Louisiana, co-ordinates tutoring for at-risk students. With the help of her club, she has renovated an uninhabitable school building, and worked with tutors to reach 50 students each day. She’s also passionate about workforce development in Baker, where well-paying craftsman jobs often go unfilled. “We just don’t have enough craft workers, people who are certified to do the jobs,” she said.

Michelle Candland, from San Diego, California, works with Monarch High, an alternative school designed for homeless children.

“Right now there are over 1.3 million homeless kids on the streets in America. That’s more than there are Rotarians around the world; 20,000

of those kids are in San Diego alone,” said Candland.

“How can a child focus on school if their tummies are growling, their shoes don’t fit, and they don't even know where they are going to be sleeping the next day,” she asked, calling for communities to work together to solve such problem.

Others honoured were Bernadette Blackstock, Marion Bunch, Carol Butler, Elizabeth Usovicz, Deepa Willingham and Jane Winning.

Winning, a registered nurse from Chowchilla, California, has provided immunisation and conducted health exams in Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador, and Guatemala. She’s also worked with Rotaplast International to provide free cleft lip and palate reconstructive surgery to those who cannot afford it.

“A 65-year old gentleman said ‘I can kiss my wife for the first time.’

These are incredible experiences you don't get to share every day.”

Butler, also from Anchorage, highlighted two projects. The first is a statewide suicide prevention plan.

According to Butler, Alaska has the highest rate of suicide per capita in the nation. The public awareness plan educates Rotary members and Alaska residents to recognise the warning signs of someone in crisis. She also talked about her club’s partnership with the Alaska Mission of Mercy, a collective of dentists, staff and other volunteers who provide free dental services throughout the state.

“Dental care is a gateway to good health,” says Butler. “There's an increasing problem nationwide with people seeking dental care in emergency rooms.”

Usovicz, of Shawnee Mission, Kansas, has worked on service projects in Missouri as well as abroad.

In Malawi, she helped to reduce the rate of malaria deaths by 65 percent to 70 percent in less than a year by supplying the community with mosquito bed-nets.

RI President Gary Huang and RI Director P.T. Prabhakar at the White House.

Wi l l i n g h a m , o f S o l va n g , California, is the founder and chair of Promise of Assurance to Children Everywhere (PACE), an organisation that educates girls and their mothers, and works to prevent child trafficking and early marriage in India.

Bunch, of Atlanta, Georgia, is the CEO of Rotarians for Family Health and AIDS Prevention. She Incredible experience: Jane Winning helped the cleft surgery of a 65-year old man who said: ‘I can kiss my wife for the first time.’ You don’t get to share such experiences everyday. has received numerous awards on behalf of her work for AIDS, and considers herself a mother who represents the face of AIDS because she started her work after losing her son to the disease in 1994. “Because of that one single tragedy, my life's journey changed dramatically from a very engaged business woman to a warrior on AIDS and advocate of human rights,” Bunch said.

As a result of her leadership, in April some 3,43,660 people received health care, medical checkups and counseling from 8,150 Rotary volunteers during Rotary Family Health Days across Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa.

Like Bunch, Blackstock, of Franklinville, New Jersey, has turned her love of service into a career, launching the People for People Foundation, which assists families struggling with financial hardships. To date, the Foundation has helped some 10,000 families with food, clothing, rent, utilities, medications and other life necessities.

“Our combined mission today is not only to provide small grants but to serve as advocates for our families and provide life-skill training and mentoring and case management where needed.”

The event in D.C. was also an opportunity for the honourees to share ideas with each other. “There are some resources still available to expand and improve projects even amongst the women here,” Jones said.

“Listening to the ladies, I was in awe,” said Vann. “I was thinking what if all 10 of us got together on one project. That would be amazing. We’re talking and it's exciting to be a part of that conversation.”

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 21

POLIOPLUS

One Act of Charity Began A Revolution

by Jaishree

Former Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit, inaugurating the renovated OT at St. Stephen’s Hospital, Delhi.

I

ndia has been certified polio-free

by WHO — an encouraging feat indeed! Just three more countries remain polio-endemic, and Rotarians through their concerted efforts are concentrating on eradicating the crippling disease from the world.

Polio eradication was top priority of Rotary since 1988 but rehabilitating polio victims and undertaking polio corrective surgeries was another mammoth task indeed, and The Rotary Foundation (TRF) swung into action. The virus has left several people including young children crippled and paralysed. Polio corrective surgery camps are organised

by Rotary clubs to reverse the condition and mobility aids such as calipers, wheel-chairs and tricycles are provided to the polio victims to enable them to lead a better life.

More recently, Rotary Club of Delhi Midtown, RI District 3010 in association with Rotarian Ghulam Naqshband Institute for the Physically Challenged (RGNIPC) funded the renovation of the operation theatre and Artificial Limb 22 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Centre at St. Stephen’s Hospital, Delhi.

One of the city’s oldest and largest non-government hospitals, it is India’s only hospital that has a dedicated polio ward, which became functional since 2001. Polio corrective surgery was first initiated at this hospital by former Director General of Health Services Dr Balu Sankaran, a pioneer in the field of polio corrective surgery, in 1987 and is today led by Dr. Mathew Varghese, HOD of Orthopaedics Department here. The eight-bedded polio ward is being supported by RC Delhi Midtown. Rotary has contributed over USD 200,000 including support from TRF, through Matching Grants to the Hospital.

This year, the Rotarians equipped St. Stephen’s Hospital with 100 beds and other necessary equipment for the Artificial Limb and Prosthesis Centre.

The Naqshband Institute, a charitable Trust run by a group of dedicated Rotarians in memory of their colleague and friend Late Rtn Ghulam Naqshband, pitched in with a grant of nearly Rs One Crore.

How it all began It all began when during one of the Polio NIDs, PRIP Rajendra Saboo and PDG Raman Bhatia undertook a visit to Uttar Pradesh, a polio endemic state that faced widespread resistance to polio immunisation. Saboo, chief guest at one of the Polio NID booths in Hapur village found several women resisted administration of polio drops to their children.

Saboo and Bhatia decided to visit one of the homes to make the family understand the significance of the two drops. Accompanied by the local Imam and a school teacher, they knocked at one of the villager’s door. A woman opened it, but slammed it shut at the sight of the men in yellow jackets and caps. The Imam spoke to her and explained the need to administer polio drops to her children. She slowly relented and said though she understood the importance of the polio drops, she couldn’t let her children take them as her husband (who was out on the fields) had threatened to kill her if she allowed this. She had two children below the age of five — the girl was sitting on her mother’s lap and this woman had hidden her little son inside a drum fearing some kind of threat from her visitors!

The Rotarians along with the Imam convinced the lady that they would immunise the children but ensure that they wouldn’t be marked with the mandatory blue mark on their fingers. This done, they stepped out of her house and on to the dusty lane. They found a five year old young boy with limp legs, crawling on all fours. He was being stoned and teased at by few school children. Rescuing the boy, the Rotarians found that he was the eldest son of the same woman whom they had just visited and that she had five children, and this boy was afflicted with polio.

This triggered concern in the mind of Saboo and Bhatia which also brought forth the unique idea of organising polio corrective surgery camps to put polio victims back on their feet. The first camp was held at Hapur and it was deliberately made an all-healthcare

camp. The villagers were provided medical care not only for polio but also for other ailments. Rotarian-surgeons from Coimbatore in South India descended on this little village; 250 of the villagers were polio-stricken and 100 patients were operated upon. The rest were referred to a hospital in the neighbourhood town, as they needed elaborate procedures.

Since then, Rotary clubs have been facilitating several such camps across the country, especially in the polioendemic states of U.P. and Bihar. Every year at least 10 camps are organised in these areas with support from the local state government and WHO. The Rotary Foundation also plays a major role in bringing out these camps through significant financial aid. Rotarian doctors from across the country and abroad camp at the treatment venue for a week to perform the corrective surgeries and provide relevant mobility aids for the patients.

Saboo rightly observed that these corrective surgery camps would go a long way in encouraging social mobilisation and breaking resistance. When the locals see the polio victims walking tall, faith in Rotary would automatically grow for actions speak louder than words.

St. Stephen’s Hospital The polio ward at St. Stephen’s Hospital is the pride of Rotary and every foreign Rotary visitor and guests from TRF do not miss a visit to this site which has changed hundreds of lives and is going strong today. Bhatia feels “a moral obligation to help the children of the world who were unfortunate to have been afflicted with polio. This life-changing surgery will bring back their lost future.

Why should they still suffer this disability,” he laments.

Another interesting aspect he reminisces with gratitude and awe is on how the late Naqshband, a doyen of the tourism industry and Managing Director of Le Passage to India approached him the first time offering a donation.

Mrs Sheila Dikshit visiting the renovated Artificial Limb Centre at the hospital.

“I first thought it might be a few lakh of rupees, but he left me speechless with the figure—all of Rs 1 crore! To facilitate polio corrective surgeries. He didn’t stop; further donations continued after his death in 2000, at the age of 84.”

Her husband had threatened to kill her if she immunised her children against polio.

The RGNIPC Trust was thus formed and Bhatia is one of the Managing Trustees. The Trust works under the aegis of RC Delhi Midtown. Today the Rotarians have helped to fulfill Naqshband’s dream.

The upgraded OT and Artificial Limb Centre were formally dedicated to the community by former Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit in September.

Efforts are taken by the Rotarians to cover all children afflicted by the dreaded disease across the country so that they may be surgically treated.

And their service does not stop there.

Rotary Club Delhi Midtown along with Trustees of RGNIPC are together

trying to rehabilitate each and every polio patient. They support them in ways such as getting them back to school or college; or help them learn a vocation or even start a small business of their own. The objective being to help each one of them lead a dignified, self-sustaining life.

TRF is satisfied with this project and has been extending its wholehearted support. Bhatia appeals to all District Governors to make use of this project. All they have to do is identify the polio patients and bear their travel cost to Delhi. The Rotarians of RC Delhi Midtown will then take care of the accommodation and food for the patients and their attendants, and the hospitalisation expenses for single or multiple corrective surgeries.

At the dedication ceremony, Saboo congratulated Dr Mathew Varghese and his team for such a wonderful job in serving the community and also complimented fellow Rotarians for providing support.

Such corrective surgery enables little victims of polio to attend school and older people to pursue their dreams and earn a livelihood.

When everyone around their lives shunned them saying “They can’t” Rotary reached out to say “Yes, you can.” The Rotarians justly feel elated at having made these people stand on their own feet.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 23

Rotarians reach out to the

devastated J&K people by Rasheeda Bhagat

Rotary clubs provide support to the flood victims.

24 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

A

s the devastation caused by the unprecedented flooding in Jammu and Kashmir continues to traumatise thousands of people who have lost their homes, loved ones and become refugees in their own homes, Rotary and Rotarians are reaching out — opening their purses and hearts — to the affected people.

Rotary Foundation India Chair Ashok Mahajan is spearheading the efforts to collect funds and relief material to be rushed to the people of J&K. Even though at these trying times Rotarians have proved that “Rotary Cares and Rotary Shares,” and contributions have been widespread and generous, the amount collected is not enough as the scale of the destruction is so huge and people are still marooned and stranded away from their homes, says Mahajan.

The good samaritans of District 3140 are leaving no stones unturned to ensure that a steady supply of enough funds and relief material is available to help the ravaged people of Jammu and Kashmir, with District 3070 also pitching in. The two Districts are working in tandem to understand the scale of the disaster, the kind of help required and what more needs to be done.

Rotarians from across the country are also pitching in with their support.

Relief material collected by Rotarians has been consistently reaching the State. Rtn B.R. Malhotra from Rotary Club of Pune in RI District 3131 has sent blankets, utensils, food; Rotarians from 3140 have sent 10,000 blankets to J&K (5,000 each); RC Bombay Queen’s Necklace has dispatched medicines worth Rs 12 lakh through the Red Cross.

Generous individual contributions are coming in too. Rtn Shammin Botwala of Rotary Mumbai Green City has contributed Rs 5 lakh. PDG Sajjan Goenka and PDG T.N. Subramaniam (District 3140), Rtn Samir Jhaveri of RC Bombay Bayview and Rtn B.M. Shivraj of RC Thane NorthEnd have

Shelter kits donated by RI District 3080.

J&K Rotarians swing into action Huge areas of Akhnoor, Rajouri and people living on embankments of Jammu and Tawi were badly affected by the floods. Houses, livestock, schools and other infrastructure were devastated and thousands rendered homeless in just a few days. Some areas were completely buried under landslides triggered by incessant rains, 50 bridges were washed away and numerous power stations and pump houses lay submerged. “Jhelum breached the embankments and flooded the bowl-shaped Srinagar and people had to climb on to the rooftops of their houses to save themselves, after suffering huge losses,” says DG Gurjeet Sekhon, District 3070.

Rotary has 11 clubs in Jammu region and one in the Kashmir Valley.

