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Cairns Mulgrave Rotary Club
Boxed Gift Pens
Available Now
$15.00 each.
Please see Secretary Mike if you would like one
PRESIDENTS
MESSAGE
No message this
week.
CHANGEOVER 2003
$65 per person Saturday July 5th
6.30
Champagne and nibbles on the platform at Cairns Central Station
6.45 Board the train for the Freshwater Connection with the Barrier
Reef Jazz Band
7.00 Arrive Freshwater Connection. Enjoy a beautiful 3-course dinner,
dancing and formalities
10.30 Board the train for Cairns Central Station Dance to the Barrier
Reef Jazz Band back to your car It's elegant, fun and different
Theme for the evening
CHICAGO
Please add you name and number of people who will be attending to
the next page
Please note all money has to be paid by Friday 27th June - as it
will be too difficult to collect the money on the platform of the
train!!
Rotary at a Glance
Down Under there are 1, 198 clubs and 36, 333
Rotarians in Australia and Papua New Guinea and 254 clubs and 10,
211 Rotarians in New Zealand and the Pacific nations.
My mother bakes
my chicken
But when I eat I cough
I wish that when she cooked it
She'd take the feathers off.
The Rotary Factor
A club known for backslapping lunches emerges
as a key ally in war on terror
By Mike Conklin
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Published November 28, 2001
It is an unlikely war that the U. S. has been fighting
against terrorism, what with the dropping of both bombs and food
on Afghanistan. It seems fitting, therefore, that one of our allies
in this improbable war is about as improbable a partner as you could
imagine, namely that bastion of business-minded boosterism, Rotary
International.
Yes, that Rotary. The same white bread, middle-America
institution that summons mental associations with George Babbit
and whose lapel-pin wearing members meet weekly for lunch and award
scholarships to local high school students.
As it happens, Rotary is one of the most popular
organizations within the territorial confines of Pakistan, where
it has 84 active chapters and more than 2,300 members (5 percent
of them women), some of whom are the country's most influential
opinion-makers.
Given that pivotal Muslim nation's status as our
new, best friend in the battle against Al Qaeda, it is no stretch
to assume that the Rotary connection between our two nations was
instrumental in helping to forge the important alliance. At least,
according to N.D. Tanwir, Rotary's district governor in Pakistan.
"We have had many group exchanges between our two
countries and the results have been very fruitful," explains Tanwir,
who is a retired colonel in the Pakistani army. "Those who've gone
[to the U.S.] from our country have been able to establish many
new friendships, helping us to find new financial partners to share
our projects. This has been most important."
Meanwhile, he adds, "The U.S. visitors here were
always happy to see that Pakistan was quite different from what
they had been reading or hearing. They also noticed our problems,
especially the influx of refugees, and have carried our message
to their home."
Ever since Sept. 11, the communications traffic
-- e-mails, faxes, telephone calls -- between Pakistan and Rotary
International headquarters in Evanston has been especially heavy,
according to Wen Huang, Rotary's public information specialist for
the Asia/Pacific region.
"Much of the early communication was whether we
were OK in the United States after the attack," Huang said. "Now,
it is more about how programs -- especially our polio immunization
initiative over there -- will be affected. I'm happy to say not
much has changed."
Massive immunization
Earlier this month, Pakistani Rotarians, plus other
volunteers, poured into Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan for three
days of immunizing the homeless against polio. This was the 96-year-old,
Chicago-born service group's second round of fighting against the
disease in these locations since the terrorist attacks against the
U.S.
"Afghanistan is one of the world's hot spots for
polio and, in fact, the areas where you find lingering diseases
like this also tend to be the world's most conflict-ridden countries,"
says Liza Barrie, chief spokesperson for UNICEF. "Rotary is one
of those organizations that goes on the ground, as we say. They
get as close as they can to the problem."
Abdul Khan, a Rotarian in Pakistan who oversaw the
latest polio initiative, says more than 5,000 fixed immunization
centers are being established by the organization. He says special
efforts have been made to greet Afghan refugees with relief as they
cross the border and are met by local Rotary members and other volunteers.
