[D9640general] [eFlash_Rotary] Digest Number 767

[Garry Krischock]

 Messages In This Digest (2 Messages) 
  1. 1456: Trucking tycoon helps fund peace program From: Sunil K Zachariah 

  2. 1457: President Elect DK Lee's Theme Speech "Make Dreams Real" From: Sunil K Zachariah 
Messages 
  1. 1456: Trucking tycoon helps fund peace program 
Tue Jan 29, 2008 4:30 pm (PST) 
Trucking tycoon helps fund peace program

By Tiffany Woods 

Rotarian Al Jubitz remembers the time when he was 12 years old and 
another boy punched him in the face. His ego was bruised, but he 
learned a lesson: Peace is always better than fighting. 

Now he hopes to see that lesson applied on a global scale. A member 
of the Rotary Club of Portland, Oregon, USA, Jubitz has pledged 
$300,000 to endow five Rotary World Peace Fellowships, which will 
fund aspiring peacemakers as they pursue master's degrees.

"Rotary World Peace Fellows deserve a boost financially to follow 
their passion," says the retired trucking tycoon. "You've got to 
trust that if we plant seeds in these young people, good things will 
happen. That's why I support the program." 

Jubitz, 63, graduated from Yale University but says he received 
his "formal education" in peacemaking in the late 1970s, when he was 
involved with the Creative Initiative Foundation (later called Beyond 
War). The group organized grassroots meetings in living rooms to 
educate people about the excesses of the Cold War arms race.

Today, he's particularly interested in fostering peace in Cyprus, 
where a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone separates Greek and 
Turkish Cypriots. "If we can create peace in Cyprus, we probably have 
all the ingredients for doing it in the Middle East," he says. 
Jubitz, who visited Cyprus in 2005, has helped fund Portland State 
University's Peace Initiatives Project, which aims to find a solution 
to the longstanding conflict on the Mediterranean island.

Through the Jubitz Family Foundation, he and his daughters have also 
awarded grants to Portland State University's conflict resolution 
graduate program, the Wholistic Peace Institute, and the Oregon Peace 
Institute, which Jubitz chaired in the 1970s

Source: Rotary International News 
Courtesy: eFlash_Rotary


  2. 1457: President Elect DK Lee's Theme Speech "Make Dreams Real" 
Tue Jan 29, 2008 4:48 pm (PST) 
Make Dreams Real

Dong Kurn Lee
RI President-elect

The moment when I learned of my nomination to be president of Rotary 
International was one of the most exciting and joyful moments of my 
life. I think this is true for every RI president and for everyone 
who is elected to a Rotary office for the first time. There is a 
feeling of great happiness,great honor, and great anticipation. There 
is also an understanding that your life will never be the same again. 
In the long term, I know I will be forever changed by the experiences 
I will have as president. And in the short term, I know that the 
responsibilities that I face, now and in the year ahead, will be 
unlike any I have faced before.

This is also true for all of you, as new district governors. There is 
so much that each of us can do as Rotarians. All of us have been in 
Rotary long enough to know and understand Rotary's power. Alone, we 
might be able to help individuals here and there, to make small 
changes, to help in small ways. Together, our abilities are stronger. 
Together, we really can make a lasting difference on a global scale. 
Together, there is no limit to what we can accomplish.

But when we truly understand the power that we have through Rotary, 
we must also understand that with this kind of potential comes 
tremendous responsibility. In each of our clubs, every year, we 
Rotarians decide how best to use the resources that we have: our 
time, our skills, and our funds. These decisions are not always easy 
or obvious. They are not simple questions of right or wrong. They are 
complicated questions of who needs our help the most and whom we can 
help the best. We want to use our resources efficiently, to maximize 
the good that we can do. Often, we are drawn toward needs that our 
hearts will not allow us to ignore. We aim always to strike a 
balance, to find the projects that will give the maximum benefit for 
our Rotary investment. We know that if we make our decisions well - 
if we do our research and understand the needs and are wise and 
careful with our resources - we will do the most good with everything 
that we have.

That is our responsibility as Rotary leaders: to do the most good we 
can and to inspire other Rotarians to do the same. In the end, the 
responsibility for successful service projects lies with each 
individual club. But it is the job of the district governors and 
senior leaders to guide, to motivate, and to encourage our clubs to 
focus their efforts wisely. And it is my responsibility as
president-elect to choose the year's theme and service emphases, 
which help to channel and define the work of the year ahead.

