By Brad Webber
Guatemala
The Rotary Club of Guatemala La Reforma’s Upcycling Art Festival featured whimsical sculptures and paintings created with cast-off materials such as paper and cardboard, wood scraps, glass, plastics, metal, rubber, and electronic waste. Like many countries, Guatemala struggles with solid waste management, notes Esther Brol, a past club president who pioneered the event in 2023. “Pushing artists out of their comfort zone by challenging them to create works of art from waste has generated wonderful results,” including raising funds for club projects and The Rotary Foundation, she says. The club partnered with the Rotaract Club of Guatemala La Reforma and the Rotary Club of Los Altos Quetzaltenango to organize the three-week exposition and sale that concluded 5 June.
Canada
The annual Concert to Feed the Need has raised nearly $90,000 since 2018 to offer meals in the Durham region in Ontario, through a network of food banks, meal and snack programs, shelters, and other social service providers. Feed Ontario reports an increase of 47 percent in the number of employed people using food banks since 2018. “With the rising cost of food and the impact of the pandemic still being felt, food bank use is soaring,” says Joe Solway, a member of the Rotary Club of Bowmanville, which initiated the event. Members of six other Rotary clubs also sell sponsorships and tickets and promote the show, an eclectic mix of pop, folk, country, rock, blues, gospel, “and maybe this year some opera,” Solway says. Media attention surrounding the concert and its acclaimed performers helped it yield nearly $23,000 in 2023. The 2024 event will take place on 8 December.
Bulgaria
In 2007, the Rotary Club of Sofia-Balkan teamed up with the Bulgarian Basketball Federation and the National Sports Academy to form a basketball club for wheelchair users, and the project has kept growing. Over the years, the club has lured coaches from the European Wheelchair Basketball Federation to offer a player clinic, cultivated referee skills, and established a Rotary Community Corps to help. On 13 February, in conjunction with a Rotary zone event, the Bulgarian team faced off against a Serbian team for a friendly match. RI’s president at the time, Gordon McInally, sounded the starting whistle and tossed the ball into play. The club’s signature project is a point of pride for Rotarians, says Past Club President Krasimir Veselinov, and several organizations that advocate for people with disabilities have signed on to support the venture.
Kenya
Recognizing the importance of sleep to child development, the Rotary Club of Nairobi delivered bed kits for 8,000 school children in 2024, a milestone in a long-running project. Over the past 16 years, the club has partnered with Toronto-based charity Sleeping Children Around the World to supply bed kits to a total of 80,000 children at a cost of about $4 million, says club member Mumbi King. Each kit includes a mat or mattress, bedding, and mosquito netting, along with school supplies and clothing. The kits have an outsize influence on children’s lives, since better sleep improves health and school performance, King says. Twenty Nairobi Rotarians mobilized for the five-day delivery mission in February, serving the town of Naro Moru at the base of Mount Kenya and other villages, including in the Maasai Mara region. “The heat couldn’t keep the team from visiting the villages and interacting with the families,” says King.
Ethiopia
With the wind at their backs, members of the Rotary Fellowship of Kites and its founder, Henock Alemayehu, gathered for a day of kite making and flying with 250 children, many of them displaced by conflict among the more than 80 ethnic groups in Ethiopia. The children and volunteers converged on the grounds of an elementary school in Quiha, in the northern Tigray region, for the Ashengoda Kite Festival on 9 June. “The simplicity of this activity carried profound significance, offering a rare moment of peace and joy for these children,” says Alemayehu, a member of the Rotary Club of Addis Ababa Central-Mella. The kite fellowship, which has more than 100 members from 12 countries, is “creating lasting change through the simple yet powerful act of kite flying,” says Alemayehu.
This story originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.
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