Full transcript

Ellina Kushnir

Hello everyone, thank you so much to Mohammed and the meeting organizers for the opportunity to join you today virtually. My name is Ellina Kushnir and I work at Rotary International’s headquarters as the manager of service and engagement. With many of you over the years, but for those who I haven’t met yet, I hope to do so in the near future. I’ll share a little bit about what I do at Rotary, and then I’m also joined by my colleague, Fergal McCarthy, who will introduce himself and share more about what he does at Rotary as well.

So I mentioned that I work in the service and engagement team, part of programs and grants, and my team oversees resources, partnerships, and programs that help our members connect to do more good and make more impact in the world through their community service projects or to engage with Rotary beyond the club and to broaden their networks and global communities. And so some of the activities that we support include inter-country committees, Rotary action groups, Rotary Fellowships, Rotary Friendship Exchanges, and so forth. I won’t list them all, but I know that many of you through your long Rotary tenures have experience with all of these activities and more, and I am so pleased to be able to work with all of you and support your work through inter-country committees. So with that, I will turn it over to my colleague Fergal to introduce himself and share a little bit more about what he does.

Fergal McCarthy

Thanks for that, Ellina. Hi all, my name is Fergal McCarthy. For those that I haven’t met before, I’m the Peace Programs Manager here at Rotary International.

Essentially my role is a role that sort of fits in between each of our peace building activities, so obviously the Rotary Peace Centers, the Rotary Peace Fellowship, and the peace area focus, but also a lot of the elements that are on Ellina’s team, such as Rotarian Action Groups and our relationship with certain action groups, as well as other engagement opportunities like ICCs and friendship exchanges. I also work with a lot of our Rotary representative network that represent Rotary at various UN and international organizations around the world and many other assets throughout the organization that have a intrinsic sort of piece building element or byproduct to it. Yeah, so that’s my road, my road of rotary.

Ellina Kushnir

Great, thank you and thanks Fergal for joining me today for this update. I’m going to start and spend just a couple minutes talking about some recent developments here at headquarters that will be of interest to you. And then Fergal will do the same for a couple of minutes.

So first and foremost, I think that many of you are familiar, a couple years ago, we produced a video that featured a number of programs and activities available through Rotary. Intercountry committees were featured as part of that video and so over the past few months we have created just a segment that is exclusive to Intercountry committees to help us promote and better market ICCs across the rotary world. That video is available through the Rotary website, and I’ve also shared a copy of it with Mohammed to pass along to all of you. It is available with subtitles in languages, So if you find it useful in your presentations or meetings to share more about inter-country committees that’s available for your use.

Another piece that I wanted to remind everyone of as we’re still early in the Rotary year, is R.I. President Jennifer Jones’ various presidential initiatives, as she calls on all of us to imagine Rotary and imagine a world and a Rotary community where we feel like we can bring our best selves to the organization, but we’re also accomplishing what we want the future of our world to look like. And I think this is particularly relevant to all of you and your work in inter-country committees. And so you may be familiar that President Jones has 4 initiatives that she’s focusing on this year.

The first is to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in everything that we do within Rotary and within our communities. We want to ensure that we create a welcoming, inclusive environment at our clubs, at our district events, but also in our activities like inter country committees. Empowering girls and calling on all of us as we’re planning service projects to think about how we can empower girls’ voices to be agents of change and to drive progress in their communities. And lastly, President Jones has been undertaking a media tour that really works to or serves to help tell our story of impact.

Amongst the many things that we undertake within the service realm. What are we accomplishing through that work. And so President Jones is looking to model how we tell our stories of impact in partnership with media, in partnership with other organizations. And so as those videos become available, I hope that you’ll take inspiration to similarly share what you’re doing through your work with inter-country committees at the club level, at the district level, to make a positive change in communities near and far.

And lastly, before I turn it over to Fergal, I know If you’ve heard me speak or present before, I’m always looking for stories around what you are doing through inter-country committees. Many of you send me updates when you form new ICCs, and that’s wonderful. Please continue to do so. But What I’d also like to hear is what kind of activities you’re undertaking through your existing ICC relationships.

When you share those stories with me, I’m able to pass them along to our many different channels within Rotary. Some of those promotions and stories you’ll hear Fergal talk about momentarily, but through our magazines, through our newsletters, through our blogs and through our social media platforms, we have an opportunity to elevate and amplify the work that you’re doing and inspire others to either partner with you or to gain inspiration and to replicate your good work. So please, as another reminder, share about the service projects and the opportunities that you’re undertaking through your inter-country committees, and we will help promote those stories through our various media channels. You can always reach out and write to me.