Like the project decisions of individual clubs, a president-elect's 
choice of emphases is a very serious matter. It is one that I spent 
many months considering. I thought carefully about the emphases
of past presidents and looked at some of the many projects that these 
emphases had inspired. Water, literacy, health and hunger - these are 
the categories of Rotary service that have endured now for several 
years and with good reason. These are the areas in which local Rotary
clubs, working individually and in cooperation with other clubs, can 
do the most good. They are areas in which we now have many years' 
experience and expertise. They are areas of wise Rotary investment. 
They are areas that let us do the most good with everything that we 
have.I knew with my mind that these were the emphases we should 
continue.

And yet, my heart was pulled in another direction. Because, in the 
midst of my research on possible emphases, I came across a number. 
That number was 30,000 - the number of children under the age of five 
who die every day from preventable causes. At first, I thought that 
it had to be a mistake. Perhaps there was an extra zero in that 
number, if not two. Perhaps the number was per month or per year. It 
was impossible, unthinkable, in the 21st century, that 30,000 of our
most precious children could die, needlessly, every day. But there 
was no mistake. I asked, how can it be possible?

The answers were as heartbreaking as the number. Children die 
needlessly of pneumonia, measles, and malaria - for the lack of basic 
medicines, vaccines, and mosquito nets. They die of diarrheal 
illnesses - for the lack of a packet of rehydration salts that costs 
10 cents. They die in the thousands, every day, because they have 
only dirty water to wash in and to drink. They are killed by 
illnesses that become deadly in combination with poor sanitation and 
malnutrition. They die because their families are trapped in a cycle 
of extreme poverty, a cycle that is not interrupted because there is 
no access to education. They die because their needs are not met in 
the areas of water, health and hunger, and literacy.

Once I understood this, and I understood the issues behind that 
terrible number, I knew what I needed to do. In 2008-09, Rotary will 
keep the service emphases we have had in so many of our past years, 
the emphases that are solidly grounded in our knowledge and 
experience: water, health and hunger, and literacy. But this year, I 
will ask you to focus your efforts in each of these areas on 
children, and on reducing the terrible rate of child mortality in our 
world. In 2008-09, I will ask you all to Make Dreams Real for the 
world's children. This will be our theme, and my challenge to all of 
you.

We will Make Dreams Real by giving children hope and a chance at a 
future. We will Make Dreams Real by bringing clean water to their 
communities, and by this I mean not only providing safe water to 
drink but creating the sanitation projects that keep children 
healthy. We will be as proud of building public toilets as we are of 
supplying drinking water, because by improving sanitation, we prevent 
water from becoming contaminated, and we avoid so many needless 
deaths.

We will Make Dreams Real by giving children the chance at health 
through improving their environments and their access to care. So 
much can be done to keep children healthy, with so little: mosquito 
nets, rehydration salts, vitamins, and vaccines. And so much can be 
done with just a little bit more: a trained birth attendant, a simple 
clinic, a school feeding program, a visiting nurse. These are simple 
and direct ways to save children's lives.

And in 2008-09, we will Make Dreams Real by making sure that more 
children have a chance to go to school, because it will only be 
through education that the deadly cycle of poverty can be broken.

Although it is true that child mortality is highest in developing 
countries, there is not a single Rotary district where local club 
projects cannot save lives. Every day, in every part of the world,
children die for the lack of a seatbelt or a smoke detector. Children 
die because they have nowhere safe to play. Children die because 
their parents cannot afford health care. Children die not because 
nobody can help them but because too often, nobody does. But you and 
I, here in this room, are Rotarians, and helping is what we do best.
And so it is our job to open our eyes to these needs, in our own 
communities and in communities far away. Our job is to work together, 
one club with another, to do what is needed. Our job is to Make 
Dreams Real. We will turn those dreams of a safe and happy childhood -
a childhood that becomes a long and healthy life - into a reality, 
because all of the world's children are our children. 

And our job is a simple one. It is saving lives with our hearts and 
our minds and our souls. And if, in 2008-09, every one of us does 
this job well, at the end of our year we will all have achieved 
something wonderful.

Source: San Dieago 2008 International Assembly Speechbok
Courtesy: eFlash_Rotary
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