Former serviceman Dr Phil Harding started the morning off with a special invocation that recognised our fallen at Gallipoli and on the Western Front in the week of its 100th anniversary. Last week, Phil attended a book launch for "Heroism, Humanity and Sacrifice" - which commemorates medical practitioners in various wars - between 1899-1975. Phil is listed in the book, which was passed around at the meeting.
RYPEN SPONSORSHIP
Director Youth Services John Wotherspoon received a lovely email from Susan Clift - the RYPEN/RYLA Chair for D9500 - following our Club's $610 sponsorship of two RYPEN attendees. In part it reads:
Dear John and the Rotary Club of Adelaide Light,
Thank you for your recent support and sponsorship of Rotary District 9500s recent 2015 Rotary Youth Program of Enrichment (RYPEN) held on the 10-12 April at Nunyara Conference Centre, Belair.
A great time was had by all of the forty two 14-17 year old awardees from all over South Australia in attendance and we have received much positive feedback including:
"it was the best 3 days of the year", "this was an excellent experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. At first I was shocked by the diversity of cultures coming from the sheltered rural area I am from, but it was a great experience to meet so many like-minded people. So thank you!", and "RYPEN has been an incredible experience, coming here and not knowing anyone and feeling so included and in such a supportive environment. I want to say thank you to Rotary".
Your club sponsored Ali Abbas who lives in Clearview and Fatima Vaziritabrizi who lives in Payneham. Ali and Fatima are both students at the Adelaide Secondary School of English. The school is also a great supporter of our programs by providing RYPEN awardees. Their students are new arrivals to Australia who often improve their English there before going into a mainstream school. Feedback we have received from the school is that the students attending RYPEN integrate much more quickly into Australian culture and have greater networks with other young people they wouldn't have otherwise been in contact with. Thanks for helping to support these students!
RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) applications and Club Sponsorship ($650) are now open for 11-17 July 2015! Our committee will be in contact shortly about RYLA but if you have an 18-25 year old with leadership potential to sponsor please get them (and your club) to register.
Yours in Rotary, Susan Clift
(We will be inviting Fatima and Ali to our Club as speakers in coming months.)
OTHER MATTERS
Our thanks to Paul Richardson for participating in "show and tell" at last week's meeting - and passing around a jar containing his gall stones. He said as they cost him $1000, he wanted to get some value of out of paying for their removal from his body!
Keep the date free for our Club's Quiz Night on Friday 12 June at the Hungarian Club in Prescott Terrace Norwood. Arrival time is 7.00pm for a 7.30pm start. Let your friends know the date so that they'll be available to join your table.
We had a good week for bottles and can collection with $85 raised. Also Helen Angove gave the Club a $50 donation from bottles and cans that she had collected. Thanks Helen.
Our Board meeting has been deferred until Tuesday 12 May due to a number of Board member's (and the President's absence) next week.
GUEST SPEAKER - Operations Inspector Sandy
Police Inspector Sandy has a long association with Rotary - and is currently a Rotarian with the RC of Hyde Park - but before that he attended RYLA, was a member of the former RC of Adelaide Daybreak and was a Rotary Peace Scholar.
Sandy works in the Police Department's Strategy, Policy and Programs Sector which includes units such as crime prevention, youth programs, corporate policy, legislative and multicultural. He is part of the crime prevention unit.
Sandy centred his talk on terrorism, radicalisation, freedom fighters and extremism. He mentioned that more often now, disaffected and disconnected young people are being targeted and drawn in through social media propaganda by organisations such as IS (the violent breakaway group from Al Qaeda). IS has significant resources - even though it has only 30,000 fighters - due to their stealing funds from banks, oil water and enforced taxation in the towns that they have taken by force.
It is less well known that any person who states their desire to leave IS due to disillusionment or other reasons, is most often killed before they can leave.
Syria with its 60 million refugees after its four years of war now has the dubious title of having the most refugees in history.
The propaganda sites for terrorism are often hard to find - as they are listed on the "dark net" - a tortuous path of rerouting servers. It's often better to leave sites up so that they can be monitored. A great deal of counter-terrorism is conducted on-line so that truthful information on these extremist organisations and their atrocities can be relayed to deter people wishing to join for perceived excitement or "power". They also debunk false teachings, and advocate peace and humanity.
Sandy said it's necessary to raise awareness in the community so that people can detect early signs of terrorist sympathies, and it's also important to deter Aussies from going abroad with the intention of joining a terrorist group.
He said Rotary has a role in preventing terrorism by become more inclusive and by:
* building two way understanding
* engaging with business leaders to increase its diverse membership
* funding and supporting youth programs ie RYPEN, RYLA etc so that all nationalities can learn about and from each other
* funding Peace Fellowships
* including various religions and minority groups within Rotary Clubs or our projects
* continue to influence change at a local level - and be inclusive.
Club members thanked Sandy for his insightful talk.