They appealed for help to the larger Rotary world in India. “Many of them rushed to help us. The first truck was loaded by PRID Yash Pal Das from Ambala, carrying 200 shelter boxes and 500 tarpaulins. This was followed by clubs from Amritsar which sent 10 tonnes of relief material in the form of blankets, medicines, tents and utensils.” Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Khanna, Ludhiana, Goraya, Hoshiarpur, Pathankot sent truckloads of relief and many clubs from the district sent cash contributions.

Help came from as far as Kerala, Kolkata and Pune, with materials delivered through railways, trucks and by air. Rotarians in Jammu identified beneficiaries and personally delivered aid to them. “We set up a storage unit in Jammu in a Rotarian’s house; material aid worth Rs 75 lakh has already been distributed in the State thanks to help from Rotarians,” says a grateful Sekhon.

PRIP Raja Saboo, PRIDs Sushil Gupta, Yash Pal Das, Shekhar Mehta and Ashok Mahajan provided tremendous material and financial support, he added.

The RI leaders are now considering the possibility of adopting one or two villages in J&K, build low-cost structures and other infrastructure there.

This is estimated to cost Rs 2 crore for each village, says Sekhon.

each donated Rs 1 lakh. Rtn Sandeep Agarwalla of RC Bombay has led the collection efforts and raised Rs 6 lakh though a club meeting organised for J&K Flood fundraiser, and took the responsibility of delivering 10,000 blankets.

“We appreciate their generosity.

We are also very touched that the Interact Club, which is working along with the Rotary Club of Bombay, has taken such pains to collect funds for the affected people of J&K,” says Mahajan. On their own, the Interactors have raised Rs 22 lakh to help in the relief and rehabilitation efforts.

Small but significant contributions have been coming in from across the district and in the meetings Mahajan addressed in Mumbai. He added that PRID Y.P. Das and PRID Shekhar Mehta also took immediate steps for sending shelter boxes and had offered more help to the Jammu region of the State. Many clubs and districts are directly sending relief material and money to District 3070. Governor Gurjeet Singh Sekhon of District 3070 has taken great care in managing the relief work.

“The scale of destruction this natural calamity has brought about is not just in the numbers, but also on the faces of those who survived the ones who are mourning the loss of their loved ones, their belongings and above all, hope,” he adds.

It may take long to rebuild Kashmir, but “I am hopeful that with individual endeavour, the collective contribution of our countrymen, Rotarians, and the resilient spirit of people in Jammu and Kashmir, the paradise, Inshaallah, will bloom again with Chinar trees. On our part, Rotary is willing to extend more help,” adds Mahajan.

Please send your cheques drawn in favour of District Welfare Fund (A/C J&K Disaster Relief Fund), to District Treasurer, Hemant Gokhale, Heramb Bunglow, Plot No. 57, Sulabh CHS, Tadwadi, Ambernath East, 421501.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 25

A win-win MoU Team Rotary News

D

uring the Dussera celebrations week, Rotary International District 3230 launched a unique celebration at Chennai, with District 3230 coming together with 15 clubs of Area 2 Round Table India to form a ‘fusion for service.’

The two entities signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly execute community welfare programmes. To begin with, the two organisations will jointly undertake a project to provide clean drinking water

to 15 schools in Chennai. This will benefit about 50,000 children.

This ‘joint fellowship’ will not only benefit the community which District 3230 and Area 2 serve, it also opens the doors to a win-win situation wherein, the Round Tablers get a better idea of Rotary and the work it does.

As RI Director P.T. Prabhakar told at the meeting, when Round Tablers complete 40, they are considered too old to continue, whereas in Rotary, 60 is considered ‘young.’

Rotary Round Table Fusion: DG Nazar and Tr. Shriram Duvurri signing the MoU in the presence of TRF Trustee Sushil Gupta, Assistant Governor Dr. A. Sangaram and Round Table National President Tr. Deepak Menda.

Rotary dignitaries with Round Tablers.

26 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

District 3230 Governor I.S.A.K Nazar said that this fusion was historic and “through this we are trying to create an awareness for Round Tablers that once they complete 40, Rotary could be a natural choice for them to continue their service to society.”

TRF Trustee Sushil Gupta said this joint partnership was a “great initiative” undertaken by District 3230, which would have far reaching results for both Rotary and Round Table. It was a worthwhile initiative to be extended to the national and international levels in the days to come which would take our service activities to a new level.

RI Director Prabhakar said that Rotary had great expectations of benefitting from the “young and energetic Round Tablers. The coming together of these two dynamic organisations will take community welfare to much higher levels.”

Tr. Shriram Duvurri, Area 2 Round Table India Chair said that he was very happy with this fusion between Rotary and Round Table that unites for fellowship and service to community.

Appreciating the novel venture, Tr. Deepak Menda, National President, Round Table India said that it was a proud moment as both the organisations focus on a common goal — to enhance the lives of the downtrodden, and that together they would direct their combined energies to realise the objectives of the historic MoU. Through this MoU, both the organisations agreed to facilitate partnership between each other to undertake joint programmes to promote community development.

The agreement also encourages Round Tablers to join Rotary after retirement from Round Table to continue their service to the community.

A ROTARY PRIMER

GLOBALOUTLOOK A ROTARIAN’S GUIDE TO PUBLIC SPEAKING

Copyright © 2014 by Rotary International. All rights reserved.

ublic speaking is one of the most common fears — and as business and community leaders, Rotarians have to confront it regularly. How do you cultivate this important skill? We devote this Global Outlook to all aspects of public speaking. We’ve tapped Chris Anderson, the man behind the internationally popular TED Talks, for his advice on giving a standout presentation.

We also investigate the pitfalls of presenting in a language that’s not your own and explore new technologies that will take your talk from static to stellar.

Struggling to get top-notch speakers to come to your club? We have tips for that too. Read on.

28 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

ILLUSTRATIONS BY OTTO STEININGER

P

EXPERT ANALYSIS

HOW TO GIVE A KILLER PRESENTATION

by Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson is the curator of TED, a nonprofit dedicated to spreading ideas, often through short, powerful talks.

O

n a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, some colleagues and I met a

Calif., you could tell he was nervous, but that only made him

12-year-old Maasai boy named Richard Turere, who told

more engaging — people were hanging on his every word. The

us a fascinating story. His family raises livestock on the

confidence was there, and every time Richard smiled, the

edge of a vast national park, and one of the biggest

audience melted. When he finished, the response was

challenges is protecting the animals from lions — especially at

instantaneous: a sustained standing ovation.

night. Richard had noticed that placing lamps in a field didn’t deter

Since the first TED Conference 30 years ago, speakers have

lion attacks, but when he walked the field with a torch, the lions

ranged from political figures, musicians and TV personalities

stayed away. From a young age, he’d been interested in electronics,

who are completely at ease before a crowd, to lesser-known

teaching himself by, for example, taking apart his parents’ radio.

academics, scientists and writers, some of whom feel deeply

He used that experience to devise a system of lights that would turn

uncomfortable giving presentations. Over the years, we’ve

on and off in sequence — using solar panels, a car battery, and a

sought to develop a process for helping inexperienced presenters

piece of motorcycle equipment — and thereby create a sense of

frame, practice and deliver talks that people enjoy watching.

movement that he hoped would scare off the lions. He installed the

On the basis of this experience, I’m convinced that giving a

lights, and the lions stopped attacking. Soon villages elsewhere in

good talk is highly coachable. In a matter of hours, a speaker’s

Kenya began installing Richard’s “lion lights.”

content and delivery can be transformed from muddled to

The story was inspiring and worthy of the broader audience that

mesmerising. And while my team has focused on TED’s

our TED Conference could offer, but on the surface, Richard seemed

18-minutes-or-shorter format, the lessons we’ve learned are

an unlikely candidate to give a TED Talk. He was painfully shy. His

surely useful to other presenters.

English was halting. When he tried to describe his invention, the sentences tumbled out incoherently. And frankly, it was hard to

FRAME YOUR STORY

imagine a preteen standing on a stage in front of 1,400 people.

There’s no way you can give a good talk unless you have

But Richard’s story was so compelling that we invited him to

something worth talking about. Conceptualising and framing

speak. In the months before his talk, we worked with him to

what you want to say is the most vital part of preparation. When

frame his story — to find the right place to begin, and to develop

I think about compelling presentations, I think about taking an

a succinct and logical arc of events. On the back of his invention,

audience on a journey.

Richard had won a scholarship to one of Kenya’s best schools,

If you frame the talk as a journey, the biggest decisions are

where he had the chance to practice the talk several times in

figuring out where to start and where to end. To find the right

front of a live audience. It was critical that he build his confidence

place to start, consider what people in the audience already

to the point where his personality could shine through. When he

know about your subject — and how much they care about it.

finally gave his talk at the 2013 TED Conference in Long Beach,

If you assume they have more knowledge or interest than they NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 29

do, or if you start using jargon or get too technical, you’ll lose

people move their bodies too much. They sway from side to side,

them. The most engaging speakers do a superb job of quickly

or shift their weight from one leg to the other. Simply getting a

introducing the topic, explaining why they care so deeply about

person to keep his or her lower body motionless can dramatically

it, and convincing the audience members that they should too.

improve stage presence. Some people can walk around a stage

The biggest problem I see in first drafts of presentations is that

during a presentation, and that’s fine if it comes naturally. But

they try to cover too much ground. Limit the scope of your talk to

the vast majority are better off standing still and relying on hand

what can be explained — and brought to life with examples — in

gestures for emphasis.

the available time. Go deeper and give more detail. Don’t tell us

Perhaps the most important physical act onstage is making

about your entire field of study — tell us about your unique

eye contact. Find five or six friendly looking people in different

contribution.

parts of the audience and look them in the eye as you speak.

Think of them as friends you haven’t seen in a year whom you’re

PLAN YOUR DELIVERY

bringing up to date on your work. That eye contact is incredibly

Once you’ve got the framing down, it’s time to focus on your

powerful, and it will do more than anything else to help your talk

delivery. There are three main ways to deliver a talk: You can

land.

read it directly off a script. You can develop a set of bullet points

In general, people worry too much about nervousness. Nerves

that map out what you’re going to say in each section rather

are not a disaster. The audience expects you to be nervous. It’s a

than scripting the whole thing word for word. Or you can

natural body response that can actually improve your performance:

memorise your talk, which entails rehearsing it to the point

It gives you energy to perform and keeps your mind sharp. Just

where you internalise every word — verbatim.

keep breathing, and you’ll be fine.

My advice: Don’t read it. As soon as people sense that you’re reading, the way they

PLAN THE MULTIMEDIA

receive your talk will shift. Suddenly your

With so much technology at our disposal, it

intimate connection will evaporate, and

may feel almost mandatory to use, at a

everything will feel a lot more formal.

minimum, presentation slides. By now most

Many of our best and most popular TED

people have heard the advice about

Talks have been memorised word for word.

PowerPoint: Keep it simple; don’t use a slide

Obviously, not every presentation is worth that

deck as a substitute for notes (by, say, listing

kind of investment of time. But if you do

the bullet points you’ll discuss — those are

decide to memorise your talk, be aware that

best put on notecards); and don’t repeat out

there’s a predictable arc to the learning curve.

loud words that are on the slides. That advice

Most people go through what I call the “valley of awkwardness,”

may seem universal by now, but go into any company and you’ll

where they haven’t quite memorised everything. If they give the

see presenters violating it every day.

talk while stuck in that valley, the audience will sense it. Their

Many of the best TED speakers don’t use slides at all, and

words will sound recited, or there will be painful moments when

many talks don’t require them. If you have photographs,

they stare into the middle distance, or cast their eyes upward,

illustrations, or video that make the topic come alive, then yes,

as they struggle to remember their lines.

show them. If not, consider doing without, at least for some

Getting past this point is simple, fortunately. It’s just a matter of rehearsing enough times that the flow of words becomes

parts of the presentation. And if you’re going to use slides, it’s worth exploring alternatives to PowerPoint.

second nature. Then you can focus on delivering the talk with meaning and authenticity.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

But if you don’t have time to learn a speech thoroughly and

Ultimately, presentations rise or fall on the quality of the idea,

get past that awkward valley, don’t try. Go with bullet points on

the narrative, and the passion of the speaker. It’s about

notecards. As long as you know what you want to say for each

substance, not speaking style or multimedia pyrotechnics. It’s

one, you’ll be fine. Focus on remembering the transitions from

fairly easy to “coach out” the problems in a talk, but there’s no

one bullet point to the next.

way to “coach in” the basic story — the presenter has to have the raw material. If you have something to say, you can build a

DEVELOP STAGE PRESENCE

great talk.

When it comes to stage presence, a little coaching can go a long way. The most common mistake we see in early rehearsals is that 30 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

An extended version of this story appeared in the June 2013 Harvard Business Review.

