Remember! It's Rotary Foundation Month. We'll be featuring information for the foundation throughout the month of November.

Improving access to education through our Foundation It’s an astonishing figure: 57 million children worldwide are not in school. Improving access to education is a key to breaking the cycle of poverty, and Rotarians are working to do just that. Using grants from The Rotary Foundation, members partner with communities to provide affordable textbooks, to integrate technology into the classroom, and to ensure that students have access to clean water. See for yourself how the Foundation is changing the world through education. And help by promoting your club’s education-related activities and by donating during Rotary Foundation Month.

 

Expenses alert for U.S.-bound scholars Clubs and districts sponsoring global grants for scholarships should be aware of a change in procedure made by the Trustees that goes into effect in January. Under U.S. tax law, The Rotary Foundation must withhold tax from global grant scholarships awarded for study in the U.S. on any expenses beyond tuition, books, necessary equipment, and fees. Historically, the Foundation has been absorbing the cost of such withholdings, but beginning on 1 January, the amount will instead be deducted from the scholarship payment. So clubs and districts should advise scholars to limit their budgets to tuition, books, necessary equipment, and fees. Note, though, that this change doesn’t apply to U.S.-bound scholars from Japan, Canada, and Germany, who are funded through associate foundations in those countries.

 

 
 

Honourary Sunrise Rotarian, Hon Sybil Ionie McLaughlin, National Hero, last night at UCCI's Commencement Ceremony, was presented with the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa at UCCI’s Commencement Ceremony last month. Her membership in Rotary Sunrise was acknowledged at the ceremony. The following is a short biography of our national heroine.

 

 The Hon Mrs. Sybil Ione McLaughlin, MBE, JP, was born on the 24th day of August 1928 in Mobile, Alabama, to Caymanian parents Captain Charles Christopher Bush and Lottie Verona Bush.

 

When she was two years old, on the death of her father, Sybil came to Grand Cayman with her mother, sister and brother.

 

Miss Sybil attended Georgetown Primary School, and Baptist College in Managua Nicaragua. She worked with the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Justices and Vestry in 1945, and in 1959, when the Cayman Islands received its first written constitution, Sybil was appointed the first Clerk of the Legislative Assembly and also the Executive Council (now termed Cabinet). Following further constitutional advancement Sybil became the full-time Clerk of the Legislative Assembly and the first woman to hold this post in the Commonwealth. In 1966 she served a six month’s attachment to the House of Commons in London and an attachment to the Northern Ireland Parliament in Stormont plus, in 1971, attachments to the Parliaments of Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago. Sybil retired as Clerk of the Legislative Assembly in 1984.

 

In her capacity as Clerk of the Legislative Assembly Sybil became the first Secretary to the Cayman Islands Branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association from 1965 to 1984 and travelled extensively as Secretary to delegations from the Legislature attending Conferences within the Caribbean and other Commonwealth countries. She also travelled greatly as a regional representative of the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association, a post to which she was elected at a conference in Zimbabwe in 1994.

 

Among Sybil's outstanding achievements was her appointment as first Speaker of the Legislative Assembly on 15th February 1991. She served as Speaker until she retired in 1996. Prior to 1991, Commissioners and Governors presided in the Legislature. In 1996 Sybil received the country’s highest honour of National Hero in recognition of her contribution to Cayman’s parliamentary development as well as to community life.

 

Sybil married Delworth McLaughlin of East End who was at that time a Sergeant in the Police Force. In 1987 Delworth passed away, leaving Sybil to mourn with their two sons Christopher and Gordon.

 

                           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cayman Islands Special Needs Foundation Chair introduced our club to Dr. __________, who works at Seattle's Haring Center. Dr. _______ spoke to us about inclusivity in our schools. 

The Haring Center for Research and Training in Inclusive Education is an integrated early childhood program dedicated to improving the lives of children with developmental disabilities and other special needs as well as their families and those who work on their behalf. The center, located on the University of Washington's Seattle campus, is part of the university's College of Education and the Center on Human Development and Disability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Secretary Hazel Thanks The Club

 

Secretary Hazel thanked those members of Rotary who contributed to building this modest home for a family in Honduras. 

 

Robert has been close to Rotary Sunrise for a few years, but due to work travel commitments has not been able to commit time on a regular basis. About a year ago, Robert reduced the amount of travelling, and now lives and works here on Grand Cayman. He is a software engineer, working on iPhone and iPad apps from the comfort of his spare bedroom. Previously Robert’s work has always been with technology, mostly building products and services for Financial Services, he did also spend time working for a fashion publisher.

Robert runs and cycles to stay fit, and competes in local competitions. Many of us see him running in South Sound on our morning commutes, and we are getting used to seeing him donning his running shoes at the end of our morning meetings, to run home and start work.

 

I worked my way through college painting houses and when I left school that was the only thing I could make money at, so I painted houses and grew into a general contractor building custom homes in central Iowa. Spent a few years on a farm where I grew organic produce.  During the Farm Crisis of the 1980’s the bank decided farming was not for me.  So I went sailing.  I spent the next five years sailing and studying natural healing, graduating from the New Mexico School of Natural Therapeutics.
At a low point when I did not have the money for a bottom job on the boat I met Paul Berdelsky, who had been building tennis courts here for over twenty years as he was getting ready for another trip here.  I came down with him and after 4 months he announced it was his last trip and I could have the business if I wanted it. And that is how I got here 26 years ago.

 

 

 

 

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