"The condition of the refugees is seriously alarming,"
Khan says. "We've also started working on providing other support
in these locations [particularly] the construction of shelters.
More long-range plans will be drawn up as the situation becomes
clearer."
Akhtar Alavi, a Karachi insurance executive who
was in Chicago earlier this year for a Rotary conference, adds:
"Rotarians in Pakistan are also providing blankets, food and other
provisions for the refugees from Afghanistan. This is nothing new
for us. It has been our concern since the Russians were in Afghanistan."
Doing good amid evil
Spread across the country from Islamabad to Rawalpindi,
Pakistani Rotarians have found themselves increasingly in the middle
of the tensions as they tackle the same do-gooder projects -- health
care, education, drug abuse -- that occupy club members elsewhere
in the world.
While none of this relief work is directly sanctioned
by the Pakistani government, it couldn't take place without the
cooperation of Pakistani officials. Moreover, it is almost entirely
a Pakistani production. Only a handful of U.S. Rotarians have been
on hand to assist since Sept. 11.
It's not for lack of trying, though. Late in September,
for example, Jim Lacy, a candy manufacturer and Rotary official
in Cooksville, Tenn., was to be in Karachi for a meeting with Pakistan's
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Lacy was going to make Musharraf
an honorary Rotarian for his previous support of the organization.
Change of plans
The plans had to be scrapped for reasons related
to the international situation. But while Lacy didn't get the chance
to stick the familiar Rotary pin on the general's uniform, he's
optimistic the ceremony will get re-scheduled. "We were hoping for
November, but, given the current circumstances, that isn't realistic,"
he says.
"I know Pakistan's health minister, but I'd never
met the president," he notes. "I believe he's pro-American. I know
he's pro-Rotary because he's helped us in the past with our polio
efforts. "It pains me no end to see those pictures of all the Afghan
refugees at the border checkpoints. I've stood at those same spots
myself on relief missions we've made and seen all the misery and
suffering. It's got to be worse now."
Dave Groner, a funeral director and Rotarian from
Kalamazoo, Mich., is still on -- as far as he knows, anyway -- to
lead 80 club members from the Midwest to Pakistan next February.
The group plans to meet with fellow Rotarians there, stay in their
homes, and discuss projects such as aiding the refugees.
Little more than a year ago, Groner helped host
an exchange that brought eight Pakistani students to stay in Michigan
homes. The visitors wanted mostly to improve their English skills,
but the stay proved meaningful for everyone involved, he says. "These
were people the hosts would never get the chance to associate with,"
he says.
"We learned our different religions were no factor.
I've received a lot of e-mails from my Moslem and Sikh friends in
Asia [who are] very concerned that we're all OK." Soon after the
Sept. 11 attacks, a special Web site was even established by Rotary
officials here to accommodate the 1.2 million members, scattered
among 162 nations, who were looking for updates from, or about,
their fellow Rotarians.
The site has been flooded with expressions of outrage
and shock over the World Trade Center and Pentagon violence as well
as the subsequent anthrax terrorism. Ed Futa, general secretary
for Rotary in the Evanston headquarters, says he feels that what's
happened since Sept. 11 underscores the "person-to-person" nature
of the service organization.
"Our desire is always what can we do, how can we
serve?" he says. "But not through any government or religion. In
fact, we go out of our way to avoid this."
Polio-free world is goal
Futa said Rotary's principal humanitarian focus
now is to make the world polio-free in time for the organization's
centennial year in 2005. More than 200 million people in South Asia,
including refugees from Afghanistan -- where an absence of Rotary
clubs is only one of many voids -- have been immunized. About 57
million of that total were Pakistanis.
"The disease doesn't know borders," Futa says.
Rotary will spend nearly $25 million this year on its Ambassadorial
international scholarships for college and high school youth --
the largest privately funded program for such grants in the world.
Sara Anson Vaux, director of the fellowship office for Northwestern
University, calls the organization "a major player" in scholarship
foundations, ranking alongside prestigious names such as Fulbright,
Carnegie, Luce, Marshall and Gates.
