• Ghana Grant – Thank You Letter from Walter Hughes

Dear Fellow Rotarians and friends,

 

Water is flowing, schools are growing, Microflush toilets are improving sanitation and I’m in love.  Lisa Doss and I are getting married on August 25^th at my home with immediate family.  We’ll have a larger wedding/marriage celebration with friends and family next year.  God blessed me with time to be at home to date and fall in love with Lisa. I met her a year ago. She’s a joy.  She’ll also inspire me to be a better man. We are going on a honeymoon to Yellowstone National Park and many sites out West for September.  I’m going to enjoy time with Lisa.  Work will wait.  There’s many on our team. They won’t miss a beat with sending thank you notes, writing reports and collecting money to fund our new projects.

 

It has been truly an unusual year.  There’s good news during the pandemic.  We haven’t missed a beat on “doing good in the world.”  We have a preschool, elementary school and a junior high school under construction.  We dedicated three elementary schools in 2019.  We finished $891,127 worth of projects in the past year which translates into 86 new boreholes, 11 new small-town water systems, 603 Microflush toilets and many micro-credit loans.  The amazing fact is that we have $1.3 million in projects that are in the works.  Three grants were just approved worth for over $514,507 which will repair 350 boreholes, drill 38 new boreholes and build three small-town water systems and construct 250 new Microflush toilets.

 

An amazing fact is that none of the new grants are in “my name.” We are developing new leaders in new Rotary Clubs in the USA, Canada and Ghana.  We are mentoring leaders to empower community leaders, to build strong partnerships and increase local funding.  We are looking for new leaders who want to transform communities around the world.  If you know someone who wants to learn how to transform lives on a large scale, we want to mentor, train and equip them.  We have classes that we’ll teach over the next year that were first piloted last year for Nigerian Rotary leaders. 

 

We have two new water & sanitation grants that need funding currently:  GG 20-11499 for water and sanitation in Northern Ghana and GG 21-18484 in the Upper East Region of Ghana.  Grant 20-11499 has been submitted and will receive the 50% TRF match on club donations.  It is led by Florence, Oregon and Tamale, Ghana Rotary Clubs.  Grant 21-18484 is led with Montreal and Bolgatanga Goodwill Rotary Clubs.  We just need a pledge now.

The real heroes are the new leaders who stepped up to get the job done.  My heart goes out to Blake Dubose of Columbia Capital, South Carolina Rotary who led the Nkrankrom Elementary School effort with Eric Gyamfi of Sunyani East Rotary Club.  AG Frank Kofi Owusu-Debrah and Kafui Mary Kornu led the effort to build Soronoase Elementary School, Adadease Junction JHS and Yawhima Preschool.  Abdul Mumin is the charter president for Obuasi Rotary Club and is starting out with two global grants.  AG Sue Carter has her first baby incubator grant.  AG Shel Douglas and Prince George County is leading the effort with two school grants.  Shel Douglas has mentored many new leaders.  David Rosenthal and his team of the Hampton Roads Rotary is leading several new projects including GG 19-90400. 

 

Nana Mensah is stuck in the UK during the pandemic and yet he’s still moving projects along in Ghana.  Mark Asante is monitoring the construction of Hiamankyene Elementary for Kumasi Rotary Club. 

Encouragement comes from PRIVP Anne Matthews, PDG Nancy Barbee, PDG Gary Bradham, PDG George Karnes, PDG Sandy Duckworth, PDG Tom Greenstreet, PDG Herb McClaugherty and so many more.  DG Peter Verbeeck and PDG Carl Treleaven traveled to Ghana in February to help the Techiman grant get done and identify ways to solve problems without me.  Fatima Langlois and Jean Gagnon are a powerful couple in Montreal, Canada.  My Dad, Walter Hughes, Sr. is the one who encouraged me to join Rotary twenty years ago.  They push me to dream big.  I call them “champions” of our projects.  They are the ones I go to when I’m discouraged.  