HOW TO LAND A NOTABLE SPEAKER FOR YOUR NEXT CLUB MEETING (IN FOUR EASY STEPS) Imagine you’re thinking of joining Rotary. You attend a club meeting, and the speaker that day is uninspiring and boring. Do you still join? “Speakers hold more real estate than anyone in the Rotary meeting — including the club Presidents,” says Michael Angelo Caruso, Public Image Chair and Governor-nominee of District 6380 (parts of Ontario and Michigan), who teaches presentation skills to leaders and salespeople as a communications consultant. We caught up with Caruso, who has spoken to more than 400 Rotary clubs and districts around the world, at the RI Convention in Sydney, Australia, to get his take on how to make the most of your weekly speaker and land that big name.

1

Sell your club. Emphasise to prospective speakers that it’s a big deal to present at your club and that they’ll get something out of it.

“If you can’t promise them a big crowd,

3

Invite speakers who appeal to the members you have and the members you want. If you bring in presenters who are popular in the city, chances are they will have friends,

promise them that 20 of the top leaders in town will be

associates, and customers of their own who could come for

there,” Caruso says. Consider changing your vocabulary:

the presentation. Welcome your speakers to bring their own

Rather than asking someone to be the “programme” at your

audience to your club meeting, and you may find prospective

“club meeting,” see if they’ll be the “keynote speaker” at

new members. Also invite people you know who might be

your “lunch.” Take your speakers seriously, and they will

interested in your speaker.

take your club seriously.

2

Create buzz on social media before, during, and after the meeting. Ask your speakers for a headshot and short video, and post them

4

Start small, but think big. Finding and promoting 52 big-name speakers may sound daunting, but what about 12? Designate the first meeting of each month as the “speaker

on social media to generate interest in your

showcase,” and aim to double your attendance at that

event. Ask their permission to tweet and photograph during

meeting based on the draw of a star speaker, Caruso

the meeting — social media revolves around what’s hap-

suggests. Having a larger crowd increases the chances that

pening right now. “A speaker would never say no to that,”

you’ll get media coverage and that other notable speakers

Caruso says. If you took video of the presentation, post it

will come to your club as well. Don’t forget to collect

afterward.

business cards from visitors so you can let them know about upcoming programmes and club events.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 31

BREAKING THE CANADA

DON’T forget it’s good practice to provide English and French translations of documents when working in Quebec.

LANGUAGE BARRIER Public speaking is hard enough without the added difficulty of delivering in a foreign language. But with the right approach, anyone can learn to give an effective speech in another language. We turned to some multilingual Rotary leaders for tips on getting your message across.

DON’T OVERTHINK IT. “Just speak,” says 2005–06 RI President Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammar, whose first language is Swedish.

“Even if the grammar is wrong, just go ahead.” According to Rotary International speechwriter Abby Breitstein, it helps to remember that audiences are there to hear what you have to say, not to find out how well you speak their language.

FIND YOUR COMFORT ZONE. If you’re presenting in a second language, learn what suits your proficiency level. Less-proficient speakers may need to write out the entire speech, while others will feel comfortable with an outline. Bhichai Rattakul, 2002– 03 RI President, adapts to the occasion. A native Thai speaker who also speaks English and Chinese, he uses scripted speeches for formal events but works from notes in more casual settings.

PRACTICE UNTIL PERFECT. “Even if you have a written speech, prepare it so much that you almost know it by heart,” Stenhammar says. Breitstein suggests rehearsing into a voice recorder to hear how you sound, especially if you’re trying to fine-tune foreign pronunciations.

HOLD THE JOKES. Humor doesn’t always translate, so use it sparingly — or not at all. “Some people love jokes, but I am quite serious when I speak,” says Rattakul, who prefers using memorable anecdotes to connect with listeners. “Especially in Rotary, I find a good story that would touch the hearts of the audience,” he says.

32 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

ARGENTINA

DO be aware that as business friendships develop in Argentina, kissing, hugging and back patting often follow handshakes. Follow the lead of your Argentine counterparts.

GERMANY

DO treat business meetings as serious occasions. Save humor for social settings.

INDIA

DON’T point your foot at another person in India. Apologise if your shoes or feet touch someone else.

KENYA

DON’T jump straight into business matters. Small talk is expected.

INDONESIA

DO carefully look at people’s business cards when they give them to you.

Immediately putting them in a pocket is considered disrespectful.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 33

READY TO BUILD YOUR NEXT PRESENTATION? We tested three up-and-coming platforms that are available anywhere in the world.

FLOWBOARD WWW.FLOWBOARD.COM

HAIKU DECK WWW.HAIKUDECK.COM

This iPad and Mac app allows you to create presentations

Haiku Deck appeals to users

by embedding photo galleries, videos and links. Each

with its emphasis on visuals.

presentation gets a unique Flowboard URL, making your

You can choose background

work easy to access online and share via social media.

images from nonprofit digi-

Flowboard allows you to import content from just about

tal licensing group Creative

anywhere, including Dropbox, Instagram, Facebook and

Commons, import your own

YouTube. Available in English, French, German, Italian,

photos, or pay a small fee

Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and simplified Chinese.

to use Getty Images. Its streamlined design options and integrated formatting make it almost impossible

PREZI WWW.PREZI.COM

to create an unattractive presentation. Haiku Deck

This ‘virtual whiteboard’ allows you to work from a sin-

is offered in iOS and Web-based versions. Avail-

gle screen that outlines the entire presentation, telling

able in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese,

the story by zooming in and out to cover specific top-

Portuguese, Spanish and simplified Chinese.

ics. Its cloud-based platform allows multiple users to work on a presentation simultaneously. Available in English, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

HOW TO PRESENT AN AWARD • • • • •

TAKING OFFICE? District Governors-elect have the opportunity to attend a session on public speaking at the International

HOW TO ACCEPT AN AWARD •

Assembly. Club Presidents-elect receive training on speaking at their

•

District Assembly.

•

Learn more in the District Assembly Leaders’ Guide at www.rotary.org.

34 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Tell a story about the significance of the award.

Pronounce the recipient’s name correctly.

Provide background information on the recipient.

Hold the award respectfully, and hand it to the recipient as if it were a treasure.

Stand so the audience can clearly see you, the recipient, and the award.

•

Begin by addressing the audience to buy some time and calm your nerves.

Control filler words (ums and ahs).

Say thank you, keep names to a minimum, and pronounce them correctly.

Remember that the audience is rooting for you.

Focus - Happy Schools

by PRID Shekhar Mehta Chair, Rotary India Literacy Mission Happy Schools, Happy Children

viii. Well maintained space for teaching staff.

The Happy Schools project of Rotary India Literacy Mission comes into focus in November. The project aims to adopt 1,000 elementary schools across India to provide infrastructural and/or co-scholastic facilities to make them secure, attractive and happy learning-teaching places for students and teachers.

[*In this context, ‘secure’ means a school building secured with boundary wall or fencing and entry-exit gate/s with locking facility. This facility (of secured school premises) and those at sl. nos. ii, iii, iv, v (uniforms) and vi are mandatory under the RTE Act.] However a school will be termed as ‘Happy’ only when all eight requisites are fulfilled. i. The Club President and Club Literacy Committee Chair (CLCC) must visit both urban and rural schools in its vicinity and talk to the Head Master/Mistress of the school to find out if there is a School Management Committee (SMC) and an Annual Development Plan as mandated by RTE Act. ii. Conduct the survey, using the School Information Form in the shortlisted schools to assess the existing facilities. iii. Select the schools where club can provide/upgrade atleast five criteria and on development all eight criteria will be fulfilled.

Under the Happy Schools project a school may be selected for conversion into a Happy School if five or more of the below mentioned requisites are absent: i. Painted, well maintained and secure* school building ii. Clean and hygienic separate toilets for boys and girls iii. Safe and adequate drinking water for both children and teachers iv. Library facility for schools v. Uniforms and footwear for every child vi. Play material, games and sports equipment vii. Benches and desks for better student-teacher interaction and

1. Work out in detail with the school authorities the modalities of taking up the school facilities as per the survey — in particular, the sequence in which the works of providing the facilities ought to be taken up and the time slot/s suitable to the school authorities for this purpose.

2. Take ‘Before Pictures’ of the facilities that are to be upgraded / provided before the project is implemented.

3. The project details have to be uploaded for approval.

4. Upload the project details, cost estimates, and ‘before pictures’ of the project etc. for approval prior to commencement of the work through the Grant Application Form in the format available for this purpose on the www.rotaryteach.org website (select ‘Project Upload’ Tab to the top left of the homepage, click ‘Upload Projects’

Happy School Committee Members

PDG Ravi Vadlamani Chair

PDG Ajoy Chhabra Member

36 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

PDG Ramesh Agarwal Member

PDG Bal Inamdar Member

PDG Nitin Dafria Member

INNER WHEEL IN INDIA

Dr. Rashmi Sharma Association President

5.

6.

7.

8.

then click ‘New Projects’ and select Happy School Grant Application Form online).

Once the project is approved start implementation.

On completion take pictures of the new/improved facilities. The work will be assessed on the basis of ‘Before’ and ‘After’ pictures uploaded.

Visit the schools periodically (without prior notice) to check that the facility is being used and maintained.

On completion of the project, submit report giving documentation as required by the Happy School Grant Application Form. The reimbursement will be released only after proper documentation.

Bina M. Vyas Past Association President and National Literacy Co-ordinator

They have already adopted 250 schools.

Annual School Development Plan 1. The SMC in every government or government-aided school must draw up an Annual Development Plan.

2. This plan must be published in the community the school serves.

3. If the Annual Development Plan exists then it should be studied in detail to find out whether it covers any of the areas that are provided for under the Happy School project. If the plan allows Rotary clubs to develop at least five of the criterion and provides for the remaining three then it may be considered for adoption under the Happy Schools project.

4. If the Annual Development Plan covers the elements provided under the Happy Schools project and the school plans to implement it within one year then this school will not be eligible for converting into a Happy School.

5. If the school does not have an Annual Development Plan then it may be considered for selection provided all other requirements for developing a Happy School are met.

Note: • The club that takes up this scheme will be entitled to ‘reimbursement’ of 50 percent of the actual cost incurred, subject to an upper limit of Rs. 2,50,000.

(Rupees two lakh fifty thousand).

• The clubs who do not apply for grants for developing Happy Schools must also upload complete project details on the website www.rotaryteach.org.

• There are awards for the top three districts in the Best Performance by District in Happy School project.

Due to a miscommunication from the RILM office, a wrong picture was used of PDG Dilip K. Patnaik under ‘Child Development Committee Members.’ This is the right picture.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 37

The India Sri Lanka Tie-up

by Jaishree

L to R: DG Nazar & PDG Sampath Arumugam (D-3230), PDG Krish Rajendran & DG Gowri Rajan (D-3220) and RI Director P T Prabhakar at the Sister Club Agreement event.

A

new chapter unfolded when Rotarians of District 3230 (Tamil Nadu) landed in Sri Lanka (District 3220) on a four-day mission from October 8 – 11, 2014. The 160-member group included Rotarians, spouses (Anns) and children (Annettes). They executed community service projects and vocational service programmes in various parts of Sri Lanka.

The trip was momentous for the Rotarians of both the Districts as it involved the historic signing of ‘Sister Club Agreements’ between 55 Rotary clubs of both Districts. The event, graced by RI Director P.T. Prabhakar, DG Nazar (District 3230) and DG Gowri Rajan (District 3220), took place in Wadduwa near Colombo, in the presence of 400 Rotarians, Anns and Annettes. The Rotarians 38 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

are hopeful that this tie-up between clubs of the two Districts would enable more meaningful international service projects.

Another significant event was the installation of an ‘Annettes Club’ sponsored by RC Anuradhapura — the first of its kind in District 3220.

The Annettes clubs of District 3230 kickstarted their international programme by handing over hearing aids to Tharidu Fernando, President of the newly formed Annettes Club of Anuradhapura, for distribution to the hearing-impaired children of Sri Lanka.

The guest-Rotarians also visited the vocational training centre supported by District 3230 at the warravaged Mullai Theevu in the Northern Province. This region was also badly battered by the 2004 Tsunami. The

Rotarians were happy to see the youngsters undergoing various training programmes which would give them good employment opportunities.

On October 10, the Rotarians inaugurated the waiting hall of Base Hospital at Jaffna which was funded

by District 3230. They then visited the war-torn town, Kilinochchi, to donate artificial limbs to the physically challenged, which is part of Project Dhanvantri, the massive healthcare project of District 3230 that has been executing community projects in Sri Lanka from 2011.

The heart-warming sojourn to Sri Lanka ended with an International Fellowship Nite which further strengthened the bonds between the Rotarians from these two districts and they vowed to work together with more commitment, said DG Nazar.

POLIOPLUS XXXXXXXXX

LIGHTS ON

by Jaishree

T

he Mohatta Palace Museum, an iconic structure and landmark in Karachi, Pakistan, was brilliantly illuminated on October 24 to mark World Polio Day. Senior Rotarians, government leaders, politicians and members of WHO and UNICEF, were present at the ceremony at this beautiful building.

This solemn occasion was a reiteration of Rotary’s commitment to fight polio and promise the people of Pakistan that Rotarians are working relentlessly to eradicate this devastating disease and save their children. Rotary has established seven polio resource centres across Pakistan to build community trust in areas that come under the high risk category for polio.