Scholarships are as likely to go to foreign students
to come to the U.S. to study as they are to Americans wishing to
study abroad. Sadako Ogata, UN high commissioner for refugees, is
a past recipient. Nancy Erbe, director for the Rotary Center for
International Studies at the University of California-Berkeley --
one of seven such centers funded by the organization on university
campuses -- says the current conflict clearly points out the need
for more dialogue among nations.
"When we dehumanize people, terror is more likely
to happen," Erbe says. "After Sept. 11, we started getting all kinds
of telephone calls from people asking what they could do. "People
need to develop and use networks that reach out to other countries,
especially at the community level," she adds.
"I met an 80-year-old Rotarian awhile back who's
in charge of 10 relief programs, including one in Indonesia. "We
tend to think conflicts have to be worked out at higher levels,
governmental or whatever, but sometimes effective solutions are
right under our noses in the community."
Vital stats
What: Rotary International, world's
first service club. Founded: 1905 in Chicago by attorney Paul Harris,
who wished to recapture, in a professional club, "the same friendly
spirit" he had felt in the small towns of his youth. Headquarters:
Evanston.
Membership: 1.2 million, which includes
approximately 90,000 women who were first accepted in 1989. There
are 30,000 clubs in more than 160 nations, including Cambodia, Kazakstan,
Pakistan, India, Australia, Russia, Malaysia, Philippines, Brazil,
Poland, Peru, Bangladesh, South Africa, Martinique, Turkey, Ukraine,
Lithuania, Montserrat, Mongolia, Iceland, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.
Noteworthy: Rotary
spends $26 million annually on its Ambassadorial college scholarship
program. It pledged in 1985 that it would celebrate its centennial
in 2005 by eradicating polio worldwide, a project that will see
the organization spending $500 million.
Copyright © 2001, Chicago Tribune
Trains & kids
A mother was working in the kitchen listening to
her 5 year old son playing with his new electric train in the living
room.
She heard the train stop and her son saying, "All
of you sons of bitches who want off, get the hell off now...cause
this is the last stop! And all of you sons of bitches who are getting
on, get your asses in the train...cause we're going down the tracks."
The horrified mother went in and told her son, "We
don't use that kind of language in this house. Now I want you to
go to your room and you are to stay there for TWO HOURS. When you
come out, you may play with your train...but I want you to use nice
language.
" Two hours later, the son came out of the bedroom
and resumed playing with his train. Soon the train stopped and the
mother heard her son say..."All passengers, please remember to take
all of your belongings with you. We thank you and hope your trip
was a pleasant one. We hope you will ride with us again soon."
She heard her little darling continue... "For those
of you just boarding, remember, there is no smoking in the train.
We hope you will have a pleasant and relaxing journey with us today."
As the mother began to smile, the child added, "For
those of you who are pissed off about the TWO HOUR delay, please
see the bitch in the kitchen...."
from Chris Winn
From the Sydney
Bacardi Festival
Possible
Rotary Function
7-Piece Multi Instrumental LATIN FIESTA BAND
Sizzling - High Energy - Infectious Check it out:
www.tigramuna.com.au
2002 - SYDNEY FESTIVAL - HEADLINER ACT
2001 - SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE
2001 - AUSTRALIAN WORLD MUSIC AWARD
2000 - LATIN PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD
1999 - WORLD MUSIC ALBUM OF THE YEAR AWARD
1998 - ARIA AWARD NOMINATION PARADISE PALMS
The Atrium Monday 16 June 03 @ 7.30pm $45 incl.
Glass of Champs & Food Platter
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL - close Friday 13 June Book &
Info:
ENCORE CONCERTS T. 4093 9018 Email: allegro@optusnet.com.au
** Mossman Saturday 1 & Yungaburra Sunday 15
Presented by ENCORE CONCERTS in association with
Musica Viva POB 1600 Cairns 4870
Tel 4093 9018 Email: allegro@optusnet.com.au
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