To "attend" the meeting, scroll down the screen, review all the information from top to bottom, view all the videos, read all the information, and enjoy your time here with us at our Rotary meeting.
Dear Fellow Rotarians, visitors and guests!
WELCOME TO OUR E-CLUB!
Thank you for stopping by our club meeting! We hope you will enjoy your visit.
Our E-Club banner is shown at left! Please send us a virtual copy of your club banner and we will send you a copy of our new club banner in exchange. We will also display your club banner proudly on our meeting website.
We are now officially a fully-fledged chartered Rotary Club in District 7020. We celebrated our Charter Gala with the meeting posted the week of January 24. Our charter date is August 12, 2013. We hope you will find the content of our meeting enlightening and will give us the benefit of your opinion on the content.
April is Magazine Month. Our club celebrates our 2014 Butterfly Storybook!
Visiting Rotarians. Click this link to Apply for a Make-up. We will send you and your club secretary a make-up confirmation. A minimum of 30 minutes spent with us will comply with RI regulations; however, we hope you'll stay to enjoy the entire meeting!
Active Members. Click for Attendance Record.
Happy Hour Hangout. Happy Hour Hangout. Our Happy Hour Hangout on a Saturday morning is early enough so that you can join before your day gets away from you.
We meet for a live chat and sometimes business discussion. If you are interested in dropping by, please click the link below. Morning coffee is on the house! (Your house, that is...) Hope to see you there!
Please note: Now, attending our HHH will earn you a make-up!
The link to the Happy Hour Hangout for Saturday is at the bottom of this meeting.
Interested in joining us? Click the link Membership Application and Information.
Our President, Kitty, would now like to welcome you to this week's meeting. Please listen in...
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ROTARY E-CLUB OF THE CARIBBEAN, 7020
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ABCs OF ROTARY (Cliff Dochterman)
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| Cliff Dochterman RI President, 1992-93 |
Functional Literacy Program
It has been estimated that a billion people - one-fourth of the world's population - are unable to read. Illiteracy of adults and children is a global concern in both highly industrialized nations and in developing countries. The number of adult illiterates in the world is increasing by 25 million each year! In the United States, one-quarter of the entire population is considered functionally illiterate.
The tragedy of illiteracy is that those who cannot read lose personal independence and become victims of unscrupulous manipulation, poverty and the loss of human feelings which give meaning to life. Illiteracy is demeaning. It is a major obstacle for economic, political, social and personal development. Illiteracy is a barrier to international understanding, cooperation and peace in the world.
Literacy education was considered a program priority by Rotary's original Health, Hunger and Humanity Committee in 1978. An early 3-H grant led to the preparation of an excellent source book o the issues of literacy in teh world. the Rotary-sponsored publication, The Right to REad, was edited by Rotarian Eve Malmquist, a past direct governor from Linkoping, Sweden, and a recognized authority on reading and educaitonal research. the ook was the forerunner of a major Rotary program emphasis on literacy promotion.
In 1985, the RI Board declared a ten-year emphasis on literacy education. In 1992 the board extended the emphasis until the year 2000. Many Rotary clubs are thoughtfully surveying the needs of their community for literacy training. Some clubs provide basic books for teaching reading. others establish and support reading and language clinics, provide volunteer tutorial assistance and purchase reading materials. Rotarians can play a vitally important part in their community and in developing countries by promoting projects to open opportunities which come from the ability to read.
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CONCERN FOR THE AGING
One current area of special emphasis for Rotary clubs focuses on providing "new opportunities for the aging." In 1990, the RI Board of Directors urged Rotarians to identify new projects serving the elderly that emphasize intergenerational activities and the integration of seniors into society and the workplace. The following year, the board called for an approach that stressed service "with" the elderly as well as "for" them.
With the substantial upswing in the worldwide population of older persons, their needs for special attention have greatly multiplied. As citizens grow older, it becomes increasingly important for them to retain their personal independence and to remain in control of their own lives to the extent this is possible.
Many Rotary clubs are seeing ways to serve the older persons of their community who face problems of deteriorating health, loneliness, poor nutrition, transportaiton difficulties, inability to do customary chores, loss of family associations, reduced recreational opportunities, inadquate housing and limited information about available social agencies for emergency assitance. Some clubs have initiated a valuable community service to assist older persons in retirement planning and adjustment by organizing and sharing the wealth of information available within the club's membership.
Other clubs have developed foster grandparent programs and other intergenerational activities that allow seniors to use their experience and knowledge to help young people. Rotarians often can provide service which seniors can no longer do for themselves.
The greatest need of aging individuals is frequently a mere expression of real caring and concern by thoughtful friends. All Rotarians should seriously consider how they and their clubs may actively participate in programs for the aging. It is one area of community service in which there is a growing possibility that each of us may some day be on the receiving end.
