Has your club recently hosted a service project that you want to showcase to be the inspiration to other clubs? Are you planning something in the near future that you would like to share with your fellow District 7910 Rotarians?

 

Our District 7910 eBulletin, Website, Facebook and Instagram depend on the content provided by our clubs, so please submit your stories and we will publish them on the district website, in the next eBulletin, and on social media. Stories that showcase your club's service projects should be submitted in plain text along with a photo.  If you are promoting an event, please send the flyer along with a sentence with the details of the event.  Please send your stories to ssager@sagerlegal.com with the words Rotary Story in the subject line.

Three years ago, I traveled around the world.  I was powerfully affected by what I experienced. As a sociologist, I knew about global connectionsand the ways different parts of the world depend and interact with one another.  What I experienced most deeply on this journey, however, were personalconnections. The storiesof students, tour guides, taxi drivers, hosts, friends, random people met in restaurants, border agents, even people I met on the street flooded my consciousness during the trip. These narratives brought the world together for me, one story at a time.

 

I experienced tremendous hospitality, a warm welcome, openness and friendliness on a journey that took me through 19 countries across three continents. I learned that the life experiences that join us together are much greater than the differences between us. I learned to value each interaction as an opportunity to contribute something positive. I also met people who were making a difference in the world: some small and some large. My friend Somit in Varanasi shared a vision based on his own life: expelled from school because his parents could not pay school fees, he now provides schooling to as many children as he can at no cost. He has organized many entrepreneurial efforts (a small guest house, a restaurant, yoga education, travel services and more) as social enterprises— directing the profits from each to teach young children in schools he organizes. His vision of peace is making the world better.

The Rotary Club of Langhorne, Pennsylvania meets for lunch at a restaurant in a historic mansion, but at times attendance was at risk of falling below the minimum 20 meals required by the venue. “We were losing members because they couldn’t make meetings,” recalls Club Membership Chair at the time, Bill Kaufmann.

Board discussions yielded ideas but no firm solutions. Then one member started sending his office manager to meetings in his place. “That was my ‘aha’ moment,” says Kaufmann, now Club President. The Club then decided to let members designate a business associate or family member to attend meetings and participate in projects in their stead – or alongside them.

The Club now recognizes the stand-ins, named “Clones”, who must have a family or business relationship with the primary member and pay $25 in annual dues to the club to cover the cost of name tags and