A Hong Kong Rotarian
Jamie Tripp welcomed Darren Todd back to Midland - he grew up and went to school here. Darren went on the the U of Waterloo and Queen's and then worked as an Assistant Curator at Ste. Marie, at the OPP Museum and as a teacher in Columbia, on Baffin Island and at the Delia School of Canada in Hong Kong where he also plays in the Pipe and Drum band.
Darren brought greetings from District 3450 which covers 63 clubs from HK to Mongolia. He's been a member of the Quarry Bay Club for 3 years and is still adjusting to different ways of doing things - it pays to sit and listen for a while. The first Club in mainland China was recently chartered. Hong Kong is a special administrative region which stll follows the British court and legislation systems introduced when it was a colony but Big Brother certainly exists and recent tensions have resulted in Chinese warships visiting - though the US fleet shows up too. Chinese soldiers are stationed in HK. Canada has strong ties there - it was mostly Canadian troops that were trapped there by the Japanese invasion and they are honoured during the HK Remembrance Day - and many residents have family in Canada. Canadians make up the second largest group of expats - 100,000.
HK is a group of islands plus the New Territories which is on the mainland and acts as a hub for trade, shipping and finance. There isn't much manufacturing but there are a lot of deals made. There is growing competition from Vietnam and Singapore but the harbour and the new airport are excellent and encourage traffic. 7 million people live in 425 sq. miles. In comparison, 6 million live in the GTA which encompases 7,125 sq. miles. It's a community of villages, each with its own customs and traditions. The Pipe and Drum band he's joined has only 2 expats - him and a lawyer from Edinburgh - and his Chinese colleagues encourage eating out a lot and joining in local festivals, especially the Harvest Festival which involves a 30 metre dragon covered in incense over 3 nights.
His Rotary Club is the smallest in HK with only 9 members and they pride themselves on their hands on projects. They are a diverse group but being small they can meet or email and come to a decision quickly. Their long term project is to try to rehabilitate a centre for challenged adults. They do most of the maintenance, buying the materials - lots and lots of paint - and supplying the labour. As the school Darren teaches at works on the Ontario curriculum the students are also required to do 40 hours of volunteer work and he arranged to have many of them help the Club. Over 120 students take part of the 8 months and they often find that they enjoy it. Being the children of privilege many of them have never worked with their hands and have to start from scratch but it is a great experience for them. They also meet the residents of the facility which is an education for them.
The other project is to support other Clubs in the District which have been helping a group of villages, 9 of them, in Szechuan which were constructed to house lepers and which have become leper ghettos. Leprosy is now curable and it is not contagious and the incidence of the disease is declining so the focus of the Clubs now is encouraging good hygience, nutrition, sustainable trades and the provision of prosthetics. They sell the food they grow to buy other necessities but leave themselves short and so they suffer from malnutrition. Darren distributed examples of needlework the Clubs are trying to develop a market for. He also presented the Club with a banner from Quarry Bay.
Next week is a Club Assembly. There will be some assignments to Committees - consider if you'd like to join one.