Jessica, the Brag & a School in Afghanistan.

Jessica Anderson, Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, came to talk to us about displaced people in Northern Uganda and her research and work with them.  It was an interesting talk on a topic that is relatively unknown, the 2004 Barlonyo Massacre by the Lord's Liberation Army.

Many thanks, Jessica, for talking to us.  By the time you read this she will have left South Africa for home in the USA and then back to Uganda.

One of the first things we do at Club meetings is head for the coffee before the meeting has even started.  As this week's meeting is a Business Meeting I suggest that you have two cups instead of your normal one just to speed things up a bit.

The Brag is such an important part of our meeting and raises more money that fining members ever would. Here's Sue Peiser soliciting cash from willing members!

Congratulations, Allan Beuthin, on a very successful Membership Meeting last Friday.  We'll put the photos and a write up on the blog next week.

Reading, Writing, Building.

In August 2008, the Canadian International Development Agency contacted Past RI President Wilfrid J. Wilkinson to invite Rotary to participate in the Afghanistan Challenge, a partnership between the Canadian government and several service organizations to help rebuild Afghanistan. Twenty-three district governors accepted, and the Canadian Rotary Centennial Afghanistan Challenge was born.

Wilkinson and 2008-09 RI Vice President Monty J. Audenart, who helped rally the support of district leaders, approached Past District Governor David T. Robinson for ideas. At the time, Robinson was president of the Canadian Rotary Collaboration for International Development (CRCID), a supplemental funding source for Canadian Rotary club projects and programs. 

Robinson knew what to do – build a school – and who to go to: Past District Governor Stephen R. Brown, of the Rotary Club of La Jolla Golden Triangle, Calif., USA.

Robinson had met Brown – who is now a Rotary Foundation trustee along with Wilkinson – several years earlier and knew of his efforts with fellow club member Fary Moini to build a school and other educational facilities in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province. With the generosity of Rotarians across Canada, Brown’s contacts in Afghanistan, and Robinson’s experience at CRCID, it took little time for the project – a 20-classroom school in Jalalabad – to take shape.

The Rotary Club of Calgary Heritage Park, Alta., took the lead on working with CRCID, and the Rotary Club of Winnipeg coordinated donations. Four of the 23 participating districts contributed money from their District Designated Fund toward a Foundation Matching Grant with the Rotary Club of Jalalabad to purchase school furnishings, including desks and computers.

“The Matching Grant application came at a time when funds were severely limited at the Foundation due to the economic downturn,” Audenart says. “The Foundation should be recognized for being a valuable partner in this centennial project.”

In all, the districts raised over $250,000, which the Canadian International Development Agency matched by contributing $238,777. Construction on the school, Nasrat II, began in January with the full approval and cooperation of Afghan officials. Heading up the building process is Mohammad Ishaq Niazmand, who served as charter president of the Jalalabad club.

“Through the assistance of Rotary in Canada, the school will accommodate 4,000 students,” says Niazmand. More than two-thirds of them will be girls, which signifies a dramatic shift in access to, and attitudes about, education for females in Afghanistan. Less than a decade ago, fewer than one million Afghan children were enrolled in school, and nearly all were boys. Today, nearly six million students are enrolled, and more than a third are girls.

Nasrat II follows the design plan of another facility built by Niazmand and his team. Niazmand calls it “one more ring in a chain of assistance” that has enabled Rotary to “win the hearts and minds” of the people of Jalalabad and Nangarhar Province. “Education is fundamental for change in this war-ravaged country and will greatly contribute to changing a culture of war to a culture of peace,” he says. 

Robinson concurs: “There is evidence in other countries, in particular Bangladesh, that once women are educated, there is a virtual spiral of development, jobs, lower birth rates, education, and stability. Literacy is something that is so critical in making the world a better place. You can solve a lot of issues if people are literate.”

Robinson is optimistic about the opportunities for global communication and the exchange of goodwill that the school’s computer lab and Internet connectivity will present. Throughout the 2010-11 school year, CRCID is helping to implement a public engagement program to inform all of Canada’s Interact clubs and 3,500 high schools about Nasrat II. The effort, modelled on a successful online network of students in the San Diego area and at the Jalalabad school that La Jolla Rotarians helped build, aims to create a formal online relationship between Nasrat II and Canadian students.

The public engagement website, www.afghanistanschool.ca, features a 3-D model of Nasrat II, which allows users who wish to sponsor a student to create an avatar of an Afghan boy or girl to place in the virtual school. The website also shows the latest project metrics, such as the number of contributions received, and helps students create a fundraiser to support the school. Users can also track the site’s progress toward a Guinness World Record: one million online guest book signatures.