These centres, along with local Rotary clubs, organise health camps to immunise children against polio, measles and other diseases, and also provide aid for other ailments. Rotar-

ians have also worked with Islamic scholars to form the Pakistan Ulema PolioPlus Committee to ensure polio immunisation in remote and difficult areas.

About the challenges in fighting polio in Pakistan, PDG Aziz Memon, National Chair, Pakistan PolioPlus Committee says, “Insurgency and lack of accessibility to children where the war is going on are the biggest problems. But the biggest challenge is getting the Government’s ownership in accomplishing this task — to make Pakistan polio-free.”

The Mohatta Palace was built in 1927 by a Marwari businessman, Shivratan Chandraratan Mohatta of Rajasthan, to serve as his summer home. Hence this palace has striking similarities to the stunning architecture of Rajasthan. Today this beautiful palace functions as a Government museum devoted to arts.

Every year on this day, Rotary clubs across the world look for opportunities to spread community awareness about polio and the urgent need to prevent it.

They also strengthen their pledge to eradicate this crippling disease, which thanks to the massive Rotary crusade to end polio, has limited this disease to just three countries–Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. That is, a 99 percent reduction in polio cases across the world.

Several unique activities marked the day this year. Rotary created a Guinness Record for the ‘World’s Biggest Commercial’ with over 1,15,000 supporters — from school students to celebrities to armed force personnel— in 172 countries, adding their photos to help end polio. Iconic buildings in various cities were illuminated to remind the world about Rotary’s fight to end the disease and inspire people to maintain constant vigil.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 39

CROSSWORD PUZZLE

The first coffee plants in Brazil arrived in the early 18th century, but Brazilians’ love affair with coffee really took off in the early 1800s, when huge plantations were established in São Paulo State’s Paraíba River valley. Within a century, coffee was the country’s main export, and Brazil remains the largest producer of coffee beans in the world.

Whether it’s early in the morning or late at night, Rotarians in town for the 2015 RI Convention, 6–9 June, will be able to find a good cup of joe in São Paulo.

With breakfast, Brazilians usually take their coffee black or pingado (with milk). After a meal, it’s common to have a cafezinho — strong black coffee served in a small cup.

Cafezinho and pĂŁo de queijo (a cheesy bread puff) are a common mid-afternoon snack.

Any bar or bakery in Brazil worth its salt will serve good cafezinho. At higher-end padarias, you can enjoy your coffee with pastries and desserts, or misto quente, a grilled hamand-cheese sandwich.

In Santos, about an hour from São Paulo, you’ll find the Palåcio da Bolsa Oficial de CafÊ, or Official Coffee Exchange Palace, where the price of coffee was traditionally set.

It now houses a coffee museum, the Museu do CafĂŠ, which naturally includes a cafe and a shop.

Register for the 2015 RI Convention in SĂŁo Paulo at www.riconvention.org.

40 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Um cafĂŠ, por favor

CONVENTION

FOUNDER’S FORESIGHT Across 1 Paris summer 4 Item removed at the pump 10 Toward the sunrise 14 Dallas-based carrier (abbr.)

15 Like an 11 p.m. show 16 Lo-cal, in product names 17 Start of a 1914 Paul Harris prediction 19 La ___ Tar Pits 20 Miniaturist’s display 21 Gaucho’s weapon 22 Wyo. neighbor 23 Part 2 of the prediction 27 ___ voce (quietly) 29 “Hinky Dinky Parlay ___�

30 Keanu’s character in The Matrix 31 Book clubs and such 33 Golden Rule pronoun 34 Bosnian, e.g.

35 Part 3 of the prediction 38 “Mama� of a 1960s pop group 41 McKellen of movies 42 Hereditary ruler 46 Sporty truck, briefly

47 48 49 54 55 56 58 59 62 63 64

What boys will be Third planet Part 4 of the prediction Say a Hail Mary, say Future attorney’s exam, briefly Walks Word after snap or garbanzo End of the prediction Periodic table abbr.

Victorian-era art critic John Part of a PC-resetting combo 65 Private dinner?

66 Left brain’s forte, supposedly 67 Potash Down 1 Boaster’s suffix 2 Like a Corvette, say 3 Gnaw at corrosively 4 Party or play follower 5 Gamal’s successor 6 Sports replay term 7 Jewel’s weight unit 8 Ocean between N. Am. and Eur. 9 One who 56-Across, for short 10 Pipe joint 11 Delta or American 12 Burglar 13 Oolong or Earl Grey 18 Where spa customers soak

21 “Liquor not provided,� for short 22 Flavor-enhancing additive 24 Allege under oath 25 Three minutes in the ring 26 Arcing shot 28 Unlatch, to bards 32 They may be cloudy 33 Over there 34 Nerve impulse transmission site 36 Doubled, Mork’s greeting 37 “Ciao!�

38 Partner of paste 39 Sports participant, often 40 Playgrounds’ apparatuses 43 Advent 44 Like some mansions 45 “___ will be done�

47 Bumped into 50 Carries on wildly 51 ___ apso 52 Ticks go-with 53 Oil company acquired by BP 57 Huckleberry of fiction 58 Impact sound 59 Like “bring� or “sing� (abbr.)

60 Day of the wk.

61 Canonized fem.

Solution in the December issue

Reproduced from The Rotarian

XXXXXXXXX

The Giving Festival

invited to contribute to any organisations of their choice in cash or kind or as time by volunteering their services.

The event was aan Utsav or Festival of Giving is India’s weeklong inaugurated by celebration observed every year during the week Mr. N. Vaghul, Rtn S.V. Balasubramaniam including Gandhi Jayanthi (October 2–8) to promote ‘giving’ former Chairman, handing over cheque for among people. Launched in 2009, the festival encompasses ICICI Bank at Rs 5 lakhs to RI Director. people from all walks of life — from school children to Ramakrishna home makers, automobile drivers to corporate honchos Kalyana Mandapam, Coimbatore on October 4, 2014. and celebrities, who indulge in various forms of giving RI Director P.T. Prabhakar, the chief guest spoke on the not just limiting to monetary contributions but also include importance of giving. He elaborated on four aspects to contributing their time, resources and skills — anything giving: Why, When, To whom and How much to give — to bring joy into the lives of the underprivileged. It could quoting examples from the ancient epics to substantiate be as simple as treating the housemaid and her children to his ideas. He commended the idea of the event and hoped lip-smacking ice creams or as large as donating huge amount it could be replicated in other places as well. of cash or gifting books and stationery Rtn A.R. Arunachalam, President items to school children hailing from of RC Coimbatore Central, detailed the poor families. Rotary clubs across our various projects to be launched during country also celebrate this festival with the festival. These included an effort to great gusto and various activities are enroll 1,000 new blood donors and organ undertaken by Rotarians to give a fillip donors, in association with Karunya to the art of giving.

Blood Donors Society; sanction letters Rotary Coimbatore Central organised to provide two dialysis machines to a unique event ‘Aram Seyya Virumbu’ as Coimbatore Medical College Hospital; part of the Joy of Giving week. The event inauguration of a project to construct 100 brought 30 service organisations from toilets at Devarayapuram block. The club Coimbatore, Chennai and Ayakudi under adopted five schools of Friends of Tribals Rtn A.R. Arunachalam, President, one roof working in diverse fields. Stalls for a one year period and also undertook were put up at the venue to create aware- RC Coimbatore Central inaugurating to sponsor 40 differently-abled students at the rural sanitation project. ness about their services, enroll volunAmar Seva Sangam, Ayakudi at a cost of teers and raise contributions. Public were Rs 1.4 lakhs.

While the government has given free laptops to students in government institutions and aided colleges, Eduseva, a technology startup, along with the Rotary Village Knowledge Centre (a joint initiative of RC Coimbatore Central, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and Tulsi Trust) inaugurated a series of classes to help rural students reap the benefits of technology through these laptops. Several students from Devarayapuram village attended the session.

Reputed speakers inspired the audience to open their hearts and purses to transform the lives of the down-trodden.

Cookery and fancy dress contests saw enthusiastic participation from children. The food festival was a successful fund-raiser as it drew a large crowd providing a variety of gastronomic delight for the public. Over 8,000 guests visited the joy of giving celebrations.

D

Mr N. Vaghul inaugurating the Joy of Giving Festival along with RI Director P.T. Prabhakar.

With inputs from RI District 3201 NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 41

WORLD ROUNDUP Rotary Club of Versailles, France

Compiled by Kiran Zehra

FREE VEGETABLE GARDENS ‘Potalib,’ an international food-sharing movement was launched by the Rotaract Club of Versailles. More than 20 French institutions, local communities and corporations received the kit consisting of seeds for 18 different vegetables, information on how to cultivate them, and 12 wooden bins, each about a cubic metre in size and filled with around 270 Kg of soil to plant, grow, harvest, and eat healthy food.

Rotary Club of LublinCentrum-Maria Curie-Sklodowska MUSIC FOR THE DIFFERENTLY-ABLED Founded by Rotary members, the Music School for Children with Disabilities serves students with various disabilities, including Down’s syndrome, autism and visual impairments. The club, in association with The Rotary Foundation and the Henry Wieniawski Musical Society, which houses the school, provides financial assistance to meet the needs of the school.

Rotary Club of Nkumba, Uganda IMPROVING HEALTHCARE The club raised more than $2,000 to dig and construct a new latrine pit for Nkumba’s Kitala Health Centre.

This centre is the only public medical facility in the area, serving a population of almost 600,000, most of whom can’t afford private healthcare. The club estimates the latrine pit will last upto 20 years.

Rotaractors with their vegetable garden.

Rotary Club of Koriyama West, Japan

Enjoying the music.

MENDING MENTAL HEALTH Under a Global Grant project, the club along with RC Englewood, New Jersey, USA purchased mobile video conference equipment for mental health clinics in areas affected by the Fukushima nuclear power-plant crisis.

These tools connected mental healthcare providers in Japan with trauma experts at the Arnold Global Health Institute in New York, where psychologists treated survivors and witnesses of the September 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster.

Rotary Club of Stavanger, Norway HARVESTING MACHINES FOR FARMERS Under a Matching Grant Project the club donated portable olive harvesting machines, nets and packaging devices to farmers from Germiyan village, Turkey, to enhance the quality of their produce, as the main economic resource of the region comes from table olive and olive oil production.

Rotary Club of Beijing FUNDS FOR CHILDREN OF AIDS PATIENTS The Rotary Club of Beijing conducted HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns for both rural and urban communities. In association with China’s Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and The China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF), the club is funding children of AIDS patients to cover their schooling cost.

Rotary Club of Atlanta

Rotary Club of New York

FIGHT AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING G The Rotary Club of Atlanta is helping homeless teenagers who fall prey to human trafficking by relocating them to Covenant House, the city’s only crisis centre for homeless youth. This year a candlelight vigil was held to raise awareness on child sexual exploitation.

Funds generated by the event will be used to expand the Covenant House.

AWARENESS AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Members of the club along with Miss America Kira Kazantsev and Safe Horizon, an organisation that provides support and promotes justice for victims of crime and abuse, joined hands to create awareness on domestic violence. The event helped raise $3000 for Safe Horizon.

ROTARY ACTS

Jalpari

by Rasheeda Bhagat

44 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

T

Happy farmers beaming at the large expanse of water.

he first thing that strikes you about Rotarian Meena Borate, Past President of the Rotary Club of Pune Hillside, who is a medical doctor by profession, is her utmost honesty, no-nonsense approach, and the passion to execute whatever she has undertaken.

Today if under her dynamic leadership and the desire to help the underprivileged classes in Rotary District 3131 — farmers and other poor people — have got both water for their farms and clean drinking water, through 16 projects funded by The Rotary Foundation for a whopping Rs 63 lakh, there is an interesting story to relate.

A hard-nosed physician, her transition from a “businesswoman” as she calls herself, (“when we take money from our patients, aren’t we doing business; how can we call it service?”) to Pune’s jalpari (water fairy) began on that momentous day in the year 2001, when she attended a Rotary International meet in the US, accompanying her husband, Dr. Madhav Borate, then Governor of the District.

“In Rotary, we have training for spouses and I was reluctantly attending one for first ladies (spouses of Governors),” she recalls.

Some of the other spouses found out that Meena was a doctor and approached her saying they wanted to donate some money — Rs 27 lakh — for helping children with eye problems in developing countries, so could she help.

Meena could not curse her hard luck enough. “I was already burdened with my own practice; my husband was Governor and had no time to spare for our hospital. But I also felt that God had sent me an opportunity to do something for poor children and if I refused it, I would be a bad human being,” she recalls.

So she undertook the project, learnt a lot from it, and more important,

got hooked to the idea of community service.

Transition takes place

Jump to 2013; the hard-nosed businesswoman-cum-doctor had been transformed enough to donate Rs 17 lakh of her own money for charitable work through Rotary.

