2015 Zones 24 & 32 winners

          2015 Donald MacRae Peace Award Recipients



The Rotary Zone 24-32 Donald MacRae Peace Award is an annual award presented to recipients from each of Zone 24 and Zone 32, to recognize and honor an individual or organization for outstanding achievement in international service.  The Award reflects the ideals of Rotary as expressed in the Fourth Object of Rotary, which is: The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
 
Biography: PRIP Wilf Wilkinson
2015 Zone 24 Donald McRae Peace Award
 
Past RI President Wilf Wilkinson’s accomplishments are many and wide-ranging in their impact on the lives of so many people.  As a hallmark of his year as President of Rotary International, Wilf clearly defined the importance of international service by holding four peace forums on four different continents. Under the byline of “Peace is Possible,” he provided the opportunity for both Rotary and world leaders to come together to discuss and strategize on global peace initiatives, and Rotary’s role in enhancing efforts to work towards peace.
 
During the same Rotary year, Peace Community initiatives were established in a variety of centers, where Rotarians were encouraged to partner with local stakeholders¸ making declarations of a common purpose toward the establishment of peace embracing communities. This initiative resulted in a resolution at the 2010 Council on Legislation to broaden peace-driven community programs.
 
Past President Wilf is a founding member and Director of the Canadian Landmine Foundation, an organization dedicated to working with governments and civil societies toward the elimination of both the production of landmines and the deactivation of those already on the ground. He continues to advocate with the Canadian government on behalf of Rotary for support of both RI’s polio eradication campaign and other Rotary programs geared to peace initiatives on a broad scale.
Biography: Safe Passage/Camino Seguro 
Todd Amani, Executive Director
2015 Zone 32 Donald MacRae Peace Award

Safe Passage/Camino Seguro started in 1999, when a young woman from Maine, Hanley Denning, met  children on the municipal city dump in Guatemala City.  The children were unable to attend school because their families lacked the resources to buy school uniforms or books.  Without education or job skills, they worked as pickers on the city dump, and the cycle of poverty was doomed to be repeated onto the next generation.  Hanley enrolled the children in school and started an after-school program where the children received help with their homework, hygiene and nutrition information, and could develop socialization skills. 
 
Today, Safe Passage provides 600 children  and 100 adults with education, social services, and the chance to move beyond the poverty their families have known for generations.  Safe Passage has accomplished this through dedicated support and involvement from Rotary clubs, including Matching and Global Grants, short- and long-term volunteers and a remarkable number of Rotarians who have served as Board members.

The program,  now under the leadership of Executive Director Todd Amani (shown here), who accepted the award for Safe Passage, is not resting on its laurels: Plans (and a fundraising drive) are in place to build school facilities for all 600 children, plus provide expanded extracurricular and community activities.