Gloria Straudt
Rotary Peace Fellowship
Gloria Tom Wing Straudt came today to tell us all about the Rotary peace Fellowships.
This is a Rotary Foundation project.
It is a 2 year fully funded scholarship. It costs about $70.000 for each one. The candidate needs 3 years of international experience to apply. The competition for these scholarships is so competitive nowadays.
There are three levels of interviews to go through. Firstly the club level.
This is where each club can advertise for candidates and set up interviews to do the first level of screening.
This cost the club nothing other than the advert and the time to interview.
Once your club has selected your candidate then they go on to the District level. They in turn send their selection onto the final committee that actually makes the choice.
Anyone who is working on Peace and Conflict has experience and can apply. A Rotary connection or experience helps.
The Burnaby Metro town Club sent forward a candidate last year, as the year before.
In 2009 they had a successful candidate.
Our district of 2040 has had one peace scholar.
One of the Peace scholars helped the Vancouver Police with the photo recognition after the riots here.
One is now working in Liberia.
Physically interview them and make sure they have a second language.
We are looking for teachers, lawyers, doctors, police or other professionals to apply. They need three years experience in their field to apply.
We can advertise in the local press, which also gets the Rotary name out there.
When qualified they often go to work in the NGO field. Abroad.
One question that often comes up in the interviews is what are you going to do with your degree when qualified.
There are now 6 Universities in the world that run this program for Rotary.
The speaker was thanked by President Ilan.