The inspiring story of World Vision's partnerships with Rotary.
Meeting Notes of the February 14, 2018 meeting of
The Rotary Club of Clover Park
Notes recorded by David Cotant, edited by Tom McClellan
12:30 pm Call to Oder by President Brian Christensen. Invocation: Riley Wyatt. Pledge of Allegiance: Dave Hall
There were no visiting Rotarians. Fred Willis introduced his wife Ingrid Willis.
Sunshine Report:
Alice Peeples – All are healthy. A further report from Tom McClellan, reading an email from George Lin, they are all safe and no particular problem after the earthquake.
Late arrivals: Ellie Carr and children
Upcoming Speakers
Feb. 21: John C Matthews, Rotary International Director of Zones 25 and 26
Feb. 28: Leanne Noren, of Pierce County Project Access
Mar. 7: Georgia Lomax, about Pierce County Library’s Strategic Plan
Announcements:
John Munn: Lakewood Playhouse Opening of the new season. Fund Raiser Saturday Feb. 17th, 6:00 pm. Many great Auction Items and Lots of Fun. Come support the playhouse and help with the new sound system. Tickets available at www.lakewoodplayhouse.org.
Riley Wyatt: Friends of Scouting, Wednesday, March 7th, 7:00 am. Riley has a competition for which Scouting Rotarians has the most from his club. Attend if you can and support Riley and the scouts. http://www.pacificharbors.org/master-events-page/2018/3/7/2018-friends-of-scouting-breakfast
Ellie Carr: Tyee Park Elementary School will hold a Reading Night and Spaghetti Feed, March 1 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. This is a full club event to sponsor the Spaghetti Feed. The food is being donated by restaurant supply company Sysco. Everyone plan to be there to help. Ellie asks that volunteer servers arrive at 5 PM. Bring your Rotary aprons, and if you don’t have one yet, check with David Cotant. He has some logo-emblazoned aprons available for $10.
Board Meeting: This Friday, February 16, 2018 7:30 am, Carr’s Restaurant
Fun and Fines, with General Ed assisted by Riley Wyatt
John Munn: Advertising the Lakewood Playhouse event, $10
Riley Wyatt: Advertising the Friends of Scouting breakfast, $10
Joy Taylor: Robotics Team is at the Lakewood Town Center, the building adjacent to Burlington Coat Factory. Stop by to see the robots work. Robotics team continued: February 24th – Event at Bellarmine – Students to tell of recent activities. $15.
Ellie Carr: $2.00 late fee
Jeannie Hill: Happy Birthday. Riley led the signing, which slowly came together.
Dave Hall: Successful resolution of 2-year fight with IRS for tax overcharges. $2,000 in tax refund. Fine: 1% + $5 = $25, on a Wachter.
Georgene Mellom: Raffle tickets auctioned off; Charlie bought for $5, then retuned tickets to Georgene since they had been grade school buddies. See Raffle at end of meeting.
Georgene is also back from 10 nights in Hawaii. At $5/night, that should be $50, but Georgene only could scrape together $49, so she offered up a box of chocolates with macadamia nuts in lieu of the final dollar. The chocolates were auctioned off to Randy Black for $15.
Fred Willis: Article in the Suburban Times re. “Education starts at Home – Parenting” A very good, well written article, which you can read at https://thesubtimes.com/2018/02/13/on-partnering-schools-and-the-community/. Fred paid $10.
This Week's Speaker:
Cathy Saunders – World Vision
World Vision (WV) started in 1950 by Army Chaplain and war photographer Bob Pierce, from Federal Way, WA. He started by helping a girl with the $5.00 in his pocket. This Chinese girl had heard him talk about Christ, and came home to tell her family what she had heard. Religion / Christianity was against the law at that time, so the parents beat the child and sent her to an orphanage. The orphanage director told Bob Pierce that she was his responsibility. He gave what he had, and said he would be back.