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- Peace and Conflict Resolution
- Disease Prevention and Treatment
- Water and SanitationIf yo
- Maternal and Child Health
- Basic Education and Literacy
- Economic and Community Development
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MESSAGE ABOUT WATER
DON'T WASTE WATER
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ROTARY ANTHEM
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DISTRICT 7020 CONFERENCE 2014 IN CAYMAN ISLANDS
The website for registering for the conference is now available:
www.DC2014CAYMAN.ky
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OUR DISTRICT 7020 PROJECT PORTAL
Have a look!
Our E-Club can add our projects to this website!
Browse to www.7020.org and click the Project Portal.
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"THIS CLOSE" - We are ...
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SPEAKER - JACKSON KATZ - A MEN'S ISSUE
A clarion call for us all -- women and men -- to call out unacceptable behavior and be leaders of change.
Jackson Katz asks a very important question that gets at the root of why sexual abuse, rape and domestic abuse remain a problem: What's going on with men?
Jackson Katz is an educator, author, filmmaker and cultural theorist who is a pioneer in the fields of gender violence prevention education and media literacy. He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), which enlists men in the struggle to prevent men’s violence against women. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, MVP has become a widely used sexual and domestic violence prevention initiative in college and professional athletics across North America. Katz and his MVP colleagues have also worked extensively with schools, youth sports associations and community organizations, as well as with all major branches of the U.S. military.
Katz is the creator of popular educational videos including Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity. He is the author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help and Leading Men: Presidential Campaigns and the Politics of Manhood. He has also appeared in several documentaries, including Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes and MissRepresentation.
"After I watched this talk, my first thought was, 'If only every man, woman and teenager could see this video and hear this message.'"
--Daily
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SPEAKER - An Idea in Progress - Four speakers
Diana Reiss studies animal cognition, and has found that bottlenose dolphins (and Asian elephants) can recognize themselves in the mirror.
Peter Gabriel writes incredible songs but, as the co-founder of WITNESS and TheElders.org, is also a powerful human rights advocate.
As Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, Neil Gershenfeld explores the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds.
Vint Cerf, now the chief Internet evangelist at Google, helped lay the foundations for the internet as we know it more than 30 years ago.
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from THE ROTARIAN MAGAZINE - April
Menstruation: There, we said it. Now let’s talk about it, because girls are suffering. about it, because girls are suffering.
There are many candidates for the title of “last taboo,” but the strongest contender is menstruation. Even within the field of sanitation, which I have been writing about for seven years, menstruation is hardly mentioned. This is absurd, and dangerous. Menstruation is inevitable and natural. Yet throughout the developing world, women are ostracized, shamed, and damaged by this pointless taboo. In 2012, I traveled through India with the Great Wash Yatra, a sanitation carnival organized by WASH United, a nongovernmental organization. In 51 days, it covered more than 1,200 miles and went through five Indian states. It attracted 150,000 visitors to play educational games about sanitation and hygiene, such as Poo Minefield, in which a blindfolded contestant had to avoid potentially dangerous excreta while picking up lifesaving soap bars. There was WASH Idol, whose winner sang the best sanitation-themed song, and there were dance contests.
But I was drawn to a corner of the carnival, to a yellow and red tent that bore a sign saying “Women and girls only.” This was the Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) Lab, where women and girls could tell researchers about their experiences, get free sanitary cloths, and make themselves a bracelet using red and green beads to symbolize the days of the menstrual cycle. (Mine was made by a male volunteer who must think my period lasts 21 days.) Twelve thousand women and girls passed through the MHM Lab. Even on holy days, when researchers expected nobody to turn up, there was a queue several hundred meters long outside the entrance.
What did the women want? The free sanitary cloths were useful, of course. The advice about how to keep them sanitary was good too. (Iron them or dry them in the sun.) But what they wanted most was information. They wanted to talk. They wanted to know things they had never been told because of the breadth and depth of the taboo. More than 70 percent of them told the MHM workers that they had known nothing about menstruation when they started bleeding. Their mothers had not talked to them about it, because their own mothers in turn had not talked to them. When they had begun bleeding, many thought they were ill. Some thought they were dying. I met a young woman in a schoolyard whose mother had died of cancer, so when she started bleeding one day, she was convinced that she had cancer too. What else was she supposed to think?
Many of those 12,000 women said their menstrual blood was dirty blood, and so they were dirty too.
