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Dear Fellow Rotarians, Rotaractors, and friends,
Rotary youth exchange — one of the many programs for youths
and young adults that we celebrate this month — was my path
into true engagement in Rotary. My wife, Susanne, and I began hosting
exchange students soon after I joined, and the experience helped
me go from simply being a member of my Rotary club to being a true
Rotarian. Now Rotary Youth Exchange is a family tradition, and a
strong one: Over the past 24 years, we have hosted 43 students!
From the start, we loved it so much that, in addition
to hosting students in our home, we became involved with the program
by helping to organize student summer camps. During one such camp,
I met Christine Lichtin, who was a German high school student at
the time and whose father is a past president of my Rotary club.
To try something new during this year of embracing change, I am
turning this space, normally reserved for the president of Rotary,
over to Christine so she can share her story.
My first contact with Rotaract was about 13 years
ago, when I was with Susanne and Holger at a barbecue for the summer
youth camp. Holger turned to me and said: "Why don't you visit
a Rotaract club? You'll meet a lot of great young people who come
together to have fun and to make a difference."
A few years later, when I was at Trier University,
his words came back to me and I decided to give it a try. That was
more than eight years ago, and I'm still at it. Once you are in
Rotaract, you just don't want to get out. Rotaract has accompanied
me everywhere, starting with the Trier club and then on to a club
in Bologna, Italy, during the year I studied there. When I was in
Kiel for my master's degree, I got involved with Rotaract there
before landing at the Rotaract Club of Hamburg-Alstertal as I began
my career. Each of those clubs has its own identity and focus, but
all have the same intrinsic motivation.
I am now taking on a senior advisory role in my Rotaract
club, which I really enjoy. I carry Rotaract in my heart, and it
shapes my values, even as my interests evolve. One day, as if she
had sensed this evolution, Susanne knocked on my door, wanting to
introduce me to a young, modern Rotary club located between Hamburg
and Mölln, my hometown. The E-Club of Hamburg-Connect, which
Susanne helped charter, holds e-meetings, all of them very relaxed
and personal. With members of different ages, everything just seemed
to fit, so I thought, why not try it out? After all, time is precious
and should be filled with fun whenever possible; the rest happens
by itself.
Now I am in both worlds — a proud member of
Rotaract and a Rotarian. And my small personal goal is to build
a bridge between these two parallel worlds. All of us have very
similar reasons for being part of the Rotary family.
It took some persistence to persuade Christine to
become a member of Rotary, but it was well worth the effort. It
is our duty to put in this kind of effort with youth program participants
and Rotaractors so we can keep them in the family of Rotary. I hope
you were inspired by her story. It's up to each of us to ensure
that more young people like Christine can experience the many ways
Rotary Opens Opportunities for us and for the people we serve.
HOLGER KNAACK
President 2020-21
Trustee Chair's Message - Aug
2020
K.R. Ravindran
Rotary Club of Colombo
Western Province, Sri Lanka
Trustee chair's message
In late 1914, Europe was divided by hundreds of miles
of trenches. British and French forces on one side
were within shouting distance of German troops on
the other. The pope made a plea for a Christmas truce,
but the shooting continued.
Then, on Christmas Eve, soldiers from
behind British lines heard an unexpected sound —
not gunfire, but singing. Next, they heard a single
voice shout out, "English soldier, merry Christmas!"
followed by "English soldier, come out to join
us!"
Both sides cautiously emerged over the
parapet into the no man's land between the trenches.
Before long, the soldiers realized that it was a real
truce. They fraternized, singing Christmas carols,
exchanging souvenirs and whiskey, and even taking
up a friendly soccer match.
The cease-fire continued only two days
before the troops returned to their trenches, resuming
bloodshed for nearly four long years. But the story
of the Christmas truce reminds us that peace is possible,
if we choose to accept it. If peace can last a few
days, could it not also last months or years? And
how do we prevent conflict in the first place?
In his Nobel Peace Prize lecture in
1964, American civil rights leader Martin Luther King
Jr. said, "We must concentrate not merely on
the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive
affirmation of peace."
With Positive Peace, our society's structures,
policies, and everyday attitudes and actions promote
justice at all levels, sustaining a peaceful coexistence.
It's an answer to the calls for justice and peace
we have heard on the streets in protests from Minneapolis
to Paris this year.
Positive Peace, studied at our Rotary
Peace Centers around the world, is not just an academic
idea for the Rotary Peace Fellows. Through Rotary's
partnership with the Institute for Economics and Peace,
the Rotary Positive Peace Academy offers free training
to every Rotary member on how to wage Positive Peace
in every project we do at the grassroots level, including
Foundation grants.
Positive Peace resonates at all levels
of The Rotary Foundation. Our literacy projects help
children gain equal access to literacy, so opposing
sides on an issue can understand each other better.
Through our Foundation grants that provide clean water,
communities gain stability, as more children stay
in school rather than fetching water for hours on
end.
Our role as civil society leaders who
wage Positive Peace will continue to expand, not only
through partnerships and more grants, but also through
our hearts, minds, and hands as we offer our gifts
to make the world a better place. -
http://www.endpolio.org/donate.
K.R. Ravindran
Trustee Chair 2020-21
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