One of the trash collecting teams celebrates during the SpoGOMI tournament. By Hiroyasu Goami, Rotary Club of Fukushima, Japan In Japan, picking up trash is a sport. SpoGOMI, or Sport x Trash Pickup, began in Japan in 2008 and involves teams competing to pick up the most trash. Fukushima prefecture has the dubious distinction of…
By Martin Parnell, Rotary Club of Cochrane, Alberta, Canada Martin Parnell In April of 2023, I met David Falconer, a high school principal from Cochrane who works in Calgary. Falconer is founder of “Classrooms Without Walls,” an organization that provides online educational courses for students in Myanmar, Ukraine, and Afghanistan. I offered to give a…
Tracey Craft, adult services coordinator for the Springfield Library, and Tracy Obremski, a technical services librarian, read on two of the benches earned by the Springfield Rotary Club through the plastic film recycling challenge. By Martin Cohn, Rotary Club of Springfield, Vermont, USA Last year, I read about a project conducted by the Capital City…
By Jeffrey Walsh, Rotary Club of Bloomington-Normal Sunrise, Illinois, USA Jeffrey Walsh I am a former Army medic and a returned Peace Corps volunteer. I joined Rotary recently, and I am excited to be part of an organization that is working to eradicate polio. I would love nothing more than to help achieve our top…
Gregor Baum with his host dad in Mexico. By Gregor Baum In 2016, at the age of 17, I traveled from Frankfurt, Germany, to La Paz, Mexico, on a Rotary Youth Exchange. The vibrant colors and rhythms of Mexico were the backdrop for this transformative journey, one that opened my eyes to the boundless beauty…
Vasanthi Ranganathan By Vasanthi Ranganathan, a member of the Rotary Club of Ambattur, India; Rotary Positive Peace Activator; member of The Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Advisers, and member of the India chapter of the Rotary Action Group for Peace. As Rotary celebrates the intersection of literacy and peace this year, I am reminded of…
By Kiran Singh Sirah, 2011-13 Rotary Peace Fellow Hurricane Helene rained sadness and pain for 600 miles across our region with catastrophic impact. In parts of Tennessee, across the mountains in western North Carolina, and beyond, the magnitude of the destruction is devastating. Some have described this as a once-in-a-1,000-year event. A Tennessee civil engineer…
Six-foot wide umbrellas provide street vendors with protection from the sun and rain. By Jignesh Pandya, membership chair for Rotary District 3131 and a member of the Rotary Club of Bibwewadi Pune, India In the heart of Maharashtra, India, in the districts of Pune and Raigad, streets bustle with activity. Countless vendors ply their trade…
Melissa Parke By the Honorable Melissa Parke, former Rotary Youth Exchange student, former Australian Minister for International Development, and Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) I grew up on an apple farm outside a small town called Donnybrook in the southwest of Western Australia. When the Donnybrook Rotary Club advertised…
By Patricia Freudenberg, 2024-25 president, Rotary Club of Global Impact Our club has instituted several innovative changes that are enhancing our club’s experience. We have managed to create a more inclusive and engaging environment. And we are committed to continuing this tradition by embracing adaptive challenges. We hope you will too. Here are a few…