In another schoolyard in another state, I met three delightful young girls who told me more. They were 10 or 12 years old but spoke with charming confidence, even about their periods (once the male cameraman had moved away). They told me what periods meant to them: restriction, taboos, and not being able to eat pickles. Pardon? Yes, madam, they said. Pickles. Other common restrictions compiled by the Indian NGO Goonj included seeing birds, going near a newborn baby, going out at noon, having sex with your husband, talking to boys, serving food, keeping flowers. One of the young women in that schoolyard told me with perfect seriousness that she couldn’t paint her nails when she was menstruating, because obviously menstruation makes nail polish go rotten. Elsewhere, women are not allowed to bathe during their period. In extreme circumstances, such as in the western Himalayas in Nepal, they are confined for the duration of their menstruation to the family cattle shed, known as a chaupadi – even in the depths of the Himalayan winter.
Why do those things matter? Because when something languishes in silence and shame, it can do harm. When women and girls must keep their sanitary cloths out of sight, many dry them in damp spaces under their beds, risking urinary tract infections and worse. An outreach worker told me of a case in which a young woman had to have her ovaries removed because of such an infection. Afterward, her fellow villagers crossed the road when they saw her, because a barren woman is a curse.
That’s the health toll. Then there is the damage to women’s futures. Research carried out in India found that 23 percent of girls drop out of school permanently when they begin to menstruate. Another study in Uganda put the figure at 30 percent. Why? The schools have poor or nonexistent sanitary facilities, and no clean, private washing areas. Schoolmates mock the girls when they have accidents in lessons, although they must sit for hours without toilet breaks. A young woman in Liberia, who attended a brand-new school that had been built without a toilet block, told me she wears two pairs of underpants, two pairs of trousers, and two skirts when she has her period. It is not surprising that many girls prefer to stay home, and eventually – especially when they reach the age at which they are considered fertile and suitable for marriage – don’t come back to school.
An educated girl is more likely to live longer, be healthier, have a smaller family, and experience greater prosperity than a girl who doesn’t receive an education. The loss of a quarter of girls from the education system is huge and disgraceful. And it’s avoidable, as are the diarrhea death tolls resulting from poor sanitation. The solution is the same in both instances: clean, safe toilets for everyone. Yet in India, 628 million people still have no toilet whatsoever. And only 12 percent of the country’s women and girls use sanitary napkins.
There’s reason for cautious hope: The government of India has launched a nationwide plan to provide girls with subsidized sanitary pads (though it has yet to reveal how a country that struggles with disposing of waste, both human and other, will deal with millions of sanitary pads in its systems). I attended an extraordinary high-level meeting at the United Nations this past March that brought together NGOs, businesspeople, and education experts, all talking periods, all working out how to break the taboo, with ideas such as sending out menstrual hygiene information with the HPV vaccine, due to be delivered to 30 million girls over the next decade. Perhaps menstruation is coming out of the linen closet, slowly.
In one of the schoolyards, I watched as a laborer hefted bricks out of one of the latrines. He was rebuilding the latrine as a sanitary pad incinerator. One of the male schoolteachers had been to an MHM workshop and told me that his female students needed a private space in which they could get rid of their sanitary cloths. It had cost him 200 rupees – only US$4, but no small sum to him. But it would be worth it if his pupils stayed in school, were educated, and grew up into young women who knew how to talk to their daughters about this natural human function without shame and fear. – Rose George
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PRANK IT FORWARD
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TO END OUR MEETING
To end our meeting, please recite aloud (on your honour!) the Rotary Four-Way Test of the things we think, say, or do.
Lou deLagran leads us.
1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it BUILD GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
...and official close of meeting
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Thank you for stopping by our E-club meeting! We wish you well in the next week in all that you do for Rotary!
The meeting has now come to an end. Please do have a safe and happy week! If you have enjoyed our E-club meeting, please leave a comment below.
Rotary cheers!
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Visiting Rotarians. Click this link to Apply for a Make-up. We will send you and your club secretary a make-up confirmation.
Please consider a donation to our Club. Just as any Rotarian visiting a Rotary Club would be expected to make a donation, we hope you will consider a donation to our Rotary E-Club of the Caribbean, 7020. Please click the button below:
Active Members. Click to indicate your Attendance.
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HAPPY HOUR HANGOUT - Saturday morning, April 19
• 9:00 a.m. Atlantic Time
• 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time (Miami Time)
Rotary E-Club of the Caribbean, 7020 is inviting you to a scheduled Happy Hour Hangout on Saturday morning, April 19.
This is a recurring meeting so the link is the same each Saturday morning. We look forward to seeing you there!
Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device:
• Go to https://zoom.us/join and enter meeting ID: 602 689 205
OR
• Click this URL to start or join. https://zoom.us/j/602689205
Join from dial-in phone line:
Dial: +1 (415) 762-9988 or +1 (646) 568-7788
Meeting ID: 602 689 205
Participant ID: Shown after joining the meeting
International numbers available: https://zoom.us/zoomconference
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