From RI December 2022 Read More Online 

Rotary projects around the globe By , December 2022

Italy 

Up to 169 million tons of unused food is wasted in the European Union every year, and only about 40 percent of Italians take home their uneaten restaurant food.

Working with the office of agriculture and food in the Piedmont region, the Rotary Club of Acqui Terme launched a project in April to encourage people to take home their leftovers.
 
It offers recyclable and compostable boxes and wine bags to restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and farmhouses.
 
Rotarians enlist members of the hospitality industry to reduce food waste and develop awareness of the value of quality foods produced by local farmers, says Giacomo Guerrina, immediate past president of the club.
 

Mexico

The Rotary Club of Guadalajara Internacional in March began training girls from the city’s underserved communities in the Korean martial art of taekwondo.

 
The Reconoce Tu Poder, or Recognize Your Power, program has trained dozens of girls, says creator Bertha Sánchez García, the club’s immediate past president. Sánchez García, a brown belt in the discipline, and Zulema Fernández Sariñana, a member of the Rotary Club of Guadalajara, developed a manual and a training regimen with the assistance of Patricia Mariscal Alcalá, an Olympian who is one of Mexico’s most accomplished female taekwondo athletes.
 
“At the end of the program, each girl knows that she is capable of knocking down her obstacles by breaking a board with a kick,” says Sánchez García.
 
The effort has been replicated by clubs in two other Mexican towns as well as in India.

United States

The Rotary Club of Conway-Morning, Arkansas, is aiming to deliver birthday messages to every child and young adult in the state’s foster care system.

Between January and September, more than 2,100 cards had been mailed, with an anticipated 3,700 individuals to be reached annually.
 
“These children already face great uncertainty and disappointments in their lives, and I strongly believe that to consistently remember them on their special day would give them hope to go on, and to show that others around them genuinely care for them,” says Mike Altland, a club member who started the campaign.
 
A dozen or so Rotarian volunteers coordinate writing and forwarding cards to foster homes with the Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services and The Call, a statewide nonprofit that works with churches to match children with families.
 
American Greetings, which operates a production facility in the area, donated a supply of cards and envelopes expected to last nearly two years, Altland says.
Sponsors