Happy New Year! Welcome Back!

It's our first meeting of the year and obviously a social one.  Always we ask people to talk about interesting things they may have done during the holidays.
We are also expecting some Danish visitors so not having a speaker is a great advantage.  Finance & Mining seem to be their interests.


District Governor's Visit
The District Governor and his wife, Martin and Christina Forsyth-Thompson, who are based in Swaziland, are visiting our part of the world from Thursday 24th January to Saturday 26th.  President Amina and some of the Board members will be meeting him on the Saturday morning but there is a dinner in the evening, 19,15 at the Randpark Golf Club for all Rotarians and partners at a cost of R150 per head.  Apparently Randpark Golf Club is actually near Cresta so it's not as far away as I thought!

If you would like to go please get in touch with Mike Vink at mike@aucklandlodge.co.za and he will submit the registration form plus the money.

Appeal
We received this email today:

Hi Peter

I got your details from Zaida Harneker

We are raising money for a hip operation for the photographer John Liebenberg. Is this something which Rotary could potentially support?

If yes, how would we go about it?

Regards

Jonathon

Jonathon Rees
Proof Communication Africa
+27 (0) 76 185 1827

jonathon@proofcommunication.com

Skype: jonathonrees

PO BOX 85067, Emmarentia, 2029, RSA

John Liebenberg

John Liebenberg is one of the outstanding photographers of Southern Africa. Portraits and landscape photography are the main motifs of his work, but his a photograph of the happening, the present moment. While working as a press photographer for The Namibian and Reuters, he openly disregarded the sensorship regulations in South Africa and showed the horrible face of the Apartheid regime of South Africa, as well as the face of the Apartheid regime’s wars in the neighbouring countries: Namibia and Angola. The photos he took appeared on the front pages of big western newspapers.

Between 1990 and 1996, working for Reuters Television, he covered Angola civil war systematically and with passion, without any pretension. Like he says, “I was shooting for television… and during the shoot or after, I would take a snapshot or two…”

John is the keeper of a huge archive, with documental and aesthetics value. It’s time to present his great pcitrues as artwork, composing all these fragments of memory with the artistic perspective.

Publications (selection): Namibia: Revue Noire. Paris; December 1994; “Anthology of African and Indian ocean Photography”. Revue Noire, 1999; Regards Croisés, with Pierrot Men, Yves Pitchen and Ricardo Rangel. French Ministére de la Coopération. 1996.
Exhibitions (selection): 
The eye of the elephant. Namibian arts association.1990;
Independence exibition, India Department Arts and Culture, Namibia, 1990;
The Johannesburg Art Gallery. Vita Awards Finalist, 1990;
Namibia: The red factory, Zurich – The Eye – Geneva, 1991;
Democracy you cannot eat, The State Archive Bremen, 1993;
Namibia of Today, Bamako, Dec 1994;
John Liebenberg Photo Exhibition. Goethe institute /Iwalewa- Haus Nairobi, June 2008;
Aufblicke’ The Iwalewa House Bayreuth for Basler Afrika Bibliographien Basel. November 8th, 2006 until December 22nd

The Board decided that we concentrated on child orientated things and we couldn't give a donation for this.  We have enough journalists in the Club who might want to donate something.  The hip replacement operation will cost R170 000 and it will enable John to continue to work.  Those who are interested can make a donation via Mike Vink.

Rotary Volunteers participate in National Immunization Day to help fight Polio pro res

11-Jan-2013

12 Rotary volunteers from Taiwan made a trip to Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India, to participate in the National Immunization Day (NID) to help vaccinate children against polio on November 4-5, 2012. During the first day of the NID, called the 'booth day', the volunteers visited several booths set up at fixed sites around a community to give two drops of vaccine to children. On the next day, the volunteers traveled throughout the selected communities across Meerut to visit each house in efforts to immunize any further children who may not have been immunized during the booth day.

Outreach centers keep Honduran youth off the street

By Susie Ma
Rotary News -- 2 January 2013
 

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Students use the computer lab at one of the outreach centers near Tegucigalpa, Honduras, supported by Rotary clubs in the city and the Rotarian Action Group for Population Growth and Sustainable Development. Photo courtesy of the Rotary Club of Tegucigalpa

Rotary International on Facebook

Rotarians from seven clubs in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa joined together to fund two outreach centers for young people in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.

The centers are thriving because of startup funding from Rotary clubs and additional support from Regional Youth Alliance, a project of USAID, and the nonprofit Save the Children.

They opened in 2009 in Buenas Nuevas and Villafranca, which have a combined population of 22,000. Rotarians chose these locations because they are some of the poorest areas in the city.

“These two neighborhoods are high-risk, where gangs and drug organizations work,” says Rotarian Guillermo Enrique Valle, who coordinated the project for the Rotary clubs of Tegucigalpa and the Rotary Action Group for Population Growth and Sustainable Development. “For young people, instead of going to school or learning vocational training, they are recruited into gangs and drugs -- it’s a vicious cycle which is hard to leave.”

Save the Children operates the centers, which are open to children and young adults ages 10 to 29. They aim to prevent violence and provide a safe atmosphere for youth to do their homework, play sports, and learn a skill. Tutoring and vocational training range from carpentry to electrical services to computer maintenance.

“A lot of them are already out of school; they have been left behind,” says Valle, past president of the Rotary Club of Tegucigalpa. “The idea is to help them out with jobs before they become delinquents and give them a possibility of a future.”

Rotarians chose Save the Children to run the centers, which have been so successful that Save the Children has opened two additional centers on its own.

Valle says Honduran Rotarians plan to support more centers. “The idea is to have one per club, and we have 29 clubs in Honduras,” he says.