Program Speaker Greg Franks - April 19, 2016

"The first club admitted in a non-English-speaking country", Greg said "was in Havana Cuba in 1916, and it started by a club in Miami Florida. Castro took over the country from dictator Batista in January 1959 and from this date going forward Rotary clubs barely survived, until 1979 when they stopped existence all together.  

 

In 2013 there was a meeting about the possibility to start Rotary again, an application was sent to Cuba, but no one ever responded. To date any attempts to get Rotary going again in Cuba have failed,  and it looks like that starting Rotary clubs is out of the question, at least as long as the current regime is in power".