So with those few updates, I’m going to pass it along to Fergal, who’s gonna share more about some of the promotions that we’ve been undertaking and many opportunities for us to continue featuring the work that ICCs are undertaking as part of our overall peace building and conflict prevention strategies within Rotary. So take it away, Fergal.

Fergal McCarthy

Cheers, thanks for that, Ellina. The purpose of my contribution was just to give a couple of updates of some of the more recent activities in the peace area. 2 of those would be Rotary’s efforts to mark International Day of Peace this year, and also the recent official launch of the Rotary Peace Program’s brochure.

Okay, so to start for International Day of Peace, which of course was the 21st of September, this year and every year, As some of you may be aware, as part of the Peace Strategy, 1 of our goals was to, or is to still going forward, is to mark International Day of Peace in a more deliberate and substantial way moving forward. This year, we created a number of interesting blogs and features and promotional elements. Firstly we used International Day of Peace as an opportunity to, as I mentioned, officially launch the Peace Programs brochure, Rotary Builds Peace, But I’ll speak a little bit about more, I’ll speak a little bit about that later on.

Also for International Day Peace, we had a couple of interesting blogs, a Rotary Voices blog by Kim Dixon, a Rotarian in North Carolina, a blog that looked at our partnerships in the peace area and Rotary’s response to the war in Ukraine.

By two Rotary Peace Fellows, Kathy Dorothy and Jeff Diesel, that looked at the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion through the positive peace lens. So a really interesting look at that important issue. And then finally, a really well written service and action blog by Ellina that also nicely tied the DEI considerations and Rotary’s ongoing work in this regard and various peace building opportunities that our members have to further that work. And we also had a couple of other features that went out in newsletters, such as the Rotary Leader and the Rotary Peace Center’s newsletter, Peace in Action.

And of course, all of this had a corresponding promotion on social media as well. Okay to mention the Peace brochure. As mentioned I just wanted to give a quick update on the brochure itself. The title is Rotary Bill’s Peace.

It’s now available for download online on My Rotary. For those that were able to make it to Houston in June, we had a small launch of the publication at the Presidential conference there, but it’s now available for all to download on My Rotary and possibly on Rotary.org in time. For those that haven’t come across the brochure as of yet, it is a high level overview of all of our Rotary Peace Building programs and initiatives and activities that for the first time brings all of those efforts and activities in in 1 road republication. And as of course, as you might expect, inter-country committees are of course 1 important member engagement program that we have featured in the brochure.

Although the brochure has been shared in a limited capacity to date, such as in Houston, the official launch was, as I mentioned, International Day of Peace this year and is now freely available. We will also be creating a PowerPoint that will supplement the brochure. It will be designed in the exact same look and feel and design concept as the brochure. So essentially the brochure in a PowerPoint format and we want to make that available to members so they can inform and inspire their fellow members and educate them and external stakeholders about everything that we do in peace.

Another resource we’re mentioning is the Everyday Peace Builder flyer. This is a one-page cheat sheet that also acts as a supplement to the brochure. So essentially it is all of the details that are in the brochure contained on 1 page, so a quick kind of reference to ways in which members can get involved in peace building initiatives. What else?

And then finally just to mention, and of course sorry I’ll make all of these resources available to Mohamed whether it’s links or the actual electronic files, the PDF files of each so that he can share with the executive committee. And that’s it for me. Finally, I just wanted to mention our continued relief efforts for refugee communities. Obviously, Europe is a region that has a significant impact from crises around the world.

We want to encourage our members to work with our partners in providing relief to refugee communities in Europe and around the world. And 1 of the ways that they can do that is through working with the RIGE, the RIGE for Refugees, a newly formed RIGE that works in this space. The full name is the Rotarian Action Group for Refugees, Forces Placement and Migration. And I think that’s it for me.

I think I’ll hand it back to Ellina.

Ellina Kushnir

Great. Thank you so much, Fergal. And thank you, everyone, for giving us an opportunity to share our updates. As we mentioned through Mohammed, you’ll receive a few follow up items including our contact information.

If you ever would like to reach out and connect, please do so. We are happy to hear from you and look forward to continuing to work with you to support and promote the good work that you all are doing through inter-country committees. So thank you again.

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