Meanwhile, Rotarians of RC Indapur in her District had been approached by the villagers of Tarangwadi and Gokhali, about 130 km from Pune, that the 4-km long stream that ran through their villages had run dry for several years and all the farmers — agriculture is the only activity — were suffering. With their crops failing due to insufficient water, land-owning farmers were forced to work as labourers in the fields in neighbouring villages, or migrating to cities, the sad but real story of Indian villages.

Meanwhile, Meena’s Rs 17 lakh had got a donation from one of her contacts within the Rotary world ... a woman from Finland who raised Rs 9 lakh from six countries. To this Rs 26 lakh was added $10,000 from the District Designated Funds when Rtn Deepak Shikarpur was Governor last year. As per RI norms, this money went to TRF and came back to Meena with a matching grant, swelling to Rs 63 lakh.

With this money the ‘Jalpari’ has managed to finance 16 water and sanitation projects in District 3131. One of the first beneficiaries were the villages Tarangwadi and Gokhali, where the farmers were in dire need of help as the drought conditions had virtually destroyed their land and livelihood; and Rotary Indapur undertook the project to bring water to them.

Enter Indapur Club

Fortunately the then RC Indapur President Vasant Malunjkar was an architect. He swung into action, did NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 45

a rainwater harvesting survey of the stream and came out with a project cost of Rs 27 lakh. But he had to cut cost as all that Meena would spare was Rs 7 lakh; the club raised another Rs 1 lakh.

The dry stream was filled up with silt and thorny, wild foliage. The project involved digging of trenches 300 ft long, 50–60 ft wide and 10–12 ft deep. But at many places there was hard rock at a depth of 7 ft.

He not only had to cut cost but get the required government sanctions, and deal with sceptical villagers. As Meena puts it, “The villagers never believed the project would be done because they’re used to promises being broken by politicians. Above all, there was the suspicion that there must be something in it for the Rotarians, or else why would we do anything for them.”

But when they saw the work begin in July 2014, “most of the villagers waited in the scorching sun for three hours to see us; we were so touched,” she says.

On his part, Malunjkar’s biggest challenge was to cut costs dramatically. The biggest cost component was the use of excavators for desilting, removal of earth and rocks. The hourly rate for an excavator is Rs 2,600. But he found a Rotarian who owned excavators, and got two machines at an hourly rate of Rs 1,500.

“We worked day and night, the silt removed was taken away by the villagers at their own cost as it is fertile soil. The rocks were used to build a road alongside.”

Within a month, 37 pits (300 ft x 50 ft x12 ft) were created, leaving a gap of about 50 ft between each, and the cost of the project came down drastically to Rs 12 lakh. “Malunjkar wants the rest of the money — about Rs 4 lakh — but I have to finance the other 15 projects too,” laughs Meena, but promises to divert some funds to him, “if I have any surplus money left.”

46 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Rtn. Meena Borate with Rtn. Vasant Malunjkar, Past President of RC Indapur.

Skies open up

Proving that the gods smile on the sincere and dedicated, “the very next day after we had completed work, it started raining heavily and continued for eight days, and all the pits filled up,” smiles Malunjkar, as he walks me along the water-filled pits.

Over 45 days have passed but the pits are filled with water; the larger objective of course was water percolation, which has happened naturally.

The farmers I met confirmed that all their wells, empty for years, were now filled with water.

The result is that in the last seven weeks sowing of crops — sugarcane, vegetables such as tomatoes, capsicum, bananas, etc and exotic fruits such as pomegranate had already begun.

Saheb Rao Tarange, a grand old man of 80, with a bright red turban, gives me a wide toothless smile,

beaming at the expanse of water before him. Seated on a bed-sheet spread in my honour under a shady village tree, with a one litre bottle of Coke on offer, he tells me how the villages had suffered from water shortage for years.

Now, with enough water in his well, he has planted on his 15-acre farm sugarcane, tomatoes, capsicum, etc and expects a good crop. Till now all of them — 5,000 inhabitants — could at best grow dry crops like jowar, bajra and maize.

As a woman carrying a large canister of water on her head, drawn from a hand pump next to the water pits, approaches, Meena explains how in months like October, drinking water came here only through water tankers.

“But this year they have enough drinking water,” smiles Malunjkar.

The best part, he adds, is that even though these pits may dry up in the absence of rain, “the stream is

A woman carries water drawn from the hand-pump installed near the water-pits.

strategically placed in the path of the canal water that is released for Indapur by the authorities thrice a year. So this stream and its pits will automatically fill up and percolate to the villagers’ wells. Nobody can stop it!”

Another local farmer, Tukaram Waghmode, who till last year used to work at the Mantralaya in Mumbai, is considered a village head, even though he is not the panchayat president. He owns seven acres of land and plans to cultivate four acres with pomegranate, a kg of which can fetch Rs 65 to Rs 150, depending on the quality. “With enough water and fertilisers, we can get 20 tons of fruit from one acre,” he adds.

But execution of 16 projects doesn’t mean Meena is resting on her laurels. Explaining the topography and the perennial problem of silt affecting water resources, she says desilting can get immediate and miraculous results. “But then how many times

can we do this; Rotary resources are not limitless.”

A permanent solution is preventing erosion in hills. Deforestation and cutting of trees for firewood results in rains bringing down rich top soil, denuding hills and causing landslides.

“We want to preserve the rich top soil by what is called continuous contour trenching, initially over 80 hectares of hills, and I have planned a project costing Rs 35 lakh.”

She already has collected this money, her motivation for such passionate work coming from growing up in an area adjacent to the Dharavi slum in Mumbai. “I watched during the monsoon all the sewage water entering their slum homes. And most of the people living there are villagers who have migrated in search of livelihoods. If they have a decent income in their village why would they come to lead such miserable lives in cities?”

Meanwhile in Tarangwadi/ Gokhali, even though the recharging of their wells and availability of adequate water has lifted the farmers’ hopes of a good harvest, unfortunately the travails of the Indian farmer do not end there.

Their next big hurdle is marketing and the huge profits made by the middlemen. Tarange, Waghmode and other farmers are worried about this too.

While there was no water, their land was lying fallow and they were forced to work as labourers in surrounding villages. Pune’s Jalpari’s dedication and passion have created optimism about a better future.

Tribhuvan Zagade, who owns 6.5 acres of land says that even though happy, they are bracing up for the next battle — marketing and middlemen depleting their incomes.

Pictures: Rasheeda Bhagat Contact Meena Borate at: + 91 9881477140 NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 47

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ROTARY XXXXXXXXX ACTS

Rotarians at the village.

G

atachiwadi is a village in Barshi, located in Solapur district of Maharashtra. It is famous for its toor dal and other agricultural products.

This village that has a population of around 800 people was facing serious water scarcity and the farmers depended solely on rainfall. The rainwater storage canal that was already in place was 750 metres long but just four feet wide and three feet deep; this was not sufficient to cater to the village.

Help came in the form of Rotarians of RC Barshi, RI District 3132. They inspected the existing canal and planned to deepen and widen it, so as to collect sufficient quantity of rain water. The rainwater thus harvested can improve the ground-water level and meet the community’s water demands.

The old canal was expanded to 22 feet wide and 10 feet deep and it was further divided into seven pockets of nearly 100 metres each. The total

Newly dug canal filled with rainwater.

project cost was Rs.1,43,000. In just one bout of rainfall, all the pockets filled up with water and the percolation increased the ground water level five-fold. The total capacity of the pockets was 1crore 30 lakh litres and about 5 crore litres will percolate into

the ground thereby strengthening the ground water level.

The harvested rainwater is not only an independent water supply but is also potable. Farmers were thrilled with this unique project as it will improve their farm produce and thus livelihood.„ NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 51

OCTOBER 2013 ROTARY NEWS 67

ROTARY ACTS

Rotary was there earlier

by Kiran Zehra

Department of Post, India released a special cover with special cancellation on project ‘Right to Go.’

A rural sanitation project.

W

ell before Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat campaign on October 2, which is celebrated as Gandhi Jayanti in India, Rotary and Rotarians have been doing this much-required and commendable work in different parts of India.

Of course in the government scheme that Modi announced, a sum of Rs 1,34,000 crore has been set apart to build a mammoth number of 11.11 crore toilets across India.

It has been well documented that a major hindrance to the education of the girl child, especially after primary school, is the absence of separate toilets for girls in secondary school. In many parts of India, after puberty, many parents discontinue their daughters’

education for the simple reason: the teenager has no access to a girl’s toilet.

In remote and rural areas, many households do not have toilets and the women depend on open fields to relieve themselves. Their pathetic plight can be imagined as they have to wait for long hours — using the fields either before dawn or well after sundown. This makes them much more vulnerable to sexual assault.

Sogav, a small village located 80 km from Mumbai, witnessed a daily scenario of people defecating in public due to unavailability of toilets in their houses.

Women and girls had to walk miles in the early hours to find a safe and discreet place to relieve themselves. They faced hygiene and safety risks every day.

Under the presidentship of Rotarian Atul Bhide, RC Thane Hills, RI District 3140, launched the project ‘Right to go’ and built 210 ‘Green Toilet Blocks’ for 210 homes at Sogav. Bhide and his team identified houses for construction of toilets based on the economic condition and number of female members in a household. Initially 10 toilets were constructed. A Global Grant partnership with RC Cherry Hill, RI District 7640, USA and TRF raised Rs 36 lakh.

Dr Renuka Desai, now in the US and a member of RC Cherry Hill, supported this project.

Bhide and team started construction of the toilets in March 2014 and completed the project in three months.

Today the project benefits 1,000 villagers. The average cost per toilet was Rs 18,000. Post construction, the team collected Rs 500 from each house in the village and opened a bank account with Rs 1 lakh. This amount will be used for the repair and maintenance of these toilets.

Each green toilet is equipped with two soak-pits with special honey-comb designed brick work. The pits are odour-free and do not require any separate drainage system. Each household maintains their toilet block.

A Rotary Community Corps is serving as a catalyst between the villagers and Rotary. Members of the RCC impart hygiene awareness to the villagers. Local officials conduct a hygiene and sanitation check. ‘Win the Kids Over’ programme at the local schools helps the children in Sogav learn the importance of good hygiene and maintaince of their own toilet block.

Rotarian Bhide shares an inspiring and interesting experience when one of the residents of Sogav thanked Rotary for not only taking care of the hygiene and sanitation of the village but also restoring dignity of women in the village. “Earlier we were just treating it as a project related to health and sanitation. But this resident made it clear that it meant much more to them,” adds Bhide.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 53

ROTARY ACTS

by Jaishree

Learning camps and Camp Galileo in progress in the village schools.

I

n continuance with Rotary’s mission to achieve total literacy goals through teacher support, e-learning, adult literacy, child development and establishing happy schools (abbreviated as T-E-AC-H) Rotary clubs across the country are doing several activities to promote literacy in their community.

Members of Rotary Club of Ankleshwar, RI District 3060 are also participating in a big way to take literacy to the unreached. At the start of the last Rotary year, the club under the leadership of Rtn Meera Panjwani and PDG Ashok Panjwani launched a unique partnership with Jhagadia Industries Ltd., Bharuch (JIA) and Pratham, an NGO that 54 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

is working for the education of underprivileged children in 21 States of India, as also USA, UK, Germany and UAE. A programme to this effect was launched in July 2013 by the District Collector of Bharuch, Avantika Singh at Vataria Primary School in the tribal village, Valia. It includes providing education to 12 surrounding villages of Valia and Jhagadia taluks of Bharuch district, Gujarat.

A team comprising Rotarians of the club and members of JIA was formed for the purpose and a Village Development Programme was evolved in each village. Pratham’s expertise was used to provide education to children and

adults. The learning activities included solving basic Arithmetic operations, science camps and fairs to help children understand basic scientific fundamentals. To achieve the objectives, the literacy team conducts intensive learning camps in schools.

Parents are also involved in this learning procedure. Simple learning materials are given to them to help them assist their children. This makes the home a conducive environment for children to study especially in these regions with low priority for education.

Science fairs are organised in the schools to encourage children to understand and get interested in the

subject. Students are chosen to be trained by Vigyan Mitras who demonstrate various scientific concepts such as magnetism, gravity, climate, astronomy, human anatomy etc., and these children, called as Bal Vigyan Mitras, in turn demonstrate the same to their classmates, parents, teachers and members of the community. Star gazing workshops called Camp Galileo enables the children and the villagers to understand the magnificence of our universe as they observe the planets, stars and satellites through a telescope.

For all these interesting topics to be passed on effectively to the children, the literacy team gets trained by Pratham who orients them with the methodology and activities that will be conducted at the schools.

Impact Today, after a year, the surveys undertaken at Jhagadia and Valia taluks

District Collector of Bharuch Avantika Singh launches the literacy project.

show impressive progress. While at the start of the programme only 11.3 percent of children could read a paragraph of text, after 22 days at camp, the figure jumped to a whopping 70.6 percent, with

59.3 percent being fluent readers!

Similarly, children who could perform addition operations improved from 54.7 percent to 83 percent. This success has motivated the club to expand its programmes to more hamlets.„

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 55

Spreading

Cheer

RC Salem Young Town RI District 2980 Infrastructure worth Rs 50,000 donated to Government High School, Erumapalayam.

