to talk to you about what is rotary and three of his friends and since then readily has become a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders who provides who manage tarion service encourages high ethical standards in all vocations and helps build goodwill and peace in the world there are more then how many will carry more than i can't remember the exactly the number the world we are in rotary district seventy nine thirty i have that in our government flag going to my wife is the district secretary how many we have forty eight clubs in the district there are four districts in in the state of massachusetts the district rotary is such a large organisation that they they have to have these trees of running down from rotary international in evanston illinois and we have province provinces and we have districts and then down to the club level  rotary has been involved in service since its original inception one of the first models of rotary was he profits most serves best the current motto of rotary international is service above self one of my six rotary as flags of all the world and in all these different languages throughout the world service above self they want to give back to the community and help other people who are suffering wrote the world on a on a grand worldwide scale it's hard to imagine that any given day there are eight thousand rotary projects going on throughout the world that's mind boggling when you think about the organization on the local district and international level it's absolutely mind boggling and sense rotary was rotarians have donated one billion dollars for various charitable works a basket oriel scholarships and things we'll talk about later on one of the largest projects that rotary has been involved in is polio plus the eradication of polio throughout the world that was  started in the early eighty's really became official in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and my wife went on a mission in two thousand and four i had the privilege of travelling to india to participate in what we call our gross national immunization day and it was an experience of a lifetime the entire city of  work for that matter the whole country was divided into districts and we had immunization stations and we immunize children against polio all day long and in that day the few days that followed when the world health organization went from door to door immunizing children we immunized one hundred sixty nine million children in that one campaign we got started limiting polio throughout the world one thousand children a day throughout the world was paralyzed because of polio and that was after the saw and saban back scene alleviated polio in the western hemisphere where throughout the far east africa and other countries in the world central taken three and a half billion dollars of which a lot of the money has come from world health organization the gates bill gates foundation turner ted turner's establishment of the united nations forty nine rotarians participated in the u n charter cough france in san francisco in one nine hundred forty nine you might remember the name carlos romero from the philippines i think he was a secretary general of the united nations and in the philippines he was a president of a rotary club on the twenty first of january with four non rotarians young professionals just getting going in their careers and they've gone to hyderabad india this is a vocational trip it is totally funded by the rotary foundation which we'll talk about a little later i think an important thing to maybe mention is that folks in the olden days had the idea that were old men smoking cigars with their chap checkbooks open that may have been true at the founding of rotary but it's very very different now you have a swami going to india we get our hands dirty i went to see i went to i went to india on the end id we have people going to we have a friend who has led several trips to the tsunami area and they have rebuilt an orphanage back for the benefits that we have we've had rotarians put down to work in mississippi for my district and habitat to help rebuild homes rotarians doing so much work locally nationally internationally that obviously we're very very proud to be members of that sort of service compassion wasn't either over the past twenty years rotary club members have helped immunize with two billion children against polio thanks to them the world will soon be polio free rotary humanity is in motion rotary comes in all shapes and sizes rotary club bob mentioned that he's a member of the rotary club of elmont and i'm a rep member of the rotary club of cambridge is the breakfast club meets at seven fifteen on tuesday count in cambridge we had about seventy six members but we all serve each club is expected to participate in what we call or avenues of service there's the avenue of clubs service which folks that focuses on strengthening strengthening the fellowship within the club and courage being the effective functioning of that club vocational service encourages rot to serve others through our vocations and to practice high ethical standards community service covers the projects and activities of the club that it undertakes to improve life in our own communities of cambridge and belmont international service encompasses actions taken on to to expand rotary to humanitarian functions and to reach around the globe in our effort to promote world peace and understanding we have a third of what we call a four way test a number of years ago a rotarian who owned a big company found his business going down the tubes and he devised the four way tests and he asked each employee to subscribe to it and when they did eventually that club that  company took off and became a success and he attributed that to the four way test is that the truth is that beneficial to all concerned will it build goodwill and better friendships is that fair to all concerned for way test is taught in the number of universities as a prime example of ethics in business we have a member of our club who got a second masters degree in business ethics and has gone to rotary district conferences and spoken to all of the clubs about ethics and business one of the things which we want to talk about is the fact that although i'm in the rotary club of belmont and my wife is  rotary club at cambridge we help each other when we have fundraisers and when we have fun times also because there's a social aspect to rotary in addition to raising money to do a lot of the local charitable works cambridge has scholarships for high school seniors and so does belmont and so does practically all the rotary clubs in our district   in belmont on town day we've had an annual pancake breakfast to raise funds cambridge we have chalk on the walk for may fest in harvard  square when we sell to local businesses and anybody else who wants to subscribe we sell squares on the on the street and then bring in artists to it's a