Morgan Shortt, CRCID program officer and gender specialist, says the goal of the public engagement program is to connect with up to 40,000 Canadian students through in-person presentations by Rotarians from the community. A contest challenges the students to develop a creative work about Afghanistan, such as a song, poem, essay, or video, based on research they’ve conducted. The focus, Shortt says, is to educate young people about cultural differences and the international development work undertaken by Rotary and Canada.

Brown predicts that the construction of Nasrat II could affect thousands of people in Afghanistan. “It will have a ripple effect on the families and friends of those directly involved. There’s a substantial intangible benefit,” he says. “It enables the Afghans to understand that they have a friend in Canada.”

Adds Robinson: “This is much more than simply building a school. It’s doing our part to help rebuild a country by creating a beacon of literacy in an area of the world that desperately needs it. As Rotarians, it’s about making a statement of who we are and what we stand for as we celebrate 100 years of Rotary in Canada.”

If music be the food of love, Give me excess of it......Jessica Anderson, Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar.

Cameron Upchurch, our speaker last week, gave us a very interesting talk on an unusual topic - a Career in Church Music.  he spoke on the educational aspects of church music, the discipline involved by the choir and surprised us with the level of excellence and dedication of the young people involved.  He spoke of the long-term benefits to the participants and played us St Henry's Marist Brothers Schola Cantorum in Durban singing plainsong in Latin and St John's College Choir singing Renaissance polyphony in Latin where he is currently the full-time organist.  He said that his position as Director of Music at Holy Trinity, Braamfontein was particularly rewarding as the Jesuits who ran the parish gave great support  to music and that at the latest auditions for the Schola Cantorum that consists of 8 black and 2 white young men and women, 50 people turned up for the audition.  Don Lindsay, in thanking our speaker, confirmed that his involvement in Sacred Music as a chorister had given him an abiding love for choral music.  As none of us have heard him actually sing we couldn't comment!

 Here are some of our members at the last meeting.  What are they thinking about?

Allan Beuthin & Sue Peiser announced there impending marriage last week.  Naturally a wedding present comes to mind and with the Club's approval the Board has come up with the idea of presenting them with the painting that Paul Kasango & Peter Rolfe are proudly standing in front of.  Its presence has loomed large in many photographs of Club Meetings and knowing their home as we do we are sure it will be prominently displayed with great pride for many years to come.

Our speaker this week is  Jessica Anderson.  She has conducted field research pertaining to issues of conflict, violence and transitional justice in Ghana, South Africa, and Uganda.  She is currently a Startingbloc fellow and Rotary International Scholar.  She is also wrapping up a short film on gun violence in urban America with another Tufts alum.  Her bachelor degree is in International Relations from Tufts University. 


She is currently doing a Masters at Wits in the popular Forced Migration Studies Programme where she is a researcher.  She is also a Director of Collaborative Transitions Africa and she will be talking to us on The Northern Uganda Remembrance Programme. 


The Barlonyo Remembrance Book 

The Barlonyo Project is about individual, family and community remembrance of one of the largest and most “forgotten” massacres of the Civil War in Northern Uganda. CTA, in collaboration with local cultural leaders (The Lango Cultural Foundation, “LCF”) and the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) are creating a photo memory book that tells the story of the Barlonyo community, commemorates survivors’ and victims’ experiences, and contributes to collective memory and truth-building in a community in which truth is highly contentious and uncertain.

Background and Project Description

In less than three hours on 21 February 2004, over 300 people in the Barlonyo Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp were brutally murdered by the rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army. Today in Barlonyo, there is a cement covered mass grave along with a memorial built by the Government of Uganda. The memorial only testifies to the death of 121 individuals, but more than 300 were killed1.

The Barlonyo massacre represents over 300 lives that have remained unaddressed and largely ignored by formal remembrance processes. The community lacks a collective memory of the massacre. In order to recover from mass violence, communities need an agreed-upon “truth” as a point to begin healing the trauma. LCF thus approached CTA hoping to find an alternative way to memorialize the massacre and contribute to the community’s process of establishing collective memory.

This Remembrance Book is way to transmit this valuable information to survivors, in addition to supporting personal remembrance processes. The book is mainly comprised of photographs, which is important because a large portion of the Barlonyo community is illiterate. There is also a map depicting the massacre, a detailed timeline of the massacre with several narratives, photographs showing how the community has developed since the massacre, a section to address the current needs of the community, and a final tribute to the victims. The Justice and Reconciliation Project based in Gulu, Uganda, carried out an in-depth documentation of the massacre prior to CTA’s work, which was they shared with CTA to design the memory book. The memory book will be in Luo, the local language, and will be mass distributed to all community members at a major community memorial event.



