By Rotary International From the April 2016 issue of The Rotarian
America’s most-visited national park, the Great Smoky Mountains, is a half-million acres of temperate forest bristling with biodiversity – as 30 species of salamanders and some 1,500 black bears attest. Yet the contours of the park, in Tennessee and North Carolina in nearly equal measures, might have been drawn differently if not for several members of the Rotary Club of Knoxville, Tenn., a role the club marked during its centennial celebration last August.
In 1915, David C. Chapman, the owner of a wholesale drug company and a veteran of the Spanish-… …read more

Source:: Rotary.org

By Rotary International From the April 2016 issue of The Rotarian
“This was a gift from God.” Stephen Mwanje remembers those words, spoken by a sick man who had just received free treatment from a doctor at a Rotary-led Family Health Day in Uganda last fall. “He never thought he would get the medical attention he needed,” explains Mwanje, a member of the Rotary Club of Mukono, Uganda, who made that man’s care possible.
In 2010-11, Mwanje was governor of District 9200, which then included Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. As he was researching options to address Uganda’s lack of health care, he crossed… …read more

Source:: Rotary.org

By Rotary International From the April 2016 issue of The Rotarian
What’s the most common work-related injury that firefighters endure? “It’s not falling through a roof, falling from a house, or burns,” explains Homero Ponce-Lόpez, 57, a retired Houston fire captain and member of the Rotary Club of University Area of Houston. “It’s cancer.” A 2015 study found that firefighters have a greater chance of developing cancer than the general population, including double the risk of testicular cancer and a 50 percent increase in multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. When cancer strikes, firefighters often end up at the… …read more

Source:: Rotary.org

By Rotary International From the April 2016 issue of The Rotarian
He should have been thrilled. Carl Sanders had joined Rotary to be of service, and now, even though he was a relatively new member of the Rotary Club of Kenosha, Wis., he had an opportunity. A well-respected member called to ask Sanders to take over as sergeant-at-arms. He explained that the position involved preparing meetings, introducing guest speakers, and reading announcements. “So you’ll do it?” he asked. “I, uh, um … ” Sanders panicked. “Let me think about it,” he said, hanging up quickly.
Sanders had built a prosperous painting business. He… …read more

Source:: Rotary.org

By Rotary International From the April 2016 issue of The Rotarian
What Kerstin Jeska-Thorwart remembers is the silence. No birds chirping, no dogs barking, no car engines revving. Nothing. “I’ve never heard such a silence before, and never since,” she says. “I knew something must have happened.”
It was 9:35 the morning after Christmas 2004, and in Sri Lanka, it was a Poya Day, a Buddhist public holiday held every full moon. Jeska-Thorwart, a lawyer from Germany, was on vacation in Hikkaduwa, on the island’s southwestern coast. Any other morning of her holiday she and her husband would have been on the beach, but… …read more

Source:: Rotary.org

By Rotary International From the April 2016 issue of The Rotarian
They came from Denmark and Spain, Thailand, the U.S., and other points around the globe. Last fall, the Rotary International Board of Directors gathered again in Evanston, Ill., not far from the office where Paul Harris hosted the first Rotary club meeting.
One hundred eleven years later, Rotary’s Board spent three days addressing dozens of issues that boiled down to one: How will the organization Harris founded thrive in its second century?
They met on the top floor of Rotary’s world headquarters, an 18-story tower with commanding views of broad-… …read more

Source:: Rotary.org

By Rotary International Get live updates and vote totals from the Council on Legislation on Rotary.org beginning on 11 April.
Representatives from Rotary clubs worldwide will gather in Chicago 10-15 April to consider changes to the policies that guide Rotary International and its member clubs.
Many of this year’s proposed changes are designed to increase membership by giving clubs greater flexibility in the timing and the nature of their meetings. Other proposals would amend membership requirements. …read more

Source:: Rotary.org