RC Thuraiyur Perumalmalai RI District 3000 Rain water harvesting rally jointly organised along with the club’s sponsored Interact Club and Thuraiyur Municipality.

RC Delhi Rhythm RI District 3010 Weekend classes organised for 150 underprivileged school students for various subjects at Basti Vikas Kendra.

RC Vuyyuru RI District 3020

RC Chalisgaon RI District 3030

Road safety awareness rally followed by an eye camp for public transport workers.

A RYLA programme organised at Patnadevi Sanctuary, Gautala forest empowered 450 youngsters.

56 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

RC Bhopal Shahpura RI District 3040 Social service volunteers from various walks of life honoured.

RC Srimadhopur Sunrise RI District 3052 School uniforms donated to 250 poor students from various government schools to promote literacy.

RC Gondal RI District 3060 Over 100 patients benefitted through a comprehensive medical camp conducted by the club.

RC Visnagar RI District 3051 Blood donation camp organised at Visnagar Voluntary Blood Bank, Kheralu collected 65 units of blood.

RC Gwalior Central RI District 3053 Distribution of educational kits to students of club’s adopted school, Kanya Vidyalaya.

RC Kapurthala Elite RI District 3070 School teachers were honoured by the club for their exemplary services to the student community.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 57

RC Saharanpur Continental RI District 3080 Grocery kits distributed to Bharathya Netraheen Vidyalaya, a school for the visually challenged.

RC Muzaffarnagar Vishal RI District 3100 Medical camp conducted at Keshav Pathology Lab, Muzzafarnagar.

RC Gorakhpur Midtown RI District 3120 Adult Literacy Centre inaugurated at Tilauli Village.

The club also installed a smart class and toilets at a primary school in the village.

58 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

RC Rajpura RI District 3090 Grocery items and medicines distributed to residents of Lepers Colony.

RC Shajahanpur City RI District 3110 Umbrellas were donated to 150 underprivileged students of Purva Madhyamik Vidhyalaya at Kursanda village.

RC Pune NIBM RI District 3131 Donation of Rs 10,000 for construction of toilets and gobar gas plants at Panawadi village.

RC Karad RI District 3132 Over 16,000 books on valuable thoughts by Swami Vivekananda donated to 124 schools.

RC Warangal RI District 3150 Tree plantation drive organised at many schools to promote environment protection.

RC Mundgod RI District 3170 Educational kits distributed to students of a primary school in Attiveri village.

RC Mumbai Bhandup RI District 3140 Twin toilet blocks built at club’s adopted village, Mohili.

RC Hospet RI District 3160 School bags distributed to children of AIDS infected parents to help them pursue education.

RC Shimoga East RI District 3180 Cash awards, dictionaries and note books distributed to toppers of the 10th standard board exams at Government School, Kommannal.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 59

RC Bangalore National Park RI District 3190 The club along with RC Cubbon Park jointly organised an eye camp at Bangalore City Institute.

RC Calicut Midtown RI District 3202 Under District Grant the club installed an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) at the Calicut railway station.

RC Tirunelveli North RI District 3212 Saplings planted at Rani Anne Government College for Women.

60 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

RC Coimbatore Texcity RI District 3201 A Zumba dance event to raise money for a rural school saw an active participation of 500 members.

RC Adoor RI District 3211 Educational kits distributed to mentally-challenged children.

RC Chennai Golden Star RI District 3230 Eye camps conducted for students at St. Joseph Matriculation High School, Ennore in association with Vasan Eye Care Centre.

RC Dimapur RI District 3240 Educational kits distributed to inmates of St. Joseph’s Children Home in association with Rotaract Club of Dimapur, under the Rotary’s TEACH Mission.

RC Jabalpur City RI District 3261 Water dispenser donated to Shri Krishna Vidhya Mandir, Bargi Gram Repura.

RC Salt Lake City RI District 3291 The club in association with RC Stavanger, RI District 2250, Norway donated a ‘Hospital on Wheels’ to Bharat Seva Ashram.

RC Muzaffarpur RI District 3250 The club conducted various competitions for children and winners were honoured.

RC Keonjhargarh RI District 3262 The malaria eradication programme performed by the club saw Rotarians spraying pesticides across the city to keep mosquitoes at bay.

RC Mount Everest Lalitpur RI District 3292 Under the banner ‘Preserve Planet Earth’ saplings were planted at Damai Tar Ganesh Sthan, Nepal.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 61

India at The Asian Games 2014

by Kiran Zehra

T

he Indian men’s hockey team will be participating in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, all thanks to the gold medal they won at the 17th Asian Games held in Incheon, South Korea. With 11 gold medals, 10 silver and 36 bronze India ranked 8th at the grand sports event that featured 439 events in 36 sports and disciplines.

While some argued that the country’s performance has not been as good as the previous edition of the games (India finished at 6th spot with 14 gold medals) others felt that the medals won in new categories such as compound archery and sailing was a new high.

Sania Mirza and Saketh Myneni – winners of the Mixed Doubles Gold.

Kissing her Gold – Seema Punia.

Indian athletes waving the Tricolour.

62 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

Jitu Rai clinched a historic gold in the 50 m Pistol event on the opening day of the games. Mary Kom retained her world women’s boxing champion title. The unfortunate controversy of Sarita Devi overshadowed Mary Kom’s gold winning performance in the women’s flyweight (48–51 kg) division.

Goalkeeper Parattu Sreejesh, who saved two penalty attempts, said it was the start of a “new era” for the former masters of the game after the men’s hockey team clinched an emotional gold after 16 years, beating arch-rivals and defending champions Pakistan in a penalty shootout. Sania Mirza and Saketh Myneni added to the gold medal count.

Yogeshwar Dutt picked up the men’s 65 kg freestyle title. The squash men bagged gold after the women’s side settled for its first ever silver. The Indian team comprising of Rajat Chauhan, Sandeep Kumar and Abhishek Verma, beat the hosts 227–225 for the gold medal and won

Jitu Rai with his Gold Medal.

India’s first from archery! Priyanka Panwar, Tintu Luka, Mandeep Kaur and M.R. Poovamma won an easy race win the women’s 4 x 400 m relay in athletics.

Seema Punia, who won the gold in women’s discus told the media, “I worked really hard to defeat two

Chinese for my gold,” she said. “It can be done if we train well.”

Sandeep Sejwal clinched a bronze medal in 50 m breaststroke swimming.

Varsha Gautham and Aishwarya Nedunchezhiyan claimed a bronze medal in the women’s 29er two person dinghy sailing event.

Two Rotarians in new

MAHARASHTRA ASSEMBLY Team Rotary News

D

istrict 3131 has the unique honour of returning not one, but two, legislators into the newly formed Maharashtra Assembly.

Rtn Dattatray (Mama) Bharne from the Rotary Club of Indapur has won the Assembly election from the Indapur constituency on a ticket from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) by a margin of 14,000 votes. He faced a stiff fight from the earlier MLA—Harshawardhan Patil of Congress.

Dattatray is a B.Com graduate from Indapur.

A former President of the Zilla Parishad, he has an excellent record in public service. In Rotary he has taken keen interest in water management projects and worked tirelessly in reaching drinking water to over 9,235 towns and wadis. He was successful in getting Rs 4 crore approved for this task.

Another success story from this election is that of Rtn Prashant Thakur from the Rotary Club of Panvel Industrial Town. Thakur, a BJP candidate, secured over 80,000 votes against 67,000 votes got by his opponent. He was a Congress MLA earlier, but resigned from the Congress Party and joined the BJP. By profession he is a civil engineer; a member of MMRDA (Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority), he has been engaged in various capacities with several educational, social and sports organisations.

Rotary News and all Rotarians wish both the newly elected MLAs all success and are optimistic they will further infuse all the values Rotary cherishes into their new roles.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 63

District 3131 shares Membership Secrets with District 1270

L to R: PDG Terry Sykes and Mrs. Sykes, Sonia and PDG Deepak Shikarpur, DG Wendy and Mr. Watson.

P

DG Deepak Shikarpur, RI District 3131 participated as RI President’s Representative at the District Conference of RI District 1270, United Kingdom held at Yorkshire during September 2014.

Rotary District 1270 consists of 47 Rotary clubs spread across north and south of The River Humber — from Barnsley in the West to Cleethorpes in the East and Lincoln in the South to Beverley in the North. Over 1,500 Rotarians attended the District Conference. The present Governor of District 1270 is Wendy Watson. She is a retired government officer.

One of the major challenges faced by Rotary in UK is depleting membership.

During his visit, PDG Deepak visited three clubs and had several meetings with senior Rotarians in the

64 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

District. He explained in detail the membership development model that he practiced in his District when he was serving as the District Governor during the Rotary year 2013–14. He presented his successful models of membership development such as Satellite clubs, Hybrid e-Clubs, Corporate clubs, Next Generation and spouse membership during his interaction at the District Conference.

DG Wendy appreciated these inputs and said that she plans to increase membership in Yorkshire using some of these concepts. Conference Chair PDG Terry Sykes in his mail to Rtn Deepak had stated that his inputs at the Conference and the clarity with which it was presented made the experience interesting for the attendees.

Tel.: 011 42250101 Fax: 011 42250191

Welcome to Rotary Institute 2014 Dear Rotary Leaders, Rotary Zone Institutes give an opportunity to Rotary Leaders, Past, Present and the Future, to meet and greet each other, exchange ideas and debate on how to take Rotary forward.

Nalini & I deem it a privilege and pleasure, to invite you and your spouse, to Rotary Institute 2014, to be held on December 12 - 14, 2014, at Hotel ITC Grand Chola, Chennai.

Venue: ITC Grand Chola, Chennai.

Date: 12 - 14 December 2014

Our Esteemed Guests

Gary Huang - Corinna Yao RI President 2014 - 15

Rtn. P.T. Prabhakar & Nalini R I Director (2013-15)

With a set of wonderful speakers and world class entertainment, this institute will be truly an Institute with a difference. We will have the rare opportunity of having with us, the 2014-15 R I President Gary Huang and his wife Corinna and 2015-16 RI President K.R. Ravindran and his wife Vanathy who will make this Rotary Institute memorable for us.

The dynamic Institute Chairman PDG Raja Ramakrishnan and his wonderful team are making every effort, to ensure, that, we all have a glorious Rotary Institute.

With warm regards.

P.T. Prabhakar, RI Director (2013-15)

My dear Rotary Friends, “Vanakkam Chennai”.

Rotary Institute in each Zone is a much awaited event where the Past, Present and the incoming RI General Officers in that Zone meet and deliberate many of our on-going programmes and plans for the future. RI leaders will be there to share with us the current status of Rotary and their vision for the future. Above all it will provide us all the opportunity for fellowship, renew old friendships and make new friends.

Rtn. R. Raja Ramakrishnan & Rajalakshmi Institute Chairman

After 12 years we are privileged to host the 2014 Zone Institute in the hometown of RIDirector and Convener P T Prabhakar . He has challenged us to match his previous Institute on a Cruise in terms of its uniqueness , record attendance and quality of programmes. The venue of Grand Chola offers comfort and world class conference facilities. For Ladies and families we will make their stay interesting and enjoyable with special tours in and around Chennai and shopping. We are also planning to organize a one day tour to Tirupathi for those who wish to have Dharshan of Lord Balaji. The organizing committee is making all efforts to make your visit to Chennai and participation in the Institute very rewarding.

On behalf of Convener RI Director P T Prabhakar and Nalini Prabhakar, the Organising Committee , Rajalakshmi and I welcome you, your spouse and family to join us in Chennai to “Light up Rotary”.

K.R. Ravindran - Vanathi RI President 2015 - 16

Yours in Rotary, PDG. R. Raja Ramakrishnan Chairman

OCTOBER 2014 ROTARY NEWS 65

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ROTARY ACTS

Dialysis Made Affordable

by Jaishree

R

otary International Director P T Prabhakar inaugurated Rotary Dialysis Centre at Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital and Research Centre, Pune on September 30, 2014.

The dialysis centre is the community service project of Rotary Club of Pune Sarasbaug, RI District 3131 with financial support from District 3131. The total cost of the project worked up to Rs 40 lakhs. The club contributed Rs 28 lakhs and the balance was funded from the District Grants. Eight dialysis machines have been installed at the centre. With plans to treat three patients per day on each machine, the club aims to extend the dialysis services to at least 24 needy patients a day.

Although, the hospital has fixed a subsidised rate of Rs 750 as against Rs 1,450 per dialysis at this centre, the facility is extended free of cost (no charge for the consumables also) to BPL patients who cannot afford the concessional rate too.

Speaking at the inaugural function, chief guest RI Director P.T. Prabhakar applauded the Rotarians for this colossal service that would enable the much needed medical care at an affordable rate for the sick people. It is indeed a huge boon for the cash-strapped community, he said. Quoting Mother Teresa and the ancient Greek king, Alexander the Great, the RI Director encouraged the Rotarians to “give” without constraint so that humanity would benefit. District Governor Vivek Aranha commented that such sustainable services would enhance Rotary’s public image and inspire more philanthropists to be part of Rotary.

