Global Humanitarian Tim Miller on His Role as New Peace Corps Country Director for Sierra Leone
Our very special guest speaker for December 12, 2024, was former Sunriser Tim Miller. Tim joined Santa Rosa Sunrise in 2004 when he moved to Santa Rosa to become the Executive Director for the American Red Cross. He left the club to work in the Philippines. He later returned to Santa Rosa and became the Executive Director of West County Community Services and rejoined Rotary with the Russian River Club. Tim has now accepted a position as Peace Corps Country Director for Sierra Leone and will move to Sierra Leone shortly. Tim initially joined the Peace Corps after college at UC Santa Barbara and served in the Philippines from 1986 to 1988.
The Peace Corps was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. Its goals are to help interested countries in meeting their need for trained people, to promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served, and to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. Over 240,000 people have served in the Peace Corps. Volunteers are currently serving in 25 countries in Africa. Africa today has 54 countries, many with explosive growth and a very young population.
Sierra Leone is in West Africa and is the size of South Carolina. The population is about 70% Muslim and 25% Christian. Its capital is Freetown. Sierra Leone has had a history of political violence, including a civil war that ended in 2002, but has more recently been peaceful with a tradition of largely free elections and no religious strife. Sierra Leone had a transitory population until about 2,500 years ago. It was settled in the 18th century by African Americans who had fought for the British in the Revolutionary War. It was a British colony until 1961. Its primary language is English with Krio a secondary language. The county suffers from an unstable electrical grid: Tim told us that offshore Turkish ships with huge generators supply a portion of Freetown’s electricity. Only 26% of the population has electricity. Sierra Leone has the 3rd highest maternal mortality rate in the world and the 11th highest infant mortality rate. Its literacy rate is 49%.
The Peace Corps’ role in Sierra Leone is to focus on mortality and education. Volunteers teach and provide community health education. The Corps has 60 staff members in Sierra Leone. 57 of these are Sierra Leone nationals, 3 are U.S. Headquarters is in Freeport. Tim’s jobs will include managing the budget, relations with the government and staff, program implementation, and volunteer programming. There is a Rotary Club in Freetown and Tim expects to attend meetings.
Good luck, Tim, on this amazing opportunity. We know you are going to do a great job!
Click HERE to view a limited time recording of Tim's engaging program.
On a regular basis, our resident photo pro Warren Smith, submits pictures of what is going on at the weekly meetings. You can always find the most recent pictures at the websites photo journal called "Meeting Sighting" Please note that all the meeting photos for the entire Rotary year are at this location with the most recent on the last page.
Thanks for all the great pictures Warren!Link to Meeting Sightings. The most recent are on the last page!
Board of Directors Meeting Notes, December 10, 2024
A message from the President - New Weekly Meeting Venue!
I wanted to send a quick note to give those of you who weren't at the meeting this week an update on our search for a new venue.
When we found out that Franchetti's was closing we immediately formed a team to help us find a new location. The team was led by Peter Hoberg and included Tom Eakin, Bonny Landers, Merle Hayes, Rob Sanville, Stacy Andress-Drucker and me. I can't thank all of these people enough for jumping right in and finding some location alternatives.
The committee came up with 15 variables that included must-have (e.g. parking) and nice-to-have needs. Among the needs was the opportunity to continue to supply the breakfast as we do now versus moving to a catered breakfast. They also gathered venue ideas from the club members, our board and past presidents and ended up with 38 venue options to research. From that list the team narrowed it down to 10 that we thought could possibly work for our club.
The team went out and visited each location, gathered cost information and made sure we understood the pros and cons of each site. From this effort, 3 venues were identified as strong options which included Chops Teen Center, Bennett Valley Golf Course and Epicenter. The main difference was that BV Golf Course and Epicenter were a catered breakfast which would increase the cost, and Chops Teen Center would allow us to continue with our current breakfast model and cost.
At the board meeting on Tuesday, December 10, 2024, Peter Hoberg recommended to the board moving to Chops Teen Center. After further discussion, the majority of the board supported the recommendation. On Thursday, December 12, 2024, I presented the recommendation to the club and opened it up for discussion. There were very few questions and great support for the idea. Some of the key reasons for choosing Chops were:
•central location
•able to keep the same model and keep the costs similar to what they are now
•ability to make the transition relatively easily
•we would be supporting a nonprofit in the area and through our weekly rent provide them with committed revenue.
Breakfast service would continue to be provided by club volunteers and would be similar in quality to what we have been doing.
Our next step is to finalize the decision with a board vote which will take place this week. Then we will finalize agreements and plan the transition details to prepare for our first meeting on January 9, 2025.
If you have any questions or feedback, please make sure you contact Peter Hoberg.
(Submitted by Peter Treleaven for Dr Dave and a few of us others who delight in word plays).
A man went to his dentist because he feels something wrong in his mouth. The dentist examines him and says, "That new upper plate I put in for you six months ago is eroding. What have you been eating?"
The man replies, "all I can think of is that about four months ago my wife made some asparagus and put some stuff on it that was delicious...Hollandaise sauce. I loved it so much I now put it on everything -- meat, toast, fish, vegetables.
"Well," says the dentist, "that's probably the problem. Hollandaise sauce is made with lots of lemon juice, which is highly corrosive. It's eaten away your upper plate. I'll make you a new plate, and this time use chrome."
"Why chrome?" asks the patient.
To which the dentist replies, "It's simple. Everyone knows that there's no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise."
Musician and Rotary Peace Fellow David LaMotte wants us to listen more closely to the stories we’re telling. He will perform at the 2025 Rotary Convention.
