A Bridge Between Rotary Clubs Worldwide: ICC and GOLA Join Forces for Organ Donation

An institutional meeting was held at the Bangalore City Club between Anil Srivatsa, founder of the Gift of Life Adventure Foundation (GOLA), and Jenny Elisabeth Bohlin, Section Chair ICC for India. At the heart of the discussion was Srivatsa’s upcoming international mission, which will bring the GOLA initiative to Europe and West Africa with the aim of strengthening its human, institutional, and international impact.

This meeting follows another milestone that is set to leave a profound mark on the recent history of international Rotary: the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the ICC Executive Council and GOLA, the non – profit organization founded by Srivatsa to accelerate awareness, advocacy, and philanthropy related to organ donation worldwide.

This is not a simple formal protocol, but the concrete foundation of an unprecedented Rotary project in terms of the breadth of its vision: uniting Rotary, Rotaract, and Interact clubs across every continent around a single stated goal — ensuring that, by 2050, no one dies while waiting for an organ or a transplant. The agreement brings together the expertise and contacts of the ICC Executive Council, a bridge among intercountry committees worldwide, with GOLA’s on-the-ground experience: awareness campaigns, advocacy efforts for laws more favorable to transplant patients, and the strengthening of healthcare capacity in regions where citizens today are forced to seek treatment abroad, adding financial cost to their suffering.

Behind the signing of this agreement and the new expansion lies a personal story worth remembering. Anil Srivatsa donated a kidney to his brother, neurosurgeon Arjun Srivatsa, in 2014, and since then has turned his personal experience into a global campaign. He has traveled through dozens of countries — driving his own car across nearly one hundred nations, a milestone reached in Dresden in August 2025 — to share his story and dispel the myths and prejudices that still hinder living organ donation today. Along the way, he has held more than a thousand public talks. From the press conference at the British House of Commons that launched the Million Donor Project, to the app connecting donors with their families, to founding the world’s first Rotary club devoted entirely to promoting this cause (chartered in March 2022 by then RI President Shekhar Mehta in Uttar Pradesh), Srivatsa has turned adventure into a tool for international awareness.

He even took his fight all the way to India’s courts, helping to remove regulatory obstacles that prevented thousands of patients from accessing transplants.This meeting with Bohlin marks a further step in this direction, bringing Intercountry Committeessupport alongside the initiative as it enters its next international phase. The decision to extend its reach to West Africa fits within an already proven trajectory: over the years, Srivatsa has built a network of Rotary clubs and partner hospitals across multiple continents, and entry into a new geographic region represents a natural expansion of his mission of “Uniting Rotary For Organ Donation.”

Heartfelt thanks go to those who made this agreement possible through energy, vision, and dedication: to Annemarie Mostert, President of the ICC Executive Council for the 2026-2028 biennium, who steered the process of bringing the two organizations together with great determination, and to Anil Srivatsa, whose tireless personal mission is today a shared legacy for thousands of Rotarians around the world.

This is thecurrent mission starting July 11, 2026 raising funds for the LIFT UP project to fund kidney transplants for women and

children living below the poverty line but have willing family organ donors. This is slated for the 3rd Global Grant application where in the first two 14 transplants were funded and the goal is to fund 100.