Day 3 at the RI Convention 2012

Early on we took our regular trek out to IMPACT Muang Thiong Thani without incident (which when you look at Bangkok’s traffic never ceases to amaze me).  Day 3 was essentially Foundation day and following the report that we had indeed managed to achieve a quorum of voting delegates for the proceedings on Day 4 (10% of clubs present) it was over to out-going chair of The Rotary Foundation, Bill Boyd to oversee proceedings.   

Bill chose as his theme “What a difference a day makes” and took us through a selection of days during his visit to Foundation grant projects throughout the world. He talked about how a simple thing like the availability of clean water can enable families to have the time to build businesses using microcredit & have healthy lives, healthy children and prosper more.  He spoke also of the importance of inclusivity – for a water project in Cameroon where Foundation funds helped provide three water tanks for a village - for a variety of reasons the tanks were 2.5 km from the village and the villagers were asked to contribute their labour to dig a trench to pipe the water in - 4,000 of them turned up – instantly local ownership was established!

Amanda Martin is a Rotary Peace Fellow alumna from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. She currently works as Displaced Persons Public Health Curriculum development coordinator in the Global Health Access Program at Community Partners International in a refugee camp on the Thai/Burmese border. Amanda’s career focus is the protection of human rights in developing countries. Prior to taking her position with Community Partners International, she supported human rights in Burma for ALTSEAN-Burma, a network of organizations and individuals based in ASEAN member states working to support the movement for human rights and democracy. She has also worked as director of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission.  While I’m sure that her heart is in the right place I did have to wonder at the wisdom of some of the things she told us of.  I’m not sure that telling refugees in the camp that they don’t get the basic rights of refugees because Thailand hasn’t signed up to the 1951 treaty on refugees is entirely likely to maintain peace! 

Major Polio Plus donor Rajashree Birla spoke next.  Mrs Birla serves as a director on the boards of all of the businesses that make up the Aditya Birla Group (ABG), a Fortune 500 company that is one of Asia’s most diversified conglomerates. ABG produces aluminum, carbon black, cement, clothing, copper, palm oil, and other goods. Subsidiaries include a mobile phone company, an insurance firm, and a chain of supermarkets. In 1995, the Birla family established the Aditya Birla Foundation in memory of Birla’s husband, Aditya, one of India’s foremost industrialists and an active philanthropist. She is an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Bombay and received that club’s Citizen of Bombay Award in 2003. She is also an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Mulund, which recognized her with the Pride of India Award in 2004. The Birla family strongly supports the End Polio Now campaign and has generously contributed $US5.2 million to Rotary’s US$200 Million Challenge, including a donation of $US1 million at the Convention.

Undoubted the highlight of the morning, and probably of the whole Convention was Bruce Aylward from WHO.  Bruce addressed Convention in Montreal two years ago. Equally outstanding then he said “you have Polio on the run" and "Rotary's decision in 1985 challenged the world to change the course of history by eradicating this crippling disease. Rotary is the heart & soul of the largest global health effort in history".  Today he told us that “we now have the lowest number of polio infected countries, the lowest number of polio cases in history”.  He went on “A polio free India, which was said to be impossible, is a magnificent achievement - it is Rotary's achievement. When India was declared polio-free, India's Prime Minister said thank you, not to WHO, not to UNICEF, not to US CDC but thanks to Rotary”.  He declared “there are now no technological barriers to eradication, only political & social barriers and these are the areas where Rotary can excel”.  Type 2 polio is now history, Type 3 is now limited to only two countries in the past 10 months.  But the need for action to complete the task is now critical, is now an emergency - recent cases have highlighted the pressing need.  In recent times it is adults now being infected and 50% died in last year’s outbreak in Tajikistan.  “We must be faster - more focused - faster in finding the missed children and why they were missed”.

Stirring stuff!  

We then had Bill Gates on pre-recorded video, reminding us that the additional US$50million given in January was to encourage further fundraising – we aren’t done yet!  Echoing Bruce Aylward’s words he said “Raise your voices even louder to mobilise others to be as committed to end Polio as you are”.  He urged us to galvanise our politicians to take the steps needed, to declare an emergency at the upcoming World Health Summit and to support it with funds.

Finally, to round the morning off, John Germ, Rotary’s US$200 Million Challenge Committee Chair gave us an update on what the Challenge has raised to date – more than $US215 million and still 6 weeks to go.  He said “There are people in the room who haven't been vaccinated against Smallpox because they were born after it was eradicated. Let's get to the same point with Polio”.  He noted that Rotary has raised (with Gates) US $2 billion US towards eradication, but we have to keep going, we’re not done yet.

In the afternoon we attended a breakout session on Best Practices for Membership Growth.  Including RIBI President Ray on the panel, the session reminded us of some fairly basic things that we need to keep doing and some useful pointers to work on, including some very useful stuff on generating a new club of younger professionals.

Another tedious journey back to our hotel took us over two hours from the end of the breakout session to our arrival.   

However the evening was outstanding – I mean you can’t come to Bangkok and not go to the Calypso Cabaret (the LadyBoys of Bangkok).  Judge for yourself from the pictures!!