We’ll miss you Roger!
We’d like to think it’s our Rotary Fellowship which attracts Visiting Rotarian Roger Painter to keep coming back to spend time with us every few years, but it’s his grandchildren here in Perth. Of course he’s also missing the snow and ice on Vancouver Island, but another week of heat wave conditions must have had him wondering if it’s now time to go home. So he is, in a couple of weeks.
Since we last enjoyed Roger’s company, he’s moved Rotary Clubs - from South Cowichan to Duncan, a Club with 60+ active members, and one of the first Rotary Clubs established in Canada.
Roger became a Rotarian after his daughter spent a year in France on Rotary Youth Exchange, and he has always been involved in Youth programs. Nowadays his club promotes short term exchanges, where your outbound exchangee lives with a family in a foreign country for 3 weeks, then bring their host sibling back to Vancouver Island to spend another 3 weeks with them in their own home. Quite often your outbound exchangee is using the short experience to improve their skills in speaking a foreign language they are learning at school. Fewer Canadian students are interested in a year long program, mainly because of cost, and also, in Canada, finding host families for inbound students has become very difficult. Canada is a destination for foreign students studying at university, and they pay full room and board to stay with a local family. Rotary can’t compete with that.
Roger brought his interest in Youth with him when he moved to the Rotary Club of Duncan, as well as two Interact Clubs. The main reason he moved was that his old Club’s membership declined in number and enthusiasm after COVID, and when he began to lose his own enthusiasm for being a Rotarian, he started to look at alternatives. Fortunately in his time as an Assistant Governor, he had got to know a lot of other Clubs and thought RC Duncan would suit him. When he advised that he wanted to move Clubs he was asked to take most of the Youth programs with him, as nobody wanted to take them on. His decision to move had been vindicated,
His Duncan Club is very active in the high schools hosting an Interact Club, promoting leadership development through community projects, and later with RYLA of course. The Club also recognises outstanding students with awards, like ”Student of the month”, and Student Entrepreneur Awards. The Interact Clubs also participate in river clean ups, and collecting food for needy students especially in the school holiday periods.
RC Duncan is very involved in overseas projects, often involving other Rotary Clubs. An example of this is Rotary Wheels for Cambodia, which funds the purchase and any necessary repairs to bikes purchased in Cambodia. Their Interact Clubs get involved in fundraising and enjoy seeing the benefits in Cambodian villages.
Another project, in Guatemala, supported by 22 Rotary Clubs in North America, receives second hand desktop computers for use in village schools in areas with little or no Internet service. Rotary helps create local Internets in each village to make the computers more useful to students researching projects.
However, even with all this going on locally and internationally, RC Duncan has positioned Polio Plus as its Marquee project and is fully committed to eradicating Polio and several other major diseases of children, from Planet Earth.
Safe travels home Roger and come back soon!
Kenn turned 80 during our Christmas break
Lorri showed off her cake making skills for a special cake to mark Kenn’s recent birthday and Visiting Rotarian Roger Painter departing home to Canada shortly.