From George Gehard, Sustainable Global Coalition
February 5, 2020
Dear Coalition members,
Having recently returned from Guatemala I believe it is correct to provide an update to our member clubs. Please share this with your membership as you think appropriate. There were actually three phases to this trip and I will comment briefly on each, but first I would like to thank Terri Smiley for recruiting participants and handling the logistics. Making these arrangements can be a challenge and Terri did a masterful job of making it all work. I would also like to congratulate the Kalispell club on its 100th anniversary, a milestone to be celebrated.
Our trip consisted of three phases: Project Fair, Maya Pedal, and visits to project communities. I will touch briefly on all three.
Project Fair: The fair began on Thursday evening and ran through Saturday, the prime purpose being to match projects with potential contributors. Our purpose in attending was to find partners willing to invest in the La Vega project and Mark Rohweder came away with a list of individuals who showed interest. These people are being contacted for possible contributions as I write this summary. However, there were a great many ‘vendors’ so the competition for resources was intense. But Mark is a great salesman and I am optimistic we will be successful. The venue and the weather were fantastic.
On Sunday we visited Maya Pedal and the community of Corralles, which could be an opportunity for another water project. Pure Water for the World will be installing water filters in this community and we were able to witness a filter being installed in one of the homes. I was very impressed with both the filter system as well as the hygiene-training program that accompanies it. This is a program we can learn from. Darrell Choate, a Bozeman Rotarian and former board member of PWFTW accompanied us on this trip. At the conclusion of our community visit we had lunch at Maya Pedal, after which we returned to Antigua, the location of the Project Fair.
On Monday we departed on the bus for Mazatenango, checked into our hotel and had supper and fellowship with the Mazatenango Rotary Club. For this part of the trip we were joined by other Montana Rotarians plus Rotarians from California, Washington and Oregon. On Tuesday and Wednesday we visited our three current projects, the highlight for me being the formal initiation of the project at Pasac. We were also able to squeeze in a couple of early morning meetings regarding the La Vega project, one with the governance trainer from the Mazatenango club and the other with Fundazucar, our NGO partner.
At this time I believe it would be appropriate to acknowledge three Rotarians who truly have lived the Rotary motto of ‘Service Above Self”. Mark Rohweder and Terri Smiley chose to undertake an enormous challenge with the La Vega project, a project I truly believed would be beyond our funding capability. Yet here we are three years later within shouting distance of the $315,000.00 budget. Mark’s overall leadership and funding skills combined with Terri’s technical writing skills are proving to be a formidable combination of talent and persistence that will inevitably lead to success.
I would also like to acknowledge Mick Shea from the Kootenai Valley club who was the grant writer for both the El Progreso and Pasac projects. I am personally aware of the hundreds of hours Mick spent on these projects and truly regret he was unable to attend the celebration marking the beginning of the Pasac project.
Too often leaders like Terri, Mark, and Mick slip under the radar in our clubs simply because they do not seek the spotlight: We would do well to recognize them.
