On June 27,  Jean MacLaren presented Past-president Jim Stewart with his Paul Harris plus 5 recognition pin. Jim's commitment to continuing support of the Rotary Foundation helps the foundation pursue its many efforts to change the lives of people in need around the world and also make further progress in the final push to complete the task of eradicating polio.  Congratulations Jim. 

 

Jean MacLaren, our club's Rotary Foundation chair, has been working diligently to keep our club in the forefront of clubs in District 5340 in donations to the Rotary Foundation. 

 

 

 

 

At our meeting on June 27, Jelena Starcevic spoke about all of the activities that kept her busy as she completed her Masters degree in Peace and Conflict Resolution as a Peace scholar at USD.  Jelena is a trained lawyer in her home country, Serbia. Before coming to San Diego for her studies here she workd in the area of employment law.  She explained how her studies will benefit her is being able to recognize what causes conflicts and how to get the parties to a dispute to work toward a resolution of a dispute by identifying the actual issues that are causing the problem.  She explained that often the percieved issues are not the real issues.  Often distrust and side issues cause the problem to escalate.  When the proper questions are asked and the parties can begin to understand each other, solutions can be found to solve the dispute in ways that benefit both parties. 

 

Jelena said she was surprised that so few lawyers were involved in learning how to resolve conflict and work toward peaceful solutions.  Jelena sent a copy of her remarks and you can download her presentation as a Word document by clicking on this link - Jelena's Peace Scholar presentaton.

 

Here are links to 2 articles she wrote:

 

 

 

In Costa Rica, Fundacion Biendemujer is an NGO that works with children of La Carpio, Costa Rica's largest informal settlement of refugees from other central american countries.  Chris spoke about how this organization seeks to help the children of the encampment.  The current project is fund a multisensory play area for Ilori, a safe space located in the heart of La Carpio.  Here the children can come t learn, play, get academic help and have access to art, music and a lot more.

 

Chris said that a large portion of the funds needed have already been raised, but that the last $4500 is needed in order to go forward to complete this project.  The link below is the GoFundMe page that has information about this project and a way to contribute any amount that you may choose to help.