To celebrate Heart Month, Dr. Pamela Gardner and Jessica Cunningham, RN joined us from Lima Memorial Health System for a Q&A about the risk factors for heart attacks and how to keep a healthy heart. Dr. Gardner says it's important to know your family history, and if there is a history of heart trouble, you should get checked. Lima Memorial offers a vascular screening for just $75 that does not require a doctor's order. They also have same-day cardiology appointments for anyone who thinks they may be having problems. Some of the signs of heart trouble that should concern you are palpitations, growing tired more easily, cramping of the legs, generally feeling unwell. Though, Dr. Gardner cautions that if you are having a heart attack, you should call 911 immediately and not try to drive yourself to the hospital or have someone else drive you. "Time is muscle," says Dr. Gardner. The sooner you get to the hospital, the sooner they can begin treating you. She says that waiting to get treatment can do long-term damage to your heart. Some of the things you can do to keep you heart healthy are eating right, not smoking, losing weight, and getting your heart rate up for at least 15-20 minutes several times per week.
Also at Monday's meeting, Adah Ellerbrock gave us a photo tour of her very groovy retro house and all the classic furnishings and appliances that came with it.
Membership in Rotary District 6600 remains strong.
We are holding our own!! The latest Membership Trends Report came out this afternoon for Zone 30 of which D6600 is part of. We continue to remain in 4th place of the 14 Districts! As of 2/28/21 District 6600 has a net loss of 54 members for the year. As you can see from the below report, only 1 district (6560) is showing a gain for the year. There are a number of districts that are right behind us on our tail! If you have new members that are being proposed in your clubs, make sure all the paperwork and input all the data as soon as you can.
I am proud that in the midst of this pandemic, our club presidents, secretaries and district staff continue to emphasize the need to keep our members engaged. THE END IS NEAR! and that is a good thing. If we all do our job, I would not be surprised if the state will relax some restrictions to the point that we can begin meeting again in some form by May!
Remember....people are searching right now for a purpose in life. If it's one thing Covid19 has taught us....there is more to life than work, work, work. Giving back is crucial to one's mental health and there is no better way than doing it through a great organization like Rotary!
By using Rotary Direct to give regularly, you help to improve lives in communities close to you and around the world.
Your gifts allow us to address the world’s most pressing challenges. Last year, our Foundation funded 1,359 global grants totaling more than $95 million. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rotarians have responded with hundreds of service projects to help our communities through this crisis. Our decades of efforts to eradicate polio helped lead the entire African region to be certified free of wild polio in August 2020. Your ongoing generosity makes these monumental achievements possible.
Thank you for your support and your dedication to Doing Good in the World.
I am not leader material. This was my immediate thought when our first ever Leadership Training Program – unofficially named The Amazing Race of the Interact Club of Cagayan De Oro Premier - was announced back in 2017. See, I was a recluse. While I was already in my second year as a member, I still struggled to open up to others. I wasn’t confident that people would understand my awkwardness and lack of social skills. I didn’t see myself as anything but a planner—a project brainstorming machine. I was constantly wary of others and found myself asking, “Why should I learn to be a leader?”
To be honest, I do not recall much of what happened at my first Leadership Training Program. I remember being generally pessimistic as I was grouped with students that I was not really close due to our age differences. I remember feeling hopeless as we placed last in the preliminary games of the training. But there was one moment in the actual race that completely redefined the experience for me.
The test that impacted me the most was a “Brawn Challenge” where each of us had to stand at a fixed position on the arc and shoot a basketball through the basketball hoop. We had to shoot one person at a time and each person had to make the shot or the whole group starts over. It sounds simple enough. It should have been. Except, I am not the most athletic student. My group was actually doing really well until the ball was passed to me. Each time it was my turn to shoot the ball, it would fall short. Literally. No matter how many shots I took, my jumps were not enough for me to take the goal. Time was running out. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated and angry about how weak I was compared to the others.
