Leo Seguin                                     Dr. Jerry Lowney
 

 
 
The Rotary Zone 24-32 Donald MacRae Peace Award is an annual award presented to recipients from each of Zone 24 and Zone 32, to recognize and honor an individual or organization for outstanding achievement in international service.  The Award reflects the ideals of Rotary as expressed in the Fourth Object of Rotary, which is: The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
 

Click to visit the Donald McRae Award site page 
for information on the Award and previous recipients


Biography: Rotarian Leo Seguin
Rainbow for the Future
2017 Zone 24 Donald MacRae Peace Award
 
 
Leo Seguin, a past president of the Westlock RC in Alberta (D-5370), has spent 30 years improving lives in Ethiopia.  Leo’s involvement dates to the mid-80s famine that struck that country. 
Through Rainbow for the Future, an Alberta-based organization Leo started in 2004 to focus on development work, he has been instrumental in raising $10 million that has helped one million people in Ethiopia by focusing on improved food security, clean water, schools and medical equipment.  The organization also stresses education and healthcare, especially for girls and women.
One of the first projects undertaken by the club was to fund a hostel for girls and young women.  Because Ethiopia’s Karayu people follow the rains in search of fodder for their animals, the girls are not able to go to school, but instead, they marry at a very early age. Rainbow for the Future and Westlock Rotary built the hostel so the girls can pursue an education and delay marriage. 
Leo shares the story of his work in his book, Where a Bird Meets a Fish in the Sky.
 
 

For his work on this project, Leo Srguin is the Zone 24 recipient of the 2017 Donald MacRae Peace Award.
 

Biography: Rotarian Dr. Jerry Lowney
Haitian Health Foundation
2017 Zone 32 Donald MacRae Peace Award
 
 

 
Dr. Jerry Lowney, a member of the Norwich, CT club in D-7980, has devoted time, talent, and treasure to serve the poorest of the poor in Haiti over the past 25 years.
What started in 1982 as a short-term mission trip to provide dental care has become a lifelong passion to improve health of Haiti’s poorest.  In 1985, Jerry founded the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF) which offers basic healthcare services to the 200,000 people living in the Jeremie region of Haiti. 
HHF has developed a feeding program that offers 24-hour care for children suffering from chronic malnutrition.  It has an inpatient maternal center for village women in high-risk pregnancies, and also provides routine maternal and pediatric care, and has helped to found a school of nursing. 
For more than 25 years, Jerry has traveled to Haiti every three months to operate the Haitian Health Foundation, provide dental care, and more.  His work has received wide-spread praise, and in 2013 the White House named him a Rotary Champion of Change.
 
 
For his work on this project, Dr. Jerry Lowney is the Zone 32 receipient of the 2017 Donald MacRae Peace Award.