By Geoffrey Johnson
David LaMotte understands the power of a good story. Need proof? Look no further than the opening chapter of his book, You Are Changing the World: Whether You Like It or Not. There you will find the gripping account of a sudden illness that, in 2001, seemed like a stroke and left the 32-year-old LaMotte incapable of speaking and feeling sensation in his extremities. The things taken from him, as he explains in the book, were his words and his hands, a catastrophic loss for a man who made his living, and found spiritual sustenance, as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter.
In 2009, David LaMotte stepped away from a successful career as a musician, singer, and songwriter to accept a Rotary Peace Fellowship at Australia’s University of Queensland.
Image credit: Juan Diego Reyes
Spoiler alert: LaMotte survived the ordeal, though that should be evident given that, 23 years later, he’s still around to discuss what happened. “As a professional musician, it’s easy to get self-absorbed,” the Rotary Peace Fellow says today. “What happened to me in 2001 made me reevaluate where I was putting my energy. I resolved to turn my focus outward.”
But if LaMotte understands the power of a good story, he also recognizes the importance of closely examining the stories we tell, what we hope to accomplish with them, and the truths they contain or perhaps, unintentionally, conceal. To ensure that people make good decisions, he says, it’s important to be cognizant of the stories we’re telling and the stories we’re hearing.
David LaMotte
Rotary Peace Fellow, University of Queensland, Australia, 2009-10
You Are Changing the World: Whether You Like It or Not, 2023 (2nd edition)
“Why Heroes Don’t Change the World,” TEDx Talk, 2024
Divergent passions
But before delving into all that, here’s a quick look at LaMotte’s own story. The youngest of four children, he grew up in Sarasota, Florida. “We lived in the manse across the street from the church where my father was the Presbyterian minister. I was introduced to lots of different kinds of people at dinner.” Those meals, he says, imbued him with a “desire for connection across the lines that divide us.”
LaMotte, who will speak and perform at the 2025 Rotary Convention in Calgary, also grew up listening to the music his older siblings liked, especially the singer-songwriters Neil Young, Jackson Browne, and Carole King. He began playing guitar in his teens, confining his playing to his bedroom. Finally, in college at James Madison University in Virginia, he began appearing at open mic nights. “I moved from performing covers to playing songs that I had made up,” he recalls. “It meant a lot to me that people were touched by my songs.”
He graduated from college with two deep but divergent passions: music and mediation, an effective method of conflict resolution. Torn between the two, LaMotte gave himself two years to make it as a musician, which, against all odds (to hear him tell it), he succeeded in doing. Today he has 13 albums to his credit and has performed more than 3,500 concerts around the world, some with the trio Abraham Jam, a musical collaboration between a Jew (Billy Jonas), a Muslim (Dawud Wharnsby), and a Christian (LaMotte). Today he identifies as a “Quakertyrian.” “I’m a passionate amateur theologian, and my spirituality is pretty broad,” he says. “I have a foot planted in both religious traditions”: the Presbyterian teachings of his youth and the Quaker precepts that have informed his adulthood.
And then, having succeeded as a musician, LaMotte set his career aside to study at Australia’s University of Queensland as a Rotary Peace Fellow. Accompanied by his wife, Deanna LaMotte, and their infant son, Mason, he spent a year and a half earning a master’s in international studies with a focus on peace and conflict resolution. “I was keenly aware of the privilege that the fellowship was,” says LaMotte, who praises the Rotary members of District 7670 (North Carolina) for making his fellowship possible and the members of his Queensland cohort for enriching the experience. “They were all extraordinary people, in midcareer and with a track record. They already had a lot to contribute, and I learned much from them.”
Puncturing the hero myth
Today, LaMotte continues to work with Senderos Guatemala (which translates to Guatemala Pathways), the arts, education, and mentoring program that he and Deanna founded after honeymooning in Guatemala. He also devotes time to public speaking engagements, including a recent TEDx Talk in Asheville, North Carolina (near his home in Black Mountain), that has accumulated more than 50,000 views online.
In his recent TEDx Talk, David LaMotte contends that movements, not individual heroes acting on their own, solve large-scale challenges.
Courtesy of David LaMotte
Called “Why Heroes Don’t Change the World,” the 18-minute speech, in addition to confirming LaMotte’s mesmerizing storytelling skills, allows him to challenge a predominant storyline that he fears undercuts our ability to accomplish effective change. (LaMotte considers the same topic in his book, which has been used in some college courses.) Too often, he says, we rely on the hero narrative, where “somebody really special” comes forward to “do something dramatic in a moment of crisis and then the problem is fixed.” Not only does that type of narrative absolve the rest of us from having to do anything other than wait, watch, and applaud, it doesn’t accurately reflect the way things really work. “I have yet to find one single example of this actually happening in the whole history of the world, not one where some extraordinary person ... effectively addressed a large-scale problem by themselves,” he says. “It has simply never happened.”
Returning to the story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, nearly 70 years ago, LaMotte recounts lesser-known details about the network of support behind the boycott, unfolding a more complex tale that relies on what he calls the movement narrative. The upshot is that the boycott succeeded because of ongoing efforts by a group of well-prepared and well-organized people. “They did not wait until the fire broke out to build the fire station,” he says, speaking metaphorically. “They had been doing the work for years. They were ready to go.”
LaMotte finishes by offering some words of wisdom and posing a question. “The truth is it’s not naive to think you can change the world,” he says. “It’s naive to think you can possibly be in the world and not change it. Everything you do changes the world whether you like it or not. We need you. So which changes will you make?”
This story originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Rotary magazine.
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