Minutes started to pass and even more shame clouded me. I was so sure that I would receive looks of impatience and annoyance from my teammates. I did not. I did not see a single look of disappointment. What I got instead were looks of genuine encouragement: slight nods, cheers and pats that were only ever addressed to me in a reassuring way. They huddled together and told me that they would rather see me finally score a ball than skip to the next challenge. It was at that moment that a wave of gratefulness washed over me. I felt motivated to not just accomplish the task for myself, but to go beyond that and gain something greater which, at that moment, was the happiness of my teammates. Within three more tries, I managed to make the shot. Not once, but twice. It was like a movie scene. Our moderators cheered and congratulated us for such a simple achievement. In spite of all the hardship, the short epiphany I got was definitely the greater win.
It wasn’t just me though. We all changed in a way. It was as if every one of us knew to step in when things became difficult. I like to think that the short delay further strengthened us as a group and made us closer. We all collectively agreed that while winning was the goal, honing our teamwork and getting to know each other mattered more. Of course, there were even more trials that challenged our resilience and intellect. As we progressed, I found comfort in knowing that I was with people I trusted. When one of us failed, we picked each other up and did the task together. This went on until our last exercise where we had to cross the entire covered court using only tires and wood.
It was over sooner than I anticipated and to my surprise, we won. As prizes, our advisors gifted us with pizza, cola, and a banner that we continue to use at club meetings to this day. The sunset washed over the covered court like a final gift to our fruitful day. As I went over what had happened, I knew somehow that I had changed and that the experience didn’t turn out to be as bad as I expected. I had a group of new friends who made me happy. Suddenly, it came to me that if I tried to be more open, then maybe I could have more moments like this. I left that day with a new outlook on what it meant to be a leader. I remembered that I was unsure of how to go about it, but I was determined to change for the better.
My first Leadership Training Program was a wakeup call for me to take responsibility in helping others. I was selfishly holding myself back because I was afraid I wasn’t good enough. At the end of the day, it made me see the true essence in becoming a true Interactor. The truth was that there wasn’t anything wrong with me except how I depreciated myself. The training really made me see that I needed to stop turning away from the people that care about me and develop a genuine camaraderie with them. It taught me to be more confident in myself and to rise to the occasion. I’m forever grateful for that special day because without it, I would never have gotten the courage to form the valuable friendships I have.
Years later, I have come to the conclusion that now more than ever, the world needs leaders. In a time that is filled with not just uncertainty but insecurity as well, we must look into ourselves and motivate each other to get through our trials. I’ve realized that in a way, we are all leaders who just need to see what we are capable of. Our problem is that we put ourselves into boxes and stick to what we’re used to. However, we need to take opportunities when they come to us. It isn’t fair for us to just doubt ourselves without taking chances. We don’t exactly have to be heroic leaders of legend, but we can be the ones that our own world needs.
Follow the Interact Facebook page to learn more about the Interact Awards and see the awardees in the “Video” and “Photo” categories.
Rotary and Mediators Beyond Borders International build resilient communities.
Ian Lancaster, of Rotary District 7070, attending Mediators Beyond Borders International Peace Congress in Bali, Indonesia. The theme was ‘DISRUPTORS: Being Peacebuilders in a World of Conflict’, and the 2019 Congress was designed to connect leaders around the world to cast a global vision, and craft local strategies, to advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals over the next decade.
During these unprecedented times, we are all experiencing moments of panic, fear, scarcity, and uncertainty, and conflict seems inevitable. But conflict is not inherently bad; it is simply an expression of our diversity - diverse needs, perspectives, and possibilities. Conflict is natural; violence is not. And with the right skills, conflict can be transformed into a positive source of creativity, collaboration, creative problem solving, and unprecedented progress.
As an official service partner of Rotary, Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI) comes with an international team of practitioners with the technical expertise to equip local communities with critical conflict transformation skills, worldwide. Rotary has already experienced the power of partnership in organizing polio vaccinations with local and global partner organizations; in the same way, Rotary can reduce violent conflict globally by collaborating with MBBI.
Peace is the foundation on which every other humanitarian goal is based. And where unresolved - or violent - conflict persists, so do all other issues. But resilience is found in the ability to withstand and recover quickly from difficult conditions. And conflict transformation skills are precisely the tools we need to build more resilient communities.