“It is becoming so that they cannot remember . . . We need to remember the massacre and to give it to our children so that they can remember our beloved ancestors.”
—A Survivor of the Barlonyo Massacre

Ambassadorial Scholarships, The Rotary Foundation's oldest and best-known program, was founded in 1947. Since then, more than 40,000 men and women from about 100 nations have studied abroad under its auspices. Today it is one of the world's largest privately funded international scholarships programs. Nearly 700 scholarships were awarded for study in 2009-10. Through grants totaling approximately US$16.2 million, recipients from about 70 countries studied in more than 80 nations.

"The Rotary Foundation does some terrific things, not the least of which is the Ambassadorial Scholarships program." — Michael R. Whiteman, international programs director, University of Idaho

The purpose of the Ambassadorial Scholarships program is to further international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries and geographical areas. The program sponsors academic year scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students as well as for qualified professionals pursuing vocational studies. While abroad, scholars serve as goodwill ambassadors to the host country and give presentations about their homelands to Rotary clubs and other groups. Upon returning home, scholars share with Rotarians and others the experiences that led to a greater understanding of their host country.

Generous contributions from Rotarians worldwide represent a continued faith that today’s Ambassadorial Scholars will be tomorrow's community and world leaders. 

Congratulations Allan & Sue!

The Event of the Week!  Why did Cap Classique suddenly appear on our tables at last week's meeting?
Allan Beuthin & Sue Peiser announced that they are getting married!  Congratulations from all of us!

Maybe we could persuade some other member to celebrate something...bubbly goes down well with Breakfast on a Wednesday morning.

Mike Vink's talk on tabloid journalism was great fun though I am sure he took it a lot more seriously when he was editing a tabloid!

I included this picture of his favourite headline just to remind us that the  event was fictitious and the accompanying article was written by the editor of The Sun, Max Clifford.  As Mike worked with him in London it certainly means that we will view him in a new light!  My favourite headline from the ones Mike showed was the photo of Eric Cantona kicking the Crystal Palace fan Matthew Simmonds, "The Sh-t hits the Fan".  Simmonds turned out to be the real sh-t!

Our speaker this week is Cameron Upchurch of St John's College where he is the full-time organist.  He is also Director of Music at Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Braamfontein.  Here he is coming to grips with an organ in Taipei during the St John's College Choir's Tour of Taiwan.
He is currently completing a PhD in Liturgical Music and he will be talking on "A Career in Church Music" something I would have thought was not possible in South Africa!



My thanks to Mark Cresswell for photographing this lavatory-shaped Spiralling Collecting Box at Melbourne Airport.  A clever way of collecting all those Australian coins you don't want to take home.

 RYLA friends put their skills to good use

Two students who met at a district Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) event used their friendship and talents to help travelers stranded by the volcanic eruption in Iceland in April.

Måns Gårdfeldt and Jonas Larsson became friends at the District 2340 (Sweden) RYLA in 2008. After ash from the volcano grounded more than 100,000 flights and disrupted travel for millions of passengers, the two alumni collaborated to create a website that offered volcano-related news, car shares, and housing.

"The biggest problem seemed to be the lack of organization from airlines, governments, and transportation companies," says Gårdfeldt, explaining that he and Larsson were moved by stories of distraught travelers. "People were paying extremely expensive taxi trips, and some had no way to get home at all."

The website featured discussion threads for people looking to share rides to destinations across Europe, with ride offers at a variety of prices, says Gårdfeldt.

Word spread quickly. Their website drew 1,500 visitors an hour the first day. After five days, the site registered more than 40,000 visitors and received about 170,000 page views, according to Larsson, a computer programming student.

"We knew it could be something very big if we did it right," says Larsson. "We used Facebook and Twitter to market the website. It was an overnight success."

Their site was mentioned in several newspapers and received radio and TV exposure.

"We had reporters call at every hour of the night, which of course was thrilling," says Gårdfeldt. "It felt really good to succeed and see people use our site."

"Knowing that there were thousands of desperate people out there needing help, it was a wonderful feeling to see them come to our website," says Larsson. "Seeing the connections made by visitors fueled Måns and me to work day in and day out that week."

Because site visitors mainly posted their e-mail or telephone numbers to connect, Gårdfeldt and Larsson don't know exactly how many people they helped, Gårdfeldt says. However, they received confirmation from several people that the site helped them get home.

"We had about 1,000 posts, so we know there were a lot of people who came to the site and organized their travels together," Gårdfeldt says.

Rotarians in their district also noticed their success and brought the two RYLArians to Montréal, Québec, Canada, to share their story with participants at the 2010 International RYLA in June.

Welcome Calvin, Mike Vink on the Tabloids and Polio Plus in Afghanistan

Welcome Calvin Meter as a member of our Club.  Here he is being duly inducted by President Graham.  As you can see he fell asleep briefly during the reading of the Charge but managed to wake up in time to laugh at Graham's joke.  It's great having you as a member, Calvin, not least because you have the unusual classification, Literature!

