MEMBERSHIP MINUTE – Ways to grow, what other clubs are doing.
“If we want to reverse the decline in membership that many clubs have been experiencing the last 10 years, we need to have a cause that engages our members and communities. With this in mind, our Rotary club created a focus group three years ago that searched for an issue that would make a real difference in our community. After carefully consideration we decided to adopt a project to address domestic violence and family abuse. Since our involvement in this project, we have grown from 31 members to 76 members.”
– David Harmon, president, Rotary Club of Ballina on Richmond, New South Wales, Australia
Rotary membership relates to our experience and has an impact on fundraising. Here is an excerpt from a club that more than doubled their membership and how they did it. The full article is on the blog. Take a minute to read about this club and all the interesting topics at the Rotary Blog. https://blog.rotary.org/
PEACE ACADEMY: What the latest IEP report says about world peace
Posted on
By Michael Collins, Executive Director Americas, Institute for Economics and Peace
In June, the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) released its 15th annual Global Peace Index, one of the leading measures of peacefulness globally. Since 2017, the IEP and Rotary have been in a strategic partnership, providing members with new tools to effectively build peace in communities around the world. It has been my pleasure to work with Rotary members as I have been involved in the process of creating a number of global peace indexes.
What can we glean from the latest report? Well, there’s good news and bad news. Overall, the 2021 Global Peace Index reveals a world in which decades-old conflicts are beginning to abate. But at the same time, civil unrest and political instability are creating new challenges as the world looks toward a recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. For the ninth time in 12 years, the level of global peacefulness has declined, but it was also the smallest decline recorded by the index.
The Pillars of Peace and Rotary’s areas of focus
Peace is much more than the absence of violence. The Rotary Positive Peace Academyintroduces the concept of Positive Peace, which describes the attitudes, structures, and institutions that underpin and sustain peaceful societies. The IEP has developed a conceptual framework, known as the Pillars of Peace, that outlines a system of eight factors that work together to build positive peace. Derived from a statistical analysis of over 24,000 datasets, the Pillars of Peace provides a roadmap to overcome adversity and conflict, and to build lasting peace.
The report also notes that peace deteriorates more rapidly than it can be built. While this may be disheartening for some, I see it as a beacon, a challenge that Rotary members have met head on for more than 100 years as they embrace peace as a cornerstone of Rotary’s humanitarian mission.
In order to help make the concept more tangible for members, Rotary created the Positive Peace Activator Program in 2020. By 2024, 180 new Positive Peace activators will be trained in six regions of the world. They complete a 20-hour training program and emerge ready to work with clubs and districts as project consultants, trainers, and speakers at Rotary events. Today there are cadres of activators in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, and Europe. Training will begin soon in Africa and Asia.
While peace is a complex issue, we’ve never had so many tools and as good a framework to measure our progress. Please join us as we continue to build on our partnership to create a lasting and positive impact on communities around the world.
Learn more about the Rotary-IEP Partnership or contact project coordinator Summer Lewis.
TAKE THE COURSE- FREE
Access the Rotary Positive Peace Academy now: Created by internationally renowned think-tank the Institute for Economics & Peace, this free short course introduces the transformational framework Positive Peace. Learn how Positive Peace is associated with better performance on ecological sustainability, improved wellbeing, stronger GDP growth rates and better business outcomes. https://www.positivepeace.academy/rotary
In a time of separation, our winning photographers used their cameras to make connections
It was a challenging year for photographers. Once the pandemic hit, travel plans had to be changed or canceled. That was reflected in many of the submissions for Rotary magazine’s 2021 photo awards: Many more photos than usual were taken close to home, sometimes as close as the backyard. We did see breathtaking images of some photographers’ journeys, many from the days before the pandemic limited travel. Others took this year to experiment with extreme close-ups of a flower petal or a bird in flight. Many photos captured the way COVID-19 has transformed our world and our daily lives. And, perhaps reflecting the fundamental optimism of Rotarians, there were many images of hope, joy, and simple beauty.
Our judge, photojournalist Barbara Davidson, evaluated the photographs with an exacting eye. “I look for use of color as an element of composition, I look for degrees of tones in black-and-white images, and I look for strong composition and an advanced level of photography as craft,” Davidson says. But the technical achievement has to be in service of something. “The images that stand out invite one to linger on the photograph and successfully inspire an emotional response.”
In addition to the winners and honorable mentions that appear in this issue, the magazine will feature more of the photos submitted by our readers throughout the coming year.
