ROTARY CONNECTS THE WORLD โรตารีเชื่อมสัมพันธ์โลก
ประธานโรตารีสากลรับเลือก มาร์ค แดเนียล มาโลนีย์ให้คำอธิบายถึงวิสัยทัศย์ของเขาที่ต้องการจะสร้างความเข้มแข็งให้แก่องค์กรโรตารี เชื้อเชิญให้บรรดาผู้นำทั้งหลายขยายสายสัมพันธ์ของตนในชุมชนต่าง ๆ และร่วมกันโอบรับนวัตกรรมใหม่ของรูปแบบสมาชิกภาพ ประธานโรตารีสากลรับเลือกที่มาจากสโมสรโรตารีดีเคเทอร์ รัฐอะลาบามา สหรัฐอเมริกาได้นำเสนอคำขวัญโรตารีประจำปี ๒๕๖๒-๖๓ "ROTARY CONNECTS THE WORLD" ท่ามกลางผู้ว่าการภาครับเลือกของโรตารีทั่วโลกในวาระการอบรมผู้ว่าการภาคที่จัดขึ้นที่ซานดิเอโก แคลิฟอร์เนีย สหรัฐอเมริกา
2019-20 presidential theme: Rotary Connects the World
Rotary International President-elect Mark Daniel Maloney explained his vision for building a stronger Rotary, calling on leaders to expand connections to their communities and to embrace innovative membership models. A member of the Rotary Club of Decatur, Alabama, USA, Maloney unveiled the 2019-20 presidential theme, Rotary Connects the World, to incoming district governors at Rotary’s annual training event, the International Assembly, in San Diego, California, USA READ MORE
Because otherwise we remain pressed for contentment
by SHIRLEY STEPHENSON
The night before I left for Guatemala City, I was seized by inexplicable anxiety. A nurse practitioner, I had volunteered to spend a week last February working with Shared Beat, a nonprofit that runs clinics in Guatemala staffed in large part by volunteers from the United States. It also provides scholarships for Guatemalans pursuing careers in medicine, nursing, and related fields. I admired the organization’s ambitious agenda, and I needed the sense of contribution and connection that comes with any volunteer effort.
But as I packed my insect repellent and antibiotics for traveler’s diarrhea, I realized it had been five years since I had volunteered abroad. Despite my enthusiasm for this trip — and my previous work in Central America, Haiti, and Africa — I felt out of practice. That night before leaving, I checked the U.S. Department of State travel advisory for Guatemala. Level 3: Reconsider travel.
I questioned my decision. I’m responsible for patients at work. I have a family, plants, pets, and a widowed mom afraid of falling. Even this short trip would create some apprehension and inconvenience. Yet no one said, “Don’t go.” On the contrary, my husband said when I left: “We’ll worry about you a little. But you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t do this.”
I was greeted at the airport in Guatemala by two men and an otherwise empty school bus. As we wound through the mountains, the driver’s companion intermittently swung open the bus’s folding door and leaned into traffic, gesticulating and whistling to signal lane changes. Burning debris and exhaust fumes shrouded the capital. I squinted in the dusty sunlight, astonished at how many birds dived through the haze.
Flaubert said travel makes one modest: You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. Amid the patchy dogs, the scarlet bougainvillea punching through iron gates, and the shouts of roadside vendors selling tamales, elote, and skewered mango carved into blossoms, I understood what Gustave was getting at. In the plaza near the guesthouse, children chased balloons. A family parting on a corner blessed one another before kissing goodbye. I stopped to eat a plantain that had been roasted in its peel until it tasted like a buttery sunrise, and I was reminded that in many parts of the world a napkin, like a glass of drinkable water, is an extravagance.
The volunteers in our 26-person group came from all over the United States. We were a mix of doctors and nurses, medical students, an audiologist, and retirees from various professions. Several volunteers had been participating every six months for the past 12 years. Throughout the week we filled each other’s water bottles, shared snacks, and inquired about one another’s gastro-intestinal health. Everyone woke in the chilly, dark hours of morning and traveled by van to different schools and clinics.
The first patient I saw had a leg wound sustained while scavenging in the vast garbage dump in Guatemala City. She was gregarious, sunburned, covered in dirt from the knees down, and proud of her job recycling plastic and copper stripped from discarded wiring. I thought of all the trash I would shed in just one week — travel-size toothpaste tubes, a disposable razor, mini shampoo bottles, zip-close bags.
