Gerry Willard introduced Guests:  Fareen Samji; Leo Johnson; Joana Fejzaj; Susan Jasper, prospective member; Eric Bell, prospective member; Anel Newman, Mana Sawamori and Sean Tomkins, our much loved exchange students.

 

Lawrence Leung started by apologising for missing Rod Collard and Andrew Gaydon from his weekly report. They are co-chairs of the Golf Committee.

 

Anel described her excellent week: there was a gathering of exchange students in Mississauga where they had a fun dance night. They met inbounds and went to a number of different waterfalls in the region. They also did some painting of the Toronto skyline. Dave Beckett but them tickets to go to the opera Idomineo. Anel is part of the Central High School drama group. The are progressing to an event in Barrie, the second regional round where they will put on yet another play. Anel invites all members to come and attend her play if they can.

 

 

Sean Tomkins' life seems to revolve around school and robotics. Recently they went to McMaster for a competition where he found a super high standard. They will be going on to the Ontario District Championships at the Hershey Centre where the top 80 teams in Ontario will be competing.

 

Mana informed us, with some sadness, that she only has 100 days left to go before her turn to Japan and she even has the countdown on an app. She was thrilled to have reached her goal of 25 Rotary club meetings and she went to number 25 at the Toronto Rotary Club with Owen McElhinney. She thanked the club for giving her so much help to achieve this goal. She found it to be a very formal meeting compared to what she is used to. She too went to the Mississauga Rotary weekend and enjoy the country dancing, and later the waterfalls around Hamilton. She brought her rendering of the Toronto skyline which, typical for Mana was quite striking. She also went to an Interact Club meeting at Nelson High School but there were only four students present.

 

Gerry Willard announced the Run4Lighthouse on 1 June, a Saturday at Lions Valley Park in Oakville where they will need volunteers from our club.

 

Mae Radford announced the Mexico Friendship Exchange group who will be visiting at the end of October and will be looking for three homes to accommodate them. They will be going to Guelph, Burlington and Mississauga. The days in Burlington will be 3-4th of October.

 

Owen McElhinney recently attended a MOB Cluster meeting and was pleased to note that the Bolivia project is well underway with applications for a global grant going in this month.

 

There has been negotiation with the golf club to bring us a more universally acceptable breakfast for $20 which was considered to be a very good deal. There were very few members who wished to continue with the old, cold breakfast.

 

Sergeant at Arms this week was Mae Radford who had the fine idea of giving everybody an opportunity to put in a happy dollar and the shoe was passed around to everybody. Some simply said they were happy, and others had more specific things.

 

Today, the Rotarians of the Week were three who are new members this year - Sean Thompson, Marni Alexander and Alex Warne.  Unfortunately Alex was unable to attend today.

In replying to receiving this honoured decoration, each replied that Rotary has added another dimension to their lives.  Marni is making changes in her life now (buying a cottage, selling a business) but is making time to help with the silent auction at our major fundraiser this summer.  Sean has a busy work schedule and will be accepting offers of an area of service in the coming year.  Great to have new members on board to inspire our Club.

 

Peter Thoem did a recap of the recent board meeting. In brief: the four clubs met to discuss possible funding of the new Joseph Brant Museum and a new Japanese garden at Itabashi Way but turned down the applications. Last year the CEO of Burlington Hydro requested support for the Festival of Lights and this support will be continued. There was little or no support for the special evening with Chef Nicholas and that has been cancelled. A couple of weeks ago there was a presentation by the Dog Guides program and supporter is being given to them for their Autism Dog Programme.  There is good progress with Lakeside à la Carte and close to a hundred tickets have already been sold. There will be a monthly auction details of which have yet to be announced.

 

The current membership of the club is 49 with a number of prospective members in the works.  

 

The scribe wants to take this opportunity publicly to offer condolences to Terry Sedore at the recent very unexpected death of his mother.  Our thoughts and best wishes of support go with Terry and his family.

