Rotary's Growing Maternal & Child Health Initiative in Uganda
Richard is part of Bulamu Healthcare, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to treat the sick and strengthen health systems serving Africans most in need.
In the presentation, Richard will share that newborn mortality is the number one cause of death in Uganda, with maternal mortality also a major problem. He will discuss how a group of 20+ Rotary clubs in Uganda and the U.S. are working to equip and provide training leading to better newborn and maternal care for more than 60 maternity facilities throughout Uganda that deliver more than 50,000 babies per year.
About Richard Siegler:
Richard Siegler is a humanitarian who has helped to lead multiple organizations in East and West Africa since 2004. After college, from 2004 to 2007, Richard served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Benin. While in Benin, he raised funding and built a medical clinic in a rural area of 25,000 people that lacked access to health care. After earning a master's degree at UC-Davis, Richard moved to Rwanda as a university lecturer and Fulbright Scholar. He then co-founded the Bridge2Rwanda Scholars program, based in Kigali, which he led from 2011 to 2017. Since 2011, this program has successfully prepared more than 350 outstanding high school graduates from Rwanda, Burundi, DR-Congo, and South Sudan. These high-achieving African students have now accepted $80 million in full university scholarships to the U.S., a more than 10x increase compared to the previous decade.
Today, as CEO of Bulamu Healthcare, Richard leads a team of Ugandan managers and partners with the mission to transform healthcare for the rural poor in Africa. Since 2016, Bulamu's teams have provided care free of charge to more than 300,000 general medicine and Maternal and Child Health patients. Bulamu has treated and supported care for more than 10,000 surgery patients, and more, all with a budget of about $1.7 million per year.
Neil Steinberg
APRIL 18TH
Hear author Neil Steinberg - Columnist, Chicago Sun-Times - and contributor to Rotary Magazine share:
"How to Defang Critics: Lessons from Rotary's past"
In the 1920s, author Sinclair Lewis parodied Rotary in his best-selling books. Rather than complain, Rotary laughed along, invited him to contribute to their magazine, and ended up nearly taking credit for his Nobel Prize in Literature. A model that anyone can use when dealing with criticism.
History is an interesting place and not something to be afraid of, even when it serves up negative information;
Criticism can be a valuable learning experience;
When writing or communicating any message, edginess can be judiciously used to draw attention.
Neil Steinberg is on staff at the Chicago Sun-Times, and the last general interest daily news columnist working at a newspaper in Chicago. A contributor to many major publications, from Esquire to Rolling Stone to the Washington Post, he began writing for Rotary Magazine in September and his article on suicide and handguns is slated to run in August.
The author of nine books, his latest, "Every Goddamn Day," based on his blog of the same name, was published in October by the University of Chicago Press and includes a brief history of the founding of Rotary.
HYBRID Meeting see LINK below for April 18th
To Lunch Club & Satellite Club Members:
April 25th
D'Agonstino's
at 241 S. Milwaukee Ave.,
just south of Dundee Rd,
5:30 -7 p.m.
This will be a club "social" meeting that will include dinner, and games!
This is an in-person meeting - NOT a hybrid meeting.
Please make sure you let Andy & Mike know you will be attending as we must provide a head count!
We will meet to socialize at 5:30 PM, with formal meeting to begin promptly at 6 PM. We will feast on pizza, Caesar salad and soft drinks, with cookies, brownies, coffee and tea for desert. Cash bar will also available. Following the conclusion of the formal meeting at 7 PM, we will play bingo,
hosted by that renowned entertainer Mitch Portugal.
Call me with any comment or questions and have a great day and weekend too.
Whether you are taking on next year's leadership role for the first time, or you are a seasoned veteran, or you are someone who is interested in finding out about club leadership roles please plan to join us on
April 29th from 9 to noon at Harper College.
(This year's spring training will be 100% in person)
We will start with an opening general session, featuring incoming Rotary International President Gordon McInally followed by role-based elective breakout sessions where we will review roles and responsibilities and share ideas. This will be followed by an optional session for clubs that want to do internal planning for next year.
Rotary projects around the globe - April 2023 By Brad Webber
United States
Members of the Rotary Club of Kaka‘ako Eco, Hawaii, tossed 5,000 mud balls filled with beneficial organisms into the Ala Wai Canal in Waikiki as part of a rehabilitation effort to make the waterway fishable and swimmable. The healthy bacteria in the genki balls — made with soil, molasses, rice bran, and water — digest and oxygenate sludge at the bottom of the canal (genki means healthy in Japanese). In March 2022, more than 200 volunteers, including club members and friends, made the balls, advised by the Genki Ala Wai Project.
Three weeks later, they threw the fermented genki balls into the waterway. Donors paid $5 per ball to defray some of the cost. “A lot of kids came out and we had canoes come through the canal to help throw the balls,” says Club President Jenny Do. “We blew the air horn and then hundreds of balls just went into the Ala Wai Canal.”
Canada
Guelph, Ontario, is one of 25 Canadian municipalities to sign a pledge with the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, to welcome people who have fled countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine. In December, the Rotary Club of Guelph Trillium launched a drive to collect winter clothing donations for refugees.
“People were so generous,” says Club President Anne Day. The club placed a bin at a mall, and donors loaded it up with more than 70 coats, 109 hats, and 52 scarves — many of them with the price tags still attached. The club also teamed up with appliance company Danby to collect furniture and household equipment for the newcomers.
United Kingdom
One coin at a time, a whimsical contraption celebrates a legendary Scottish locomotive while raising thousands of dollars for charity. Ken Wilson, a past president of the Rotary Club of Inverness Loch Ness, led the effort to commission and install the Flying Scotsman Automata in a local shopping center in 2016. A contribution of about $1 activates the complex mechanism, which depicts a kilted train conductor in an engine on a track trailed by bobbing carriages. Inside are characters that include a couple knitting and drinking tea, a pilot flying a plane, and Nessie, of course, whose tail spins to the musical accompaniment.
The club has maintained the device and collected about $27,000, allowing it to disburse more than $350 in grants each month. “It has enabled Rotary Loch Ness to help nearly 60 local charities,” says the mall’s former manager, Jackie Cuddy, “which is amazing.”
Neil Steinberg 
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