Mr Pratap Rao Pawar, Chair — Sakal Media Group, PDG Deepak Shikarpur, Club President Manoj Ghodke, Secretary Neha Satalkar, Project Chair Rakesh Oswal,

RI Director P T Prabhakar, Rtn. Manoj Ghodke, Mr Dhananjay Kelkar, PDG Deepak Shikarpur, Mr Pratap Rao Pawar, DG Vivek Aranha, Rtn Rakesh Oswal and Mrs Chandralekha Aranha at the inaugural event.

Medical Project Director Yogesh Rathod, other PDGs and District officials and Rotarians also graced the inaugural function. Past President of the club, Rtn Pankaj Shah, who played a significant role in this project, was also present at the function.

Begun in October 2009, Rotary Pune Sarasbaug has been active in its service to humanity. The Rotarians have brought immense benefits to the physically challenged at the Paraplegic Centre, Khadki, providing wheelchairs and tricycles to them. The club has a unique programme, ‘Adopt a village’ — an on-going project, the Rotarians concentrate all their welfare activities for a select few villages for an entire year so that the village transforms in a wholesome manner.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 69

ROTARY RO ROTA OT TA ARYY A ACTS CT TS

A Spanish SOJOURN

by Rasheeda Bhagat

A glorious sunset at San Antonio.

O

ne has to be exceptionally lucky to travel to an enchanting Mediterranean country like Spain half a dozen times … I’ve had that good fortune … visiting the olive growing regions of Spain for the first time in 2007, and then revisiting it on family holidays.

Add to this being hosted by Spanish Tourism not once, but twice, is great

70 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

luck indeed! Not only do you get the normal tourist’s induction into the country’s rich history, culture, great tourism spots, happening bars and pubs to hang out in, but also an insider’s perspective on what makes the Spanish people tick, how their economy is still struggling to come out of the 2008 recession and meeting people’s basic needs such as employment.

And … most of all, as you are not a tourist watching your depleting Euros all the time while looking at dining options, you get to taste the best of the Spanish cuisine in all its rich variety. On this trip, as the rice growing region of Valencia is famous for its Paella, a rice dish made with different kinds of meat, including sea food, and vegetables, we got a surfeit of Paella … a wide range from fine dining restaurants to a delicious one served up at the farmhouse of Huan Gorets, who grows rice in the reserved eco-forest of the Albufera lake, about 15 km from Valencia.

And other delicacies, particularly cured ham, along with the delicious Spanish cocktail … the famous Sangria, on offer were an unforgettable gastronomic delight.

While last year it was mostly the magic of Madrid — I had to try really hard to spot an ugly building in the areas we visited in the Spanish capital — either in 2007 or 2013, this September it was the beaches of the hip and happening Ibiza, the coastal city of Valencia and the historic town of Tarragona.

Taking up Ibiza first, this is an island of dreams, where Europe’s rich and famous love to hang out, we, a group of five Indian journalists, land in Valencia, on the eastern coast of Spain. After three days we take a luxurious three and a half hour ferry ride from the surprisingly plush Valencia Port, on the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, to this magic island. It is only 79 km off the Valencia coast in eastern Spain.

The third largest of the Balearic Islands, it is as famous for its spectacular beaches as the hippie movement in the late 1960s, considered a revolutionary and influential period in its history.

It is fascinating to learn why we find so many ‘Flower Power’ posters all over Ibiza … at the hippie market as well as all over the little town of San Antonio we visit, in search of

a glorious sunset from its famous snow-white beach strip, where the locals and tourists descend in the evenings. For some reason, San Antonio, with its beachside cafes, bars and restaurants is a hot favourite of young Brits who love to hang around here, downing beer, Sangria, wine or other cocktails.

A view of Ibiza.

Ibiza’s hippie history But the hippie movement first and why of all the places they descended on this little island. In the late 1960s, children from rich families, mostly in the US, who rebelled against the ‘materialistic and luxurious’ lifestyle of their parents in the post-World War II era, threw up their comfortable lifestyle at home and came to this island in the quest of free thought and speech.

They were attracted to Ibiza, because it already had numerous artists — painters, writers, musicians and even politicians, who had come here to escape the fascist period of General Franco which began in 1936.

The freedom to speak your mind, dress as you wished, and live a simple lifestyle, attracted these youngsters. Spanish composer Miguel Roig-Francolí was born here; other notable residents were the English punk musician John Simon Ritchie (Sid Vicious), Philiac, the psychedelic rock band, Hollywood comedian Terry-Thomas, director Orson Welles and the Hungarian master forger Elmyr de Hory.

As Ibiza evolved into a melting pot of free speech and diverse cultures, it was only a matter of time before tourists started coming here in droves. The balmy Mediterranean climate was of course a huge draw and gave an escape route to tourists who couldn’t stand harsh winters in Northern and Central Europe. Throw in Ibiza’s fascinating beaches and small wonder that in the late 1980s and through 90s, chartered flights started arriving and since then Ibiza has never looked back. This is also a

The new and the old: Belen (left) and a Spanish woman dressed in traditional costume.

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 71

Rice farms and eco systems

haven for the LGBT community and exclusive bars and pubs for them can be found all over the island.

Clubbing capital

Paella time: Huan Goret (left) helps the Chef to carry a huge Paella platter prepared for us at his farmhouse.

A

hugely enjoyable 40minute boat ride takes us to farmer Goret’s farm through the tranquil waters of the Albufera Lake. The Albufera natural park extends over 25,000 hectares, and has three eco systems, of which the lake’s spread is 3,000 hectares.

A fourth generation farmer, his farm extends over 200 hectares, producing 1,200 tons of rice, mainly of the round variety, and includes the Bomba, the premium rice used for Paella.

His cousin Belen, an astronomical engineer, helps him with technological inputs, and is a consultant to other farmers as well. She explains that in the 1970s and 80s, during the development boom in Spain, some territory from the Albufera Lake was also taken up for construction. But the Government stepped in and

72 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

stopped the encroachment on the lake.

She gives me a valuable insight into how the Government steps in to protect specialised agri-produce. As the Bomba and other rice grown in this region are premium brands and export commodity too, farmers here are not allowed to grow anything else in this area.

“Even if I can make more money from growing potatoes or other vegetables, I can’t do that,” says Goret. Hardly three percent of Spanish farmers grow rice on over 100 hectares of land and he is one of them. He exports rice to Europe particularly Switzerland and UK, as also Florida, which is a major customer.

So, is farming profitable business in Spain, I ask him.

“Not really; the cost of input and what we get from the sales balances out, but yes, we do get subsidies from the European Union so we can’t complain.”

Today it is considered one of the most happening places in Europe to party, listen to music and dance away your blues in its many nightclubs, Amnesia and Pacha being the most popular.

Small wonder then that Ibiza is considered one of the clubbing capitals of the world! At our newly opened, cheerful and fascinating hotel, The Hard Rock Hotel, the only one of this brand in Europe, there was live music to lift your spirits at various points but only till midnight.

Asked why and soon found that as the nightclubs of Ibiza spring to life only around 1 a.m. and the music and dance continues into the wee hours of the morning, the hotel had decided to gift its guests live music till midnight.

A sprawling property with over 490 rooms, two huge swimming pools and many private and plunge pools, depending on your room type, choose this hotel if your pocket allows it as it exudes a cheer and positive energy that is difficult to match.

Depending on the season, a room here can set you back by 200–500 Euros. And along with most of Ibiza, it shuts down for winter.

At nightclubs like Amnesia or Pacha, an entry ticket costs upward of 50 Euros, depending on the programme, and VIP sections are available too; no queuing up for entry at these amazingly crowded joints and no jostling for your drinks at the bar either. Beginning with 200 Euros for two, a VIP table can go above 1,000 Euros for a small group, with the drinks thrown in for free.

Historic Tarragona From Ibiza, we take a flight to Barcelona and after an unsatisfactory half a day — you can’t even soak in La Rambla in that time — we drive to

Tarragona, the historic town through which the Roman civilisation penetrated the Iberian Peninsula. As part of the second Punic War, in 218 B.C., Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio landed here and set up a garrison that over time would become the main Roman military base to provide a solid foundation for the Romans for 200 years.

In 2 nd century B.C., Tarragona city was set up with a great wall built around it. Originally 3,500 metres in length, today only 1,100 metres remain, defining the city’s old quarter. The most iconic portion of this is the imposing Archaeological Promenade, where several of the conserved monuments and remnants of an ancient past remain, fascinating tourists and historians alike.

Walking through the narrow lanes of the old town is a beautiful experience — enchanting shops, friendly locals, and above all, striking monuments and cathedrals, just around the corner. Tourists can use mechanised segways if they are good at cycling; I am not, and so gave it a pass. A tumble on the cobblestoned streets wasn’t exactly an attractive option!

One of the most imposing structures in Tarragona is what is known as the Imperil Cult Complex or simply ‘The Temple.’ In the second half of the 1 st century A.D., the city’s acropolis got a monumental status by the construction of a Provincial Forum and the Roman Circus. Built along two terraced squares and over a gigantic 7.5 hectares, this was the stuff of legend during Roman times.

Of course much of it is in ruins now, though there are constant attempts to recover and reclaim part of the town’s rich ancient history. A large hall here has been identified at the inner sanctuary of a magnificent temple of the Imperial Cult.

Tarragona’s Roman Circus, where imposing horse chariot races took place in an era gone by, is considered one of the best conserved in the western world.

The Amphitheatre in Tarragona.

Tourists enjoying balmy Mediterranean weather on the Dalt Vila ramparts in Ibiza.

Then there is the Amphitheatre, which was used for entertainment, fight of the gladiators, beasts and other public events. This was built around the turn of the 2nd century.

Even Ibiza has its own slice of history — the old town of Dalt Vila, with its imposing and defensive Renaissance walls which were built

for protection against attacks by Turks. This is a UNESCO heritage site, and juxtaposed against the blue waters of the Mediterranean where luxury yachts of the rich and famous are either docked or sailing away, it proves to visitors why Ibiza is called the land of contrasts!

Pictures by: Rasheeda Bhagat NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 73

FROM THE SHELVES

Rajesh Khanna: Lights

and loneliness

by Rasheeda Bhagat

Y

et another book has been hei — catapulted Rajesh Khanna published to tell us about into the “phenomenon” mode. the loneliness and dark patches of It was really his female fan folgloom that inhabit the world of most lowing that made Khanna a supercelebrities. Marilyn Monroe’s suicide star; star-struck young women mobbing him, leaving kiss marks on is the stuff of legend; the stunning his car, sending him letters written diva Madhubala — Bollywood is in blood, and heartbroken when he arguably yet to find a more beautiful married Dimple Kapadia. actress — was deeply unhappy, In 1972 came a low-budget trapped in a wrong marriage after her movie called Anand, produced by father played villain and prevented N.C. Sippy that cast Khanna in the her marriage to her heartthrob Dilip title role — that of a cancer-afflicted Kumar. dying hero. As Chintamani puts it, Now Gautam Chintamani, in his “Anand gave Khanna much more book Dark Star: The Loneliness of than mere commercial success or being Rajesh Khanna (HarperCollins critical acclaim. It bestowed upon Publishers India), tells us how the him his greatest and most endurfirst superstar of Hindi Cinema even ing on-screen character. But it contemplated suicide at one time in also brought him face-to-face with the early 1970s, but refrained from Amitabh Bachchan, the Bengali doing so as he didn’t want the world doctor who treats him. It was the to remember Rajesh Khanna thus.

Born Jatin Khanna in 1942 into Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India. legendary comedian Mehmood who advised Bachchan to make the most a family of railways contractors who Price: Rs.499 of Khanna’s death scene. He did just had moved from Lahore to Bombay that, and the actor who was written a few years before his birth, and adopted by his childless uncle Chunni Lal who spoilt him off before this film became the talk of the town. thoroughly, Jatin became Rajesh Khanna after winning the Filmfare-United Producers Combine talent hunt in 1965, Enter Amitabh Bachchan when he was a theatre artist.

Actually, says the author, Bachchan was so insignificant before Anand, that Khanna had not even bothered to find Aradhana’s stunning success out anything about his co-star, and snubbed him often.

After a few films in the mid-60s, his real break came with Zanjeer came in 1973 and despite being made by Khanna, Shakti Samantha’s Aradhana (1969) which left the entire the Salim-Javed duo never thought of casting him, and this, Hindi film industry shell shocked at its phenomenal success. says writer Salim Khan, was due to Khanna’s attitude. “He Interestingly, even while Aradhana was being made, Rajesh believed he was the reason why his films did well and never Khanna was acting with Asha Parekh in Kati Patang, where really appreciated the people who worked with him.” he was constantly “whining” about his being stuck in movies In Namak Haram, another super hit, Rajesh Khanna was with women-centric subjects. Apparently during the shoots, originally offered the role of the spoilt rich kid Vicky, but Asha Parekh, an established star, stayed in a far superior he chose the role of Somu, the poor worker who dies in the hotel than the one given to him! end. A wrong choice as Bachchan who played Vicky walked But Aradhana’s success changed all that. And R.D. away with all the acclaim when the film was released. And Burman’s music for Kati Patang and Kishore Kumar’s Khanna’s fall had started. soul stirring evergreen songs, combined with Rajesh Bachchan’s off-screen persona was so overpowering Khanna’s inimitable manner of delivering them — Yeh jo that anything he did was acceptable. And finally the Angry mohabbat hei; Yeh shaam mastani, and Pyar deewana hota Young Man of Indian cinema pulled the rug from under

74 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

the feet of the superstar. “Unlike Khanna whose stardom fuelled his persona, Bachchan’s aura fanned his stardom,” writes Chintamani.