Rotary’s partnership with Mediators Beyond Borders International brings a uniquely collaborative, inclusive approach that has enabled Rotary to expand while the world is contracting. Rotary’s commitment to peace and conflict prevention, coupled with MBBI’s technical expertise in the field of conflict transformation, inclusivity, cultural competency, and trauma-informed peacebuilding, presents a powerful partnership. And the global pandemic, political tensions, economic uncertainty, social unrest, and climate changes have only highlighted the profound necessity of exactly this work. For example, during the ongoing pandemic, the Rotary Club of San Pedro invited MBBI to design and host a Social and Racial Justice Peace Conversation for their club. This collaboration resulted in creative thinking, problem solving, positive outcomes, and laying critical foundations to build more resilient communities.
Both Rotary and MBBI bring important skills and expertise when collaborating through the official service partnership to address critical conflict transformation skills. Members of the Rotary network are successful community and business leaders, and their connections can offer insight into community priorities and culture. Rotary members can identify prospective beneficiaries and key local leaders, offer logistical and funding resources, provide technical expertise across many different fields, advocate for specific causes, mobilize outreach and action, build local or international partnerships, and much more.
An internationally recognized peacebuilding organization, Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI) keeps the people affected by conflicts at the center of peacebuilding and understands that peace is a process. It is MBBI’s mission to build local skills for peace and promote mediation worldwide. Their approach emphasizes inclusivity and cultural competency, and their multi-disciplinary practitioners uncover and address the many contexts of conflict, including the impact of trauma on communities. Together, Rotary members and MBBI can provide peacebuilding and mediation skills to build stronger, more stable communities.
It is urgent that we continue to equip local communities with the skills to respond to those conflicts constructively and to build resilience. Today’s challenges offer a bold invitation to leaders who are committed to a vision of peace. Not only will partnerships like this continue to make this work possible, but it will help shape the way we move forward in this historic and unprecedented time.
There are many ways in which the Rotary family can get involved with MBBI, such as Peace Conversation Facilitation training, community assessments for peace projects, the advancement of women’s involvement in mediation, building peace through development of leadership, livelihoods, and reconciliation, and much more. Learn how you can get involved here.
Since they were introduced in 2013, Rotary’s global grants have grown tremendously.
We should be proud of that. In fact, demand for global grants is growing much faster than the contributions that fund them. Half of each Annual Fund-SHARE contribution goes to the World Fund, and the World Fund is what pays for global grants. When Annual Fund-SHARE contributions remain steady but global grants increase dramatically, eventually we won’t have enough money in the World Fund to keep pace with global grant demand.
In recent years, the World Fund has been depleted before the Rotary year ends. Because of this, we have been unable to fund all the global grant requests we receive. And this year it will happen again, even though the Foundation’s Board of Trustees took measures to save costs. So the Trustees have now made policy changes that will take effect on 1 July, in an effort to increase the Foundation’s ability to fund global grants. You can read about these changes in an announcement on My Rotary.
Because you are in the process of applying for a global grant, the change that will affect you most directly is this: The World Fund match of DDF for global grants will be 80%.
For 2020-21, as long as funds remain available, DDF will continue to be matched at 100% for applications submitted by 31 May, 23:59 Chicago time (UTC-5), and approved by 30 June, 23:59 Chicago time (UTC-5). Applications that are not approved this Rotary year will need to be resubmitted with adjusted financing.
There will be one exception to these changes: Global grant scholarships submitted by 30 June, 23:59 Chicago time (UTC-5) will receive a 100% World Fund match of DDF, even if the World Fund is exhausted before 30 June.
The Trustees have spent considerable time deliberating over these issues, and these policy changes are the result of careful thought and planning. Balancing financial resources with program demands is challenging for any nonprofit, and adjustments and difficult decisions are sometimes necessary to cope with a changing situation.
If you have general questions about these changes to the Foundation’s grant funding, please contact the Rotary Support Center. If you have questions that are specific to your global grant, contact your regional grants officer.
Thank you for your continued efforts to do good in the world.
Sincerely,
Victor Barnes Director of Programs and Grants The Rotary Foundation
