Recent Photographs

President's Message

Christmas Party

In it for the long term
Rotary Exchange Projects (REP).

Aral About Finished

PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

This Friday 28th November is the last week we pay $25 for lunch. It will be $20 every week from then on.

The fees are $200 if you pay in December and $220 if you pay after December.

The District YEP programme is looking for people to volunteer for the programme in the District for three years from 2004 to 2006. If anyone is interested in being involved in this Programme please contact Mr. Bill Barber, Administration Officer for the District. He has application forms and they have to be in by December 10th 2003.

As from the 1st of December the exchange rate for Rotary International is $1.40 AUD to the $1.00 USD.

Our guest speaker for this week is Denise Mitchell. Denise is talking to the club about Rotary Foundation.

Friday December 5th will be no meeting at the Hilton.

The Xmas function at Fettas on Friday evening will take the place of the lunchtime meeting.

President Robyn

Christmas Party

Saturday December 5th

‘Fetta’s’ Abbott Street Cairns

6 for 6.30pm
Great Food Great Fun Great Company!!!
Greek Buffet, Greek Wine, Zorba Dancing, Plate Smashing

Buffet is approx $30 per person.
Seats are limited – so please let me know numbers ASAP.

Sandy

In it for the long term

Service projects in South Africa create a lasting legacy for Youth Exchange students.

by Anthony G. Craine

Before Rotary Youth Exchange student Nathan Peto arrived in South Africa in 2001, the Mawila Primary School in Soweto didn't even have a functional library. "They had some books on one or two bookshelves," says Peto, whose exchange was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Brandon, Man., Canada (District 5550) in his hometown.

"They had outdated textbooks for high school and many other books that were in no particular order and had little relevance to learners of primary school age." Peto, along with other inbound Youth Exchange students staying throughout District 9300, cleaned up the book room, painted the walls, installed new shelves, and stocked them with books appropriate for the students at the school.

The books were catalogued in a computer database, and the library was made available to the public, not just the students at the school. The refurbished library opened with great fanfare. Members of the surrounding community came out to show their appreciation with dancing and singing. Government officials attended, along with Rotarians.

The exchange students, who came from all over the world, had succeeded in making a significant difference in the lives of the students, their families, the teachers, and the entire community. And even though Peto has been back in Brandon for nearly two years, he has the satisfaction of knowing that the goodwill he and the other students generated continues to this day.

The Mawila Primary School library renovation was not simply an isolated service project carried out by foreign visitors who would soon return to their home countries; it was the first project undertaken by an ambitious District 9300 initiative known as Rotary Exchange Projects (REP).

REP was organized in 2001 by John Egan, a member of the Rotary Club of Midrand, South Africa, who served on the District 9300 Long-Term Youth Exchange Committee. The program began when Egan gathered that year's inbound Youth Exchange students at the district conference and asked if they would be interested in working on service projects.

Interested students were taken on a tour of possible project sites and asked which ones they wanted to be involved with. "I was reluctant to start with the library, as I thought it would be too big, but the students thought otherwise," Egan recalls with pride.

Through REP, Egan hoped to engage students in a new way. Because of the manner in which the South African school calendar is set up, Youth Exchange students from other countries often find they must enroll in classes a grade lower than those they would attend back home.

REP can provide the analytical and problem-solving activities needed to keep such students intellectually engaged and enthused. REP work requires some time off from school, and the students must have the approval of their host club, host parents, and the school before they can participate.

"I've tried to make every project a bit educational for the students," Egan says, adding that the goal is to have each student participate in the spectrum of activities associated with a project, rather than focus on one particular task or role. "These young men and women are very talented," he says.

One of the challenges of REP is maintaining continuity while giving the current participants a sense of ownership. Egan says this is accomplished in several ways. First, REP is run by the students themselves. Students serve six-month terms on the REP committee, and officers complete their terms three months before they leave the country, which allows them to share their wisdom with their successors.

Similarly, the new students don't feel like interlopers intruding on someone else's effort. "The existing students must take care to not describe the projects as theirs," Egan says. "We try to begin a project with new students involved at the start. So far, it has worked."

Egan says the continuity of the effort will be tested by REP's recently initiated Rotary Centennial project, which is a business plan aimed at helping participants in selected AIDS-support groups establish small-scale farming and craft-making operations as a sustainable income source and a means to improve nutrition.

"REP will have its hands full looking for support," he says of the challenge the students face in locating the resources to make the centennial project a reality. But the group will certainly be prepared. Peto, who served as vice chairman of the REP committee during his stay in South Africa, says promotion always has been a major priority.

"We wanted to make sure that these projects got all of the resources we needed to make them very worthwhile for the community," he says of the activities undertaken during his exchange year. "We spent hours preparing speeches and writing letters to get funding and equipment we needed to complete these projects."

Students also garnered support from their host clubs. Peto notes that most of the materials used to renovate the Mawila Primary School library - including paint, shelving, and books - came from Rotarian sources.

After the library project, REP located another room at the school and turned it into a media center. The REP students convinced a major company to donate computer equipment, while Rotarians donated paint and other supplies. REP students again provided the elbow grease by cleaning and painting the room. Then they loaded software onto the 15 new computers and taught the teachers how to use the computers.

Subsequent projects included the renovation of a day-care facility at an AIDS center in Soweto. After the room was painted and cleaned and the leaky roof repaired, REP held a drive to stock the center with new toys for the children.

The students also helped a wildlife-protection operation called Free Me, and the variety of tasks completed shows just how talented and versatile the students are. After helping Free Me put together its own promotional presentation program, REP installed two computers in the group's office to allow for case monitoring and data recording.

Finally, the students worked on the grounds at Free Me headquarters to rid the area of non-native plant species. "Each project had its own tasks, but painting and cleaning, along with organizing all of the exchange students, were definitely big ones," Peto says. "The work overall was not labor-intensive, but many hands made lighter work for all of us.

Each student gave his or her all to make sure the projects were big successes." Peto, now in his second year at Brandon University, continues to serve. The former Rotary Youth Leadership Awards participant still promotes RYLA for the Brandon club. He also helps with the orientation of inbound Youth Exchange students in District 5550 and speaks about his South Africa experiences to help promote Youth Exchange.

And he can often be found lending a hand to local Rotary club service projects. He credits Youth Exchange and REP with helping him to see a part of the world he would never have experienced otherwise.

"The people in these areas were extremely friendly and welcoming and showed me interesting things about the many different cultures of South Africa," Peto says. "And REP allowed me to give something back to the country whose people took me in, treated me so very well, and taught me so much." Anthony G. Craine is senior editor of The Rotarian.

Aral About Finished

Kazakhstan has embarked on a drastic extinction aversion plan of its own: a giant dam to stop the swiftly shrinking Aral sea from vanishing altogether.

The Aral has lost more than 90 per cent of its volume in just four decades, separating into two distinct sections. The Kazakh plan involves separating the two halves with a 12.7 km dam that will complete the barrier formed by an island exposed by the plummeting water level.

Unfortunately, this involves sacrificing the southern half of what was once - before irrigation and disastrous Soviet agricultural policies took their toll - the world's fourth largest inland sea.

The shoreline has receded by up to 250 km in some parts, but the Kazakh Government is hoping that when the dam is complete in four years time, water levels in the northern half will be raised by 42 m.