The book walks us through Khanna’s high handedness, complexities and totally opposing facets of his personality, some of which led to his downfall from the high perch his fans had put him onto. Most of all, his insecurities hurt Rajesh Khanna; he constantly sought positive reinforcement from people around him. Salim Khan recalls how, after he had given an interview hailing Sanjeev Kumar as one of the brightest actors, Kaka summoned him to the Mehboob Studios and quizzed him on that interview. He demanded to know if Sanjeev Kumar was better than him. When Khan replied it depended on the role, it did not go down well with Khanna.

Confession In an interview given some 15 years later, Kaka recalled that the months between end 1973 and beginning 1974 were the loneliest of his life.

He had believed his success would last forever, so when his films began to fail, he didn’t take it as just a transitory phase. “His confidence plummeted further when people around him started to abandon him. This made him irritable and edgy. He said he had built a wall around him and never allowed anyone to help.

He didn’t trust people and distanced himself even from Dimple, (his wife), in whom he never confided anyway as he found her too young and inexperienced to handle such a crisis,” says the writer.

When Shammi Kapoor decided to direct Manoranjan (1974), (copied wholesale from the Hollywood blockbuster Irma la Douce) where Sanjeev Kapoor so delightfully played the naive cop, the role was first meant for Khanna. But while Shammi Kapoor was working with Abrar Alvi, a Guru Dutt favourite, Khanna insisted he give the script to Salim-Javed, and finally lost the role.

In her foreward, Sharmila Tagore, who had memorable hits with Khanna such as Aradhana, Amar Prem and Daag, gives a candid sketch of her co-star. Though extremely generous with his friends and sometimes even showering them with gifts such as a house, he expected too much in return.

“What affected me personally was his habit of coming late to work. I went to the studios at 8 a.m. and wanted to be back with my family by 8 p.m. But this was impossible since Kaka never arrived before 12 (noon) for a 9 a.m. shift.” As a

result she opted to work more with other actors even though their pairing was hugely successful.

Political journey An interesting journey Chintamani takes us through is related to how Rajiv Gandhi wooed Rajesh Khanna over to the Congress after his bosom pal Amitabh Bachchan suddenly decided to quit politics to clear his and his brother Ajithabh’s name in the Bofors scandal. A miffed Rajiv turned to Khanna and in the 1991 elections he contested as a Congress candidate against BJP’s L.K. Advani in New Delhi and came quite close to beating him. Rajiv was assassinated in Sriperambudur before a campaign meet, and with Advani quitting his New Delhi seat — he had contested from

With Sharmila Tagore in Amar Prem.

two constituencies — Khanna was pitted this time against Shatrughan Sinha and managed to win.

Unfortunately he continued to juggle his official duties as a Lok Sabha MP with acting in films and “the seven films he made during this period were so forgettable that even his die-hard fans would struggle to recall them.”

One of his most successful co-stars Sharmila Tagore touches the core of Kaka’s fall from dizzy heights when she writes: “Like his friendships Kaka didn’t nurture his stardom and allowed it to slip from his grasp. He failed to note that the audience was changing, and that the roles he had been doing were becoming less and less relevant. Kaka either couldn’t, or didn’t reinvent himself to remain contemporary, and so he almost became a caricature of himself and people began to mock him.”

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 75

Connect to Collaborate

DG Jagdish Patel addressing the conclave.

Section of the delegates.

A

CSR conclave was organised

by Rotary International District 3051 at Gujarat Chambers of Commerce & Industries, Ahmedabad on August 23, 2014. The meeting, hosted by RC Ahmedabad Airport, aimed at harnessing the prospects for possible CSR partnership with corporate organisations, further to the newly included provisions pertaining to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the Companies Act, 2013, 76 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

for it was a good opportunity for Rotary to get access to sizable corporate fund for various service projects.

Section 135 of the Act requires that corporate have to spend two percentage of the average net profit of the company in preceding 3 financial years on CSR activities. This amount is to be spent in the financial year (April to March) and it is estimated that approximately Rs 25,000 crore would be spent every year. With

such a substantial sum available for social causes, Rotary can strategically collaborate with corporates for CSR activities and Rotary projects.

The objectives of the conclave comprised of providing a connecting platform between Corporate and Rotary to successfully implement CSR projects in a sustainable way and showcase Rotary’s best image to the corporate world so they can consider Rotary as a preferred CSR partner.

The conclave was conceived in two parts — Corporate Delegates and Rotarian Delegates.

The corporate meeting had around 70 corporate delegates, including some Rotarians from the corporate world. DG Jagdish Patel welcomed the corporate guests. PDG Ashish Desai briefed them about the leading projects undertaken by Rotary in collaboration with corporate companies at national and international level; Rotary’s partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for polio eradication and about Global Grants and TRF. ARPIC PDG Ratnesh Kashyap presented various possible projects for CSR partnership and emphasised on establishing joint skill development centres under CSR. The CSR meet for Rotarians was underway in another hall at the Chamber office simultaneously which had a registration of 210 Rotarians from 45 clubs. Rotarians discussed the way ahead to collaborate with corporate organisations in executing meaningful community projects. Mr R.J. Joshipura, Vice President - Finance, Nirma Ltd., enlightened the Rotarians about the expectations from the CSR partners. Dr Bhushan Punani (IIMA alumni) from one of the leading NGOs of Gujarat, Blind People Association, shared their experience with corporate for CSR. He further offered his support for strategic planning for CSR. Panel discussions led by DGE Lalit Sharma witnessed active

involvement from Rotarians.

Valuable information was shared regarding successful execution of CSR projects. Emphasis was laid on the District to undertake various avenues of CSR to execute long term partnership. DG Patel laid out the further action plan for successful CSR partnership.

The meeting concluded with the following decisions: To organise a workshop for hands-on training on how to prepare the proposals for CSR partnership and other documentation required for successful sustainable CSR partnership with corporate; Rotary CSR Meet for sanitation projects at district level; the District will promote Rotary through a stall at the Corporate NGO Bridge Meet to be held at Ahmedabad; CEO Dinners to be hosted by Rotary to impress upon the CEOs to join hands with Rotary in CSR. It was also decided to make available a subscription of Rotary News to leading corporate houses so as to communicate Rotary activities and areas of focus to maximum number of companies falling under the CSR to ensure that we can influence their CSR policy. Rotary District websites should have a link for CSR partner kit to let them have an idea on Rotary’s work in the community.

An attractive booklet, ‘Connect to Collaborate,’ showcasing Rotary’s life-changing projects including its role in polio eradication and its focus on literacy was released at the occasion and distributed to the corporate delegates at the conclave.

It was a productive meet for both, corporate members and Rotarians.

Rakesh Shah, President, Gujarat Chambers of Commerce & Industries thus stated, “Our chamber of commerce and industries will extend fullfledged support to connect Rotary to corporate, to execute service projects with more impact.”

SOLUTION FOR THE LAST MONTH’S CROSSWORD

With inputs from RI District 3051 NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 77

FROM THE SHELVES

Innovative Innovation Mantras Innovation Sutra Author: PDG Rekha Shetty RI District 3230 Publishers: Penguin Group Contact: rekhashetty123@gmail.com Price: Rs.250

C

hange is the only aspect that never changes. Innovation should become a habit if one has to be consistently successful. From an individual’s perspective, innovation plays a significant role in making life interesting. We change our route to work; we learn new skills to gain competitive advantage. Innovation is important for an organisation’s survival and growth. Innovation is an important driver for economic growth and improvement of nations too. What is more important is, responsible innovation should be legitimate and not at the cost of other’s suffering.

Rekha Shetty, popularly referred to as ‘innovation guru,’ beautifully elaborates the various strategies of ethical innovation in her book, Innovation Sutra, unveiling ‘the secret to better business and better life,’ as the book’s tagline goes. She weaves these mantras through an

interesting story. The protagonist Dharam, a billionaire investment banker in Manhattan has everything going for him through adharmic practices, until one day the glassbubble bursts and he finds himself facing an arrest-threat from the FBI. He absconds to India accompanied by his friend Kunal, who makes a profession selling fake Indian antiques to Americans. The two embark on a Buddhist pilgrim trail that includes Lumbini, Kapilavastu, Bodhgaya, Kolkata, Varanasi, Sarnath, Rajgir, Nalanda, Vaishali, Kaushambi and Kushinagar. The timeless Buddhist teachings awaken them to the reality of principled living. They discover a new purpose to life and develop ideas for an ethical yet profitable business. The book ends with how an enlightened Dharam goes back home, intending to sell off his assets to clear his debts and start afresh, emulating the Buddhist principles.

The author has seamlessly integrated the Buddha’s preaching with the nuances of innovation, in the form of a narrative that would appeal to the readers while simultaneously provoking their thoughts to interesting innovation sutras or rule of functioning. The 200-page paperback is neatly packed with episodes from the life of the Buddha interwoven with wonderful practical ideas that would bring success to one’s life without compromise on conscience.

Rekha Shetty is an accomplished writer with six other equally stimulating books to her credit. She is committed to innovation and creativity in management. She is the founder of Mindspower and managing director of Farstar Distribution Network Ltd., a consulting firm working on innovation initiatives, happiness and worklife balance.

Jaishree

NOVEMBER 2014

ROTARY NEWS 79

Membership in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives As on October 1, 2014

RI RI Rotary No. of Women Rotaract Interact Zone District Clubs Rotarians Rotarians

5 5 4 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 6 6 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6

Tel.: 011 42250101 Fax: 011 42250191 80 ROTARY NEWS NOVEMBER 2014

2980 3000 3010 3020 3030 3040 3051 3052 3053 3060 3070 3080 3090 3100 3110 3120 3131 3132 3140 3150 3160 3170 3180 3190 3201 3202 3211 3212 3220 3230 3240 3250 3261 3262 3271 3272 3281 3282 3291 3292 Total

159 98 134 67 89 103 66 71 50 84 116 82 75 87 107 67 122 73 144 93 61 123 136 91 125 104 128 84 66 130 76 92 75 77 80 93 147 83 148 88 3,894

6,916 4,265 5,448 3,284 4,708 2,355 2,570 3,472 1,842 3,604 3,294 3,313 2,010 2,056 3,390 2,597 4,818 3,051 7,279 3,397 2,297 4,780 5,502 3,791 4,742 4,059 3,975 3,472 1,835 5,657 2,687 3,275 2,436 2,677 1,431 2,108 4,497 2,364 4,036 2,850 1,42,140

214 290 540 173 525 262 189 469 160 297 284 162 73 95 155 213 684 211 969 274 102 233 208 273 233 180 167 157 213 393 255 422 286 247 168 389 483 163 603 323 11,737

68 133 54 30 42 28 36 23 13 34 42 40 19 9 42 23 47 33 98 62 8 24 37 48 59 52 6 15 61 106 37 35 14 24 35 15 183 110 42 92 1,879

270 254 181 176 178 87 119 125 30 96 125 148 28 78 45 30 170 83 335 160 37 244 356 113 86 344 61 129 182 357 114 122 95 59 14 33 68 20 94 86 5,332

RCC

186 68 80 258 122 131 329 120 89 103 57 96 122 146 60 48 65 54 137 108 80 153 141 41 43 38 113 117 93 271 110 165 41 65 13 31 170 38 518 85 4,705

Source: RI South Asia Office

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Editor: Rasheeda Bhagat.

Leading industrialist Mr Krishnakumar B. Jindal was honoured as Arch Klumph Fellow for his contribution of USD 250,000 to TRF. He was felicitated

by DG Vivek Aranha and inducted as an honorary member of RC Poona, RI District 3131.

Sparsh Hospice run by RC Banjara Hills, RI District 3150, takes care of terminally ill cancer patients. To mark the ‘World Hospice Day’ on October 11, 2014, the US Consul General Michael Mullins, visited the hospice and launched the volunteer enrollment programme ‘Friends of Sparsh.’

Rtn Ravindra Ostwal of RC Malegaon Midtown, RI District 3030, was honoured with ‘Regional Service Award’ (South East Asia Region) for his services in eradicating polio.

REGISTRATION NO. TN/CCN/360/2012-2014 & WPP NO.68 REGISTERED WITH REGISTRAR OF NEWS PAPERS FOR INDIA 3880/57 ROTARY NEWS PUBLISHED ON 1ST OF EVERY MONTH