First place
Photographer: Hansruedi Frutiger Rotary Club of Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Location: Yuanyang County, Yunnan, China
Second place
Photographer: Luca Venturi Rotary Club of Siena Est, Italy Location: Siena, Italy
Third place
Photographer: Randy Nickerson Rotary Club of Oshawa, Ontario Location: Longsheng County, China
9 Honorable mentions
Photographer: In-Hyuk Song - Rotary Club of Daegu-Dongshin, Korea. Location: Daegu, Korea
Photographer: Krysia Mager - Rotary Club of Batavia, New York. Location: Monterey, California
Photographer: Ting Yu Yu, Spouse of Yi-Cheng Chen of the Rotary Club of Taipei Asia Link, Taiwan. Location: Miaoli County, Taiwan
Photographer: M A Taher - Rotary Club of Sonargaon Dhaka, Bangladesh. Location: Sonargaon, Bangladesh
Photographer: Luke Stango - Rotary Club of Jackson, New Jersey. Location: Havana, Cuba
Photographer: Beate Rosalie Holzwarth - Rotary Club of Bad Dürkheim, Germany. Location: Northern Tanzania
Photographer: Rick Rogoway - Rotary Club of Clackamas, Oregon. Location: Sunriver, Oregon
Photographer: Geetanjali Dhar - Rotary Club of E-Connect, India. Location: Mechuka Valley, India
Photographer: Steve Begnoche - Rotary Club of Ludington, Michigan. Location: Ludington, Michigan
Olympic Stories - Save the Date for Author David A.F. Sweet
The Olympics are coming up and on all our minds. “After a yearlong postponement due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Games are set to kick off July 23 Tokyo, despite the ongoing spread of COVID-19 and lingering concerns in Japan. Though the Olympics will be taking place in 2021 due to the postponement, they will continue to be officially branded as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.”
Join our Rotary Club on Tuesday, August 17th for a special presentation with Author David Sweet to learn more about another unprecedented moment in Olympic history! Below are excerpts from Sweet's book and from Amazon books about his experience.
“Imagine you’re a young American who’s celebrated as one of the finest basketball players our country has to offer. You’re going to fly across the Atlantic Ocean for the first time -- destination Munich, West Germany, for the Olympics.
But in little more than a week, fellow athletes are murdered steps from your bedroom. A few days later, you are victorious not once but twice in the same gold-medal game — yet an overbearing administrator strolls from the stands and nullifies your victories. The game haunts you to this day -- and you and your teammates remain the only Olympic athletes to reject their medals.”
That’s as long as it took to sear the souls of a dozen young American men, thanks to the craziest, most controversial finish in the history of the Olympics—the 1972 gold-medal basketball contest between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s two superpowers at the time.
The U.S. team, whose unbeaten Olympic streak dated back to when Adolf Hitler reigned over the Berlin Games, believed it had won the gold medal that September in Munich—not once, but twice. But it was the third time the final seconds were played that counted.
What happened? The head of international basketball—flouting rules he himself had created—trotted onto the court and demanded twice that time be put back on the clock. A referee allowed an illegal substitution and an illegal free-throw shooter for the Soviets while calling a slew of late fouls on the U.S. players. The American players became the only Olympic athletes in the history of the games to refuse their medals.
Of course, the 1972 Olympics are remembered primarily for a far graver matter, when eleven Israeli team members were killed by Palestinian terrorists, stunning the world and temporarily stopping the games. One American player, Tommy Burleson, had a gun to his head as the hostages were marched past him before their deaths.
Through interviews with many of the American players and others, the author relates the horror of terrorism, the pain of losing the most controversial championship game in sports history to a hated rival, and the consequences of the players’ decision to shun their Olympic medals to this day.
Contact David to order a copy of his book, and he will also sign it! Email him at dafsweet@aol.com for details.
July 28th Shift #1: 6:30-8:00 AM or Shift #2: 12:30 -2:00 PM
August 25th Shift #1: 6:30-8:00 AM or Shift #2: 12:30 -2:00 PM
September 29th Shift #1: 6:30-8:00 AM or Shift #2: 12:30 -2:00 PM
Barrington Breakfast is looking for clubs to collaborate on an initiative to sponsor a Bystander Training Session offered through Asian Americans Advancing Justice/Chicago. They’re hoping to find nine clubs to contribute $250 to co-sponsor, and then to participate in, a private training session. Barrington Breakfast is a newly-designated Peacebuilder club (by the Rotary Action Group for Peace), and has a very active Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Contact Suzanne Gibson or Maria Peterson with questions or to commit.
2855 Milwaukee Ave
Northbrook, IL 60062 United States of America
We are meeting in-person at Allgauer's at the Hilton in Northbrook. Join us! Contact webmaster@northbrookrotary.org to join us. IMPORTANT NOTE: No Meeting on Sept. 7, 2021
First place