sidewalk sam kind of chalk on the walk yeah and they raise sixteen thousand eight hundred thousand dollars and it's just an incredible thing and so many people enjoy seeing the various themes that are done i think it should be emphasized that when we raise money that money goes back into the community it goes too far and our scholarships  belmont as bob said belmont gives several scholarships to graduating seniors we do the same thing in cambridge our club every christmas time has a huge christmas party for the children of our place which is the day care center poor homeless children of homeless families at the salvation army and with members of the belmont rotary club qualitative code the food pantry we've done it when the post office workers koran and collect enormous amounts of canned goods and other food and help to stock it when you drive around belmont or cambridge here and there you'll find a plaque be able to join other rotary clubs in our district and have a dictionary project and provide dictionaries for their occurred graders and this is something that you know we have on our agenda to do every year rotary international president will have a project or two that they want to focus on this year william boyd who is  international president from new zealand cool water throughout the world and literacy is these are two oakley areas that he wants to focus on if you look at a couple of the theme international president from thailand and the international president from nigeria head the theme lend a hand and that's what  rotarians from african countries will travel to south american countries and get involved in projects and exchanges and it happens throughout asia about belmont in cambridge and some of the clubs we're currently working on a project there are six clubs in three different districts among those clubs cambridge and belmont who are cooperating to raise money for a project in in kenya we want to buy a vehicle for a children's there are two hundred fifty to three hundred children ages four to fourteen in this center they come there to go to school they're talk by volunteer teachers and they get their one good meal a day there and then they go back to foster homes or to the streets whose children are all orphans many of them their parents have died of aids  so we're buying a bait vehicle poor them so that they can go to and buy larger quantities of food in a more distant village that while rob them blind they we're hoping to have a team go over there to teach a new reading methodology to the volunteer teachers and i'm hoping that i've always wanted to go to africa and i'm hoping that this is going to give me the chance to do that in the end belmont we've mentioned the high school senior college scholarships but also in the high school we have a rile up leadership for a belmont juniors high school juniors and it's increase down in pittsburgh and we sponsored her and she caught her master's degree at the london school of economics and this is going on the ambassadorial scholars there are a number of kind of famous people who have been ambassadorial scholars this is a full scholarship that is funded in full art i'm sorry to the tune of twenty five thousand dollars for a postgraduate to go to study in another country and to get a master's degree kerry healey who was a scholar both of them that their husbands as rotary scholars so we're very proud of them and rotary youth exchange i was reading in our international magazine recently that matthew mcconaughey he was a rotary plast which is a plastic surgery for kids in central america who cleft palates terry and from my district have been going down for about five or six years and doing a hundred or so operations each time and changing the lives of these kids and i can't begin to tell you all of projects well we're talking about rotary and if you just turned it tuned in we're not talking traffic circles we're talking about the service organization also recently rotary has a stab lished program for master degrees for students around the world to concentrate on rotary peace and conflict studies they call it world peace fellowships these are there are colleges and argentina australia england japan and to win the united states where these programs are being held hundred and ninety four students have already completed these programs one hundred thirty are currently in roll and the goal is to fund a hundred and twenty rotary piece fellows every year by june to two thousand and fifteen rotary foundation aims to to raise ninety five million dollars to fund the program about fifteen million has been raised to date speaking about rotary foundation i'll tell you a little about that everything we do costs money and one of the one of the sources of money for our projects particularly the international project is the rotary foundation this is the charitable arm of rotary international rotary foundation fund the ambassadorial scholarship it funds our group study exchanges  swami is leading in india at the present time they also have a matching grant program an r r program that we when we hope to launch in kenya of buying the vehicle for the orphanage will be funded in part by a matching grant from rotary international at the present time they will match every dollar given by a rotary club or individual rotarians fifty cents on the dollar moneys given by districts will be matched dollar for dollar so in that way no club or no district has to come up with that whole forty thousand dollars and in this case we have six clubs and three districts and we just got our pretty our grant is is well on the way to being approved by rotary international arch of the rotary foundation one of the positive aspects of rotary is that rotary doesn't have a lot of money tied into properties profit organizations like rotary as to the amount of money that goes to good works ranks rotary right up at the top because we have a headquarters in evanston illinois and one and you took the continents around the world with the exception of antarctica so we have administrative one location in each of the you when you join rotary you're expected to give a thousand dollars to the foundation right off the bat and then each year thereafter and that's how rotary foundation gets its money every dollar that is given to the foundation goes to the purpose for which it was given if i give one hundred dollars to go to our polio plus that will be held for three years and the income from that  one hundred dollars will go to support the administrative functions of rotary engine of the foundation the original one hundred dollars will go directly to the polio project so we can be sure that the money goes where we want to go one of the great honors in rotary is to be awarded a paul harris fellowship for the last few decades can can work up to coming up with a thousand dollars and receive all have a small many all harris fellows are awarded from the club to club members for the extra good work with the members