Reporter
Tom Croft. Photos by Bob Schelle
President
Peter Opened the meeting right on time at 12:15 and reminded us that this month
in Rotary is “Rotary Awareness Month”.
He shared correspondence from Jacqueline in Guatemala and John in Rwanda and a slide show from John and Linda Edgell in Mexico.
Jim
Force provided a stirring rendition of “O ’Canada” in which the members joined
the DuFour-Lapointe sisters singing as they received their Gold and Silver medals in
Sochi for placing first and second in the Slopestyle Skiing event.
Lynne
Murray provided the Grace and lunch was a Chinese-style buffet - very delicious
as usual.
Jessica
Van der Veen introduced our two visitors, Stuart Adam, a Rotarian from Saskatoon, and Gem Munroe, our guest speaker and a Rotarian as well.
Jim
reminded us of our duties to raise money for our Club over the next few months
with the Mardi Gras Madness dinner and fundraiser, Canadian Flag program and
Car Raffle with the Victoria Club. There
is about $50,000 to be raised so remember to do your part to generate the funding
for our Club’s projects.
Guest speaker, Gem
Munro (left), was introduced by Wolf Schopper. Gem spoke to us today about the
relationship between the Amarok Society and Rotary. Amarok Society was founded with one family at its
centre: Dr. Tanyss Munro, Gem Munro and their four children. The
Society teaches extremely poor, uneducated mothers in the world’s worst slums
to become neighbourhood teachers. View
this video for more information.
Gem: We teach these women how to
read and write in their own language; we teach them English (necessary in South
Asia for economic advancement), and teach them math. We also teach them life
skills such as health, nutrition, child care and conflict resolution. And we
teach them to think, something they’ve never before been encouraged or taught
to do. The mothers, many of whom
have never before even held a pencil, attend school every day for 2 hours.
Teachers recruited from poor neighbourhoods and trained by AS, use accelerated
learning methods (using songs, drama, games). Neighbourhood premises are
used as schools. The mothers are then trained to become teachers of their
own and their neighbours’ children, developing some of the learning materials
themselves for use with the children. The small schools, when not
being used for mothers’ classes, are used by the women to discuss issues of
importance, as determined by them, and as a place for cottage-industry
enterprises to increase family income. Working from the centre of
the family out, using our own accelerated learning methods, is a highly
effective – and cost-effective – approach. Mothers come to understand and value
education. They learn how to create a positive learning environment for children,
and they come to make better decisions in many areas for their families.
Mothers report that they can now make better sense of their world and have
become more highly valued within their own homes and in their community as they
disprove old, backward attitudes about the limitations and suitable role of
women.
The improvements in the
women’s abilities and circumstance dramatically improve every aspect of slum
life overall. As a result of a
hastily prepared meeting of Canadian and Bangladeshi Rotarians held in a
cafeteria at the Montreal International Rotary Conference in the spring of
2010, a new partnership was been created. With the assistance
of Rotary District 7070, Literacy Chair, Joan Hayward, Zone Coordinators Roger
Hayward (for Canada) and Safina Rahman (for Bangladesh), and Rotary
International Literacy Coordinator Richard Hattwick, an Agreement in Principle
was made between the Rotary Club of Belleville, Ontario, Canada and the the
Rotary Club of Midtown Dhaka, Bangladesh with Amarok Society for the purpose of
supporting specific initiatives in the poorest slums of Dhaka.
Gem was thanked by
David Westler (above) and received a Rotary Four Way Test coffee mug as a thank-you
for speaking today.
We closed with the
Queen.
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