 

They have vision, love and passion.

 

AG Susan Ojanen and Christy Brown are writing thank you notes to you.  We have Rotaractors and new Rotarians monitoring new wells and taking pictures.  Rotarians conducted strength assessments in communities during the pandemic so new water projects could get approved.  Rotarians in 274 Rotary Clubs and 60 Rotary Districts are funding these projects to impact over 809,000 lives.  You make it happen and encourage our team to keep going. 

 

I’m honored to know you and appreciate your friendship.  Thanks.  This is your story…

Regards,

Walter Hughes

Cell:  +1 540-493-4715  

 

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Why being kind is as important as ever

Your parents told you to be nice to people. Guess what? They were right. Here’s why.

by Arnold R. Grahl

Doing good doesn’t only benefit other people. It helps us, too.

Studies show that helping others boosts serotonin, a neurotransmitter that makes us feel satisfied. Another benefit to feeling rewarded when we do good: It lowers our stress levels. Who couldn’t use that right now?

Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, people everywhere are feeling anxious about their health, their families, their jobs, and their futures.

“When we are all feeling lower than we are used to feeling, with some levels of situational depression, we all need a boost,” says psychologist Mary Berge, a member of the Rotary Club of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA, who has led discussions with many Rotary clubs about coping during the pandemic.

“There has been a lot of research that when we are helping others, or when we are doing something for someone else, our reward centers light up in the brain and our stress levels go down as cortisol is released.”

It feels good to do good

In a 2016 study, researchers asked participants about scenarios in which they either gave or received support. The study, published in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, found that MRI tests showed only the instances of giving correlated to reduced stress and enhanced activity in the brain’s reward centers — which suggests that giving support ultimately had greater mental benefits than receiving it.

Researchers at Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway and the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany explored the relationship between volunteering and well-being in 12 European countries, noting the relative lack of such studies outside the U.S. Their 2018 analysis found that people who are or have been volunteers report greater well-being than people who have not.  found that people who are or have been volunteers report greater well-being than people who have not.

And in a 2013 Canadian study posted by the National Library of Medicine, researchers looked at the effect on the cardiovascular health of adolescents who do volunteer work. The study confirmed that helping people reduced the volunteers’ body mass index and other cardiovascular risk factors.

Coping during the pandemic

Berge, a training leader for Rotary, saw anxiety rising among her patients because of the pandemic and developed the Staying Sane During COVID-19 presentation. She has delivered the talk by videoconference more than 70 times, mostly at Rotary-related events.

“Rotarians in particular have a high need for being compassionate,” says Berge. “In my Zoom meetings, I hear people say, ‘What can we do to help?’ They are desperate to get that feel-good feeling again. I think they see that in doing these things, it relieves our own stress, sadness, anxiety, and irritability.”

Rotary member Jenny Stotts, a social worker, child advocate, and trauma specialist, has written about how we can increase our resiliency, adapt to adversity during the pandemic, and emerge stronger.

“When we express meaningful and intentional gratitude or engage in planned acts of kindness, we experience the benefits of serotonin and dopamine, which are two neurotransmitters responsible for us feeling pleasure or joy,” says Stotts, a member of the Rotary Club of Athens Sunrise, Ohio, USA. “Not only do we benefit others from this activity, but it has a way of recharging our batteries.”

Stotts notes that when we do acts of good repeatedly, something interesting happens in our brains. “If we engage in a regular daily practice of kindness and gratitude, we are essentially carving out pathways within our brain that make us healthier and a little more emotionally stable.”

Because of all this, Stotts tells her staff and clients, “You deserve to be your kindest self.”

Rotary members may not realize the significant role they can play in changing how people think, Stotts says.

“When we, as leaders in our community, adapt a way of thinking — that level of intentional gratitude and intentional kindness — we have a way of setting a really good example,” she says. “I think it is a calming and stabilizing force. We can set that tone for our entire club and for our communities.”