Another patient, a Mayan woman in a traditional embroidered dress, expressed her grief after the loss of a son: “I have other children, but each is a part of me. Now I am incomplete.” She described other hardships she had endured, such as fleeing her home in the highlands during Guatemala’s civil war and losing family during that 36-year conflict. She had already joined a women’s support group, but she came to the clinic because sharing her story helped her. This level of trust and intimacy, always a privilege, seems even more astounding in another language and landscape.
Afternoons were temperate and sunny. A breeze carried the stench of garbage through neighboring streets. At times it locked your throat as if you had put your head in a dumpster on a humid summer day. “You never get used to it,” said a resident, “even after a lifetime here.” Lunch was rice and beans or pumpkin seed stew, whatever was being served in the cafeteria. Patient care and any needed follow-up were possible because of the extraordinary local nurses, social workers, and program coordinators with whom we partnered. When not working, fellow volunteers discussed their lives at home. I learned about rattlesnake bites, Maine’s treacherous tides, favorite books, cattle ranching, and coordinating disaster relief. I relished this exchange with people I wouldn’t otherwise have met.
Depending on traffic, the commute to and from the clinics took one or two hours. Shoulder-to-shoulder in the vans, we had time to kill. Some conversation unfolded quietly and focused on clinical cases; on other occasions, we discussed sustainability and the necessity of the scholarship program. At night, those one-on-one talks often spread into animated group discussions, as when one of the volunteers, who had been raised in Guatemala but moved to the United States in her teens, recalled that as a child, she had pitied anyone living in such poverty. “But it’s completely the wrong sentiment,” she asserted. Compassion, yes. But the patients we saw were resilient, self-sufficient, and dignified.
Another evening, someone began humming a Johnny Cash tune. We had been up since 5 a.m. and collectively seen hundreds of patients. Giddiness hijacked the van, and everyone joined in a spectacularly awful rendition of “Ring of Fire”:
Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring ...
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire.
Not every group is ideal. I’ve been on those trips, too. Sometimes the van gets stuck in the mud, an earthquake splinters life into chaos, or people get sick. Sometimes participants are cavalier and put others at risk.
But with a responsible team, a service trip gives more than it asks. Despite my early jitters, I now knew why I had needed to come to Guatemala: because the human connection dissolves differences, and an unfamiliar corner of the world becomes part of my fabric. Because opportunities to volunteer reveal the overlap in cultures, traditions, struggles, and solutions. Because the process simultaneously grounds and stretches me. Because leaving my daily routine opens me to surprise: a hummingbird’s whirr, a foreign flavor, a child-flinging his arms around me in a frenzy of welcome.
At home, I’m more likely to overlook the lessons that life offers. I work in a hospital, where every day reminds me how fortunate I am while providing examples of strength and grace. Still, it doesn’t always curb my irritation when my computer freezes or my swim goggles break at the gym. A different environment reinforces humility and transcends perceived divisions. It also alters my approach to work: It’s easier to see the usefulness of tasks that might otherwise seem rote or tiresome. I hustle more purposefully when I’m volunteering, be it for eight hours or eight days. Then I carry that energy home.
Most volunteer trips take us to regions that are less economically rich. This reminds us how we take for granted certain necessities — our roofs, our refrigerators, our drinkable tap water — and overlook our fortune in having certain luxuries: our dishwashers, our smartphones, our private cars. Yet even a short time away also underscores how, within this world of amenities, we remain pressed — not just for a time, but for contentment.
Fewer resources can spur resourcefulness. We see what’s enough and creatively bridge gaps. Often, I end up using my memory, the database I don’t depend on nearly enough when at home, to record the present and recall the past. Our last morning in Guatemala, a small group of us hiked to an overlook. It began drizzling, and a rainbow stooped over the town. We aimed our cameras, but the rainbow didn’t appear in anyone’s photos, making it that much more of everything a rainbow should be.
So we just watched the sky and grinned at one another, like a family acknowledging a private joke that no one needs to put into words.
Shirley Stephenson wrote about “kayaking grandma” Deborah Walters for the November 2017 issue of The Rotarian.
Rotary Club of Bang Khen is pleased to welcome Rotarians and honoured guests to attend our club meeting on Tuesday 9 October 2018 and enjoy speech given by Pol. Lt. Gen. Dr. Atthaphan Pornmontharat. The meeting will take place at The Centara Grand at Central Plaza Ladpraow 19:00 onwards
Sushil Kumar Gupta, of the Rotary Club of Delhi Midwest, Delhi, India, is the selection of the Nominating Committee for President of Rotary International for 2020-21. He will be declared the president-nominee on 1 October if no challenging candidates have been suggested.