Currently WV has more than 67,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Since 1998 Rich Stearns has been president of WV and has provided strong leadership.
The Partnership of World Vision and Rotary International is powerful and working well. The goals of World Vision are: Water, Health, Food, Education, Economic Development and Peace. These match very well with the goals of Rotary International.
World Vision is in more than 100 countries, and Rotary is in 170 countries. Both organizations use local people to run the projects, and when World Vision workers come together with local Rotary Club members, it is usually a reunion of friends. 95% of WV workers are working in their home areas.
Both organizations target Clean Water as a major effort. More than a 1,000 children die daily from polluted water. This number is down from more than 3,000 only a few years ago because of the worldwide efforts to provide clean drinking water. Girls usually do the work of fetching water each day. At one site where Kathy visited on a water project, they averaged 6 km each way to carry water for the daily needs, and often the water is still not clean. Because girls spend so much time carrying water, they don’t have time for school or to learn a good job. Thus they are not able to help provide a good living for their families later. Making clean water available solves a multitude of problems in a community. Diseases, i.e. polio and hearing loss are but a few of the problems of polluted water. Relieving children, particularly girls, from the time consuming daily treks, allows them to go to school, and to learn life skills.
Common Goals of WV and Rotary are to end the Water Crisis by 2030. Matching Funds between Rotary and World Vision helps to provide:
- Water Availability, Water Sanitization, and Hygiene to prevent pollution.
- Micro Financing for local projects, and
- Maternal and Child Health for 1000 days after birth.
The Gates Foundation provides grants to both Rotary and World Vision, and they work together on many of these grants.
A Water Project example: 1000 volunteers dug 87 miles of ditch and laid pipe. Two Tanks, each 40,000 gallons, collect and store water for both the village drinking and cooking, as well as irrigation for farming. The effort was lead by WV, but local people are trained to do the work, install the equipment and to maintain the system so that when WV leaves, the community can continue to take care of it..
Water Projects have had a history of lasting approximately 5 years, and then go out of use do to failure or damage, and no one in the community able to fix it. But when a research team from the University of North Carolina surveyed World Vision water projects, more than 85% were fully functional for more than 20 years. Having a Village Water Committee to be in charge of the project, to have local people trained to install, maintain, and continue to develop the system, is part of the initial preparation before WV will fund a community water project. The committee is encouraged to charge a small fee for the water so that when problems are encountered, they have the funds to fix it.
Another program for WV is rescuing child soldiers and rehabilitating them to be functional members of the community. Much work is needed to bring them back to being “normal children”, and able to work with others in a helpful, cooperative way.
World Vision is a faith based organization, but does not proselytize. They work in many countries with many religions, all without making religion a conflict.
Both secular and faith based organizations can work well together, as with Rotary and WV. World Vision has developed a very good reporting and accounting system and team. When a project is being done, all funding, supplies, and efforts can be tracked and accounted for by the WV team. Detailed budgets can be developed, and the many sponsors can be kept in the loop by the WV efforts.
“The Cause of Poverty is very complicated, and all causes have to be addressed to have any successful outcome.” President Rich Stern, World Vision.
Book: Where the Wind Leads, Vinh Chung. A refugee family’s miraculous story of loss, rescue and redemption. 2014.
A history of the rise and fall from wealth, their precarious situation as a former wealthy family in post-Vietnam War communism, and their journey to success in the United States. In the story are scenes of Stan Mooneyham, World Vision’s then-president, launching the Seasweep Operation to rescue stranded Vietnamese refugees and resettle them in the U.S.
The author, Vinh Chung MD, graduated from Harvard magna cum laude in biology, then Harvard Medical School, and Emory University residency in Dermatology.
Raffle: Georgene Mellom’s rescued tickets included the winning number. But she failed to draw an ace, and so the $700 pot continues to grow.
And Finally…
Life can throw lots of challenges our way, and sometimes you have to just pick yourself up and carry on.
Now orange you glad I did not make some corny joke?