Last week was business meeting and went very well so here are additional pictures of members making points!  I can only speak personally but I really felt that the Club is making progress last week.


Unfortunately Gidon Jude, our member and speaker for this week, mixed his dates up and will be in Israel at his brother's wedding. I attempted to persuade him where his true loyalty lay but unsuccessfully.  he is only away for a very short time and will be at our meeting next week.

I am trying to keep this 2nd Wednesday for speakers from our Club on topics of their choice.  Mike Vink will be speaking on the Terrible Tabloids as he used to be the editor of one of the more notorious!  Here he is in the foreground looking particularly editorial and ready to spike any copy that comes his way.


Afghan students raise awareness for polio eradication

Afghan students from several high schools fanned out across Jalalabad in September, raising money and awareness for efforts to eradicate polio from their country.

The students were all participants in the Global Connections and Exchange Program, a project of the Rotary Club of La Jolla Golden Triangle, California, USA, which administer Internet training labs in six high schools as well as a central training facility in Jalalabad. The effort is funded by a grant from the U.S. State Department as part of a larger initiative to promote technology, curriculum development, and international collaboration.

 Members of the College of Education Training team share their polio eradication campaign with a business owner in Jalalabad.

On 21 September, Abdul Qaum Almas, a member of the Rotary Club of Jalalabad and director of the program, and La Jolla Golden Triangle club member Fary Moini organized a workshop on the importance of polio eradication, attended by the students and community members.

Ajmal Pardis, the regional director of public health, made presentations with his staff, while a few of the students put on a play they had prepared about a young person who became crippled because his parents would not allow him to receive the polio vaccine.

The students left the workshop fired up to design their own fundraising drives, and spent two days visiting schools, businesses, homes, and government and political offices. White T-shirts identified them as participants in the Global Connections and Exchange Program and featured the words "Let's Kick Polio from Afghanistan."

First of its kind

Each team put together a slideshow on their campaigns and returned to the central training facility to share the results. Moini said the team from the College of Education Training lab, led by trainer Sahar Sohrab and team leader Ulfat Kazemi, won top honors for having collected the most.

"All the schools did a great job," she said. "I am extremely proud of them. They are the source of my inspiration and my strength."

Rotary Foundation Trustee Stephen R. Brown, a member of the La Jolla Golden Triangle club, said the students’ eagerness in spreading the word about polio was more significant than the AFA25,000 (US$550) raised. "These kids were armed with information, and they jumped on the opportunity to go out and talk to people about what polio is, and how two drops of vaccine can save lives."

"This activity was the first of its kind in Afghanistan, with students fundraising to save others from polio and tell the Afghan public how to assist in this important cause," Almas added.

Several months earlier, the La Jolla Golden Triangle club gave seed money to the Internet labs to help the students develop service projects in their communities. The students fixed local wells, repaired classroom equipment, and undertook landscaping projects. Brown said natural leaders emerged from the process, which helped the students when it came time to form teams for the polio drive.

He said the program is about much more than just Internet training for the students. "It has become its own unofficial trademark. They are all very proud of being in the program and its community outreach."

Several student leaders have begun taking steps to form an Interact club, Brown said.

The 5th Wednesday Social Event.

It was a delightful evening Chez Donet for our 5th Thursday evening.  Many thanks to President Graham and Joan Donet for opening their home and garden to us.  As usual Jenine blazed away with her camera and here is the result.  Everyone is clutching a glass of wine...how civilised we are!

This week is a Business Meeting.  The Board Meeting on Monday will be quite an important one so the report back for the Club's approval will be particularly interesting.  Don't forget the Board runs the Club in accordance with the Club's wishes so any Rotarian can attend a Board Meeting if they want to and the Board has to abide by the Club's decisions.  We all pay Club Dues...no taxation without representation!

Dear Professor Blumberg

MES/IMPILO staff would like to thank the Rotary Club for the donation of medication.

Thank you received for medication for Hospice organised by Lucille......thanks Lucille!

On the Video Bar, Flamenco.  We seemed to talk a lot about Spain this week!

To help curb vandalism during Halloween, police asked the Rotary Club of Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada, to organize a party for area youth.

The project was a success. Prizes were announced every hour, with the caveat that attendees had to be present to claim them. Police reported minimal vandalism over the Halloween weekend.

Meanwhile, Rotarians in Port Macquarie, Australia, completed a community needs assessment before establishing a public station where elderly and disabled people could recharge their mobility vehicles.

Every community has different needs. Often, clubs members can agree on which needs to address, but sometimes reaching a decision is difficult. What is the best way for your club to work toward a consensus on a suitable project?