Gupta wants to increase Rotary’s humanitarian impact as well as the diversity of its membership.
Welcome to our Club meeting on June 12, 2018.Helping to conserve our world by making the ocean clean.Assoc. Professor Dr. Thon will be presenting on how we can help.
Speaker Profile: Whenever problems about marine conservation -- garbage in national parks, slaughtering of sea creatures or problems with coral reefs -- have arisen, the first or perhaps only name which comes to mind is...
May 5, 2018 ALBUMIN FOR HEART SURGERY Paediatric Cardiac Surgery has been signature project supported by Rotary Club of Bang Khen for decade long. On Saturday May 5, 2018 President Benchawan Sarangnitra together with members of Rotary Club of Bang Khen handed over an amount of Baht 297,000 to Dr. Pirapat Magarapong, the Secretary General of Paediatric Cardiac Surgery Foundation of Thailand for their purchase of Albumin which is used as fluid agent for patients undergoing cardiac surgery.
May 12, 2018 BANGKOK DISTRICT SURVEY Mr. Somboon Hormnan, Director of Bang Khen District Office led the team of Rotary Club of Bang Khen members surveying communities in the vicinity of Bang Khen to possible finding out unmet needs of members of the communities. Currently there are 77 communities in the district 12 of which are considered slum areas.
Rotary Club of Bang Khen's Past President Vechprasith Toommongkol passed away in Vajira Hospital at 20.48 hrs March 2, 2018. Vechprasith was admitted member of the club on December 19, 2006 and served as club president in the Rotary year 2010-11 and had been appointed as Governor Assistant many years thereafter. His achievements and dedications to Rotary club of Bang Khen and the organisation of Rotary will be remembered always.
2018-19 RI President Barry Rassin wants Rotary members to Be the Inspiration
By Hank Sartin Photos by Monika Lozinska
Rotary International President-elect Barry Rassin laid out his vision for the future of the organization on Sunday, calling on leaders to work for a sustainable future and to inspire Rotarians and the community at large.
Rassin, a member of the Rotary Club of East Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas, unveiled the 2018-19 presidential theme, Be the Inspiration, to incoming district governors at Rotary’s International Assembly in San Diego, California, USA. “I want you to inspire in your clubs, your Rotarians, that desire for something greater. The drive to do more, to be more, to create something that will live beyond each of us.”
Rassin stressed the power of Rotary’s new vision statement, “Together, we see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change — across the globe, in our communities, and in ourselves.” This describes the Rotary that leaders must help build, he said.
To achieve this vision, the president-elect said, Rotarians must take care of the organization: “We are a membership organization first. And if we want to be able to serve, if we want to succeed in our goals — we have to take care of our members first.”
Rassin asked the incoming district governors to “inspire the club presidents, and the Rotarians in your districts, to want to change. To want to do more. To want to reach their own potential. It’s your job to motivate them — and help them find their own way forward.”
Progress on polio
Rassin noted that one source of inspiration has been Rotary’s work to eradicate polio. He described the incredible progress made over the past three decades. In 1988, an estimated 350,000 people were paralyzed by the wild poliovirus; just 20 cases were reported in 2017 as of 27 December. “We are at an incredibly exciting time for polio eradication,” he said, “a point at which each new case of polio could very well be the last.
He emphasized that even when that last case of polio is recorded, the work won’t be finished. “Polio won’t be over, until the certifying commission says it’s over—when not one poliovirus has been found, in a river, in a sewer, or in a paralyzed child, for at least three years,” he said. “Until then, we have to keep doing everything we’re doing now.” He urged continued dedication to immunization and disease surveillance programs.
Sustaining the environment
Rotary has focused heavily on sustainability in its humanitarian work in recent years. Now, Rassin said, Rotarians must acknowledge some hard realities about pollution, environmental degradation, and climate change. He noted that 80 percent of his own country is within one meter of sea level. With sea levels projected to rise two meters by 2100, he said, “my country is going to be gone in 50 years, along with most of the islands in the Caribbean and coastal cities and low-lying areas all over the world.”
Rassin urged leaders to look at all of Rotary’s service as part of a larger global system. He said that this means the incoming district governors must be an inspiration not only to clubs, but also to their communities. “We want the good we do to last. We want to make the world a better place. Not just here, not just for us, but everywhere, for everyone, for generations.”