 

Today's speaker was introduced: Leo Johnson, who came to Canada as a refugee from Liberia and who is heading up a project Empowerment Squared designed to give support to refugees, people new to Canada, and some especially needy folks in the Hamilton area. He arrived in Canada in 2006 as an unaccompanied minor after years as a refugee with, as he described it, absolutely nothing. He started early on to volunteer for the Rotary Club of Hamilton but was reluctant to join as he thought it was some kind of cult! After 18 years away from Liberia he returned to Monrovia where he visited the local Rotary club who strongly encouraged him to go back home and join up, which indeed he did. He had arrived in Canada with the idea that, as a refugee, you simply received help and that was unashamedly the culture, however it did not sit well with him to do that without giving back. He was fortunate enough to get into McMaster University after a very serendipitous meeting with the secretary to the registrar who encouraged him to apply, to provide his high school transcripts such as they were, to see if he could gain entry. Regrettably the transcripts were either inadequate and he was asked to take two exams which he did, and was accepted. While in university he had professors who were encouraging him to get a project going and this developed into Empowerment Squared

 

 

Leo believes that the only thing that cannot be taken away from you is your education and he believed that this was essential for his future happiness and progress through life. He noted that it is the children of immigrants who lead the way for their parents often translating, literally, and helping and guiding their parents through the transition into Canadian life, so it was the children that he wanted to support in this role. His project has been supporting 250 kids annually and so far they have had 1500 kids through the system.

 

He has a new project which is to set up a library and special community meeting place in Liberia. Amazingly after the catastrophic Civil War raged for a decade or so, there is no public library in Liberia. Leo’s project will be called the Liberian Learning Centre. The city of Monrovia has donated the land. Liberia has a woman president, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, the first African woman president. Monrovia is a democracy that is held on over two elections.  In 1989, before the Civil War, the US dollar and the Liberian dollar were on par, and their GNP was equal to that of Japan thanks to staggering wealth of minerals and rubber. Liberia was the oldest African democracy since 1847. Sadly, the Americans (through their corporations presumably), who had a lease for a hundred years, wantonly pillaged the wealth of Liberia giving very little back which seems to be their modus operandi around the world. The people decided not to wait until the end of the lease and revolted.

 

Currently there are so many people in desperate need of textbooks and reading material to support their dreams and goals and ventures such that there is one textbook for every 27 students,  and books are a black market commodity in Liberia.

 

Leo’s Learning Centre or Hub, will be a co-working space. There is no way for people to do their work or to bring their enterprises into existence and he describes so many entrepreneurs walking around with their work and proposals in briefcases but nowhere to meet. There is only one indoor centre that is so overpriced and overbooked that it is useless.

 

There will be three phases, each to be completed before the next start, to be sure of viability. The space will be for events, community meetings, and a library. There will be simple technologies to make this an effective space including specialised architecture allowing for natural airflow to meet the demands of their climate. They will have an extended roof to give shelter from the extensive rains but also to collect water. They will be experimenting with solar. Unfortunately there is no such project in Liberia now for a lack of infrastructure and support. Everything that gets built there will have to be sourced locally or at least 80%, in order to be able to fix it when it goes wrong..

 

The first phase will cost $500,000. $300,000 will come from elsewhere and $200,000 from Rotary. Sustainability will be key. They have so many components to develop including a print and graphics centre which is non-existent in Liberia. The charge is being led by the Rotary Club of Monrovia.

 

Another project they are supporting in Liberia is the production of oxygen which is virtually non-existent there with one tiny facility producing oxygen to be rationed out to hospitals. The Rotary club will stand behind the first ever formal oxygen plant. They are using Rotary International, regional and local to grow the money with an example of $10,000 growing through matching grants to $65,000. On top of that government funds will grow $40,000-$155,000.

 

So far all the Rotary clubs that Leo has visited are behind him. Before long he will be doing a bike ride, apparently he's never been on a bike before,  as a fundraiser and he feels confident that he will be able to achieve his goals.

 

Questions from the floor included one about security. There has been peace since 2005 with two successive democratic elections and the president has given her personal assurance that she is behind this project and it doesn't hurt to have the governor of the central bank as the Rotary club treasurer. Along with the Rotary club's stellar reputation, tremendous political will, any problems with corruption, which regrettably does exist, all permits should be relatively manageable.

 

People asked whether they could donate books but unfortunately that is a challenge: there is nowhere to put them. Any containers of books usually get snapped up into the black market. Luckily the time is coming when online access to books is becoming more possible in the community.

 

Leo ended up by saying that he's trying to harness the power of being crazy and believes that he can take on this project and run, and cycle, with it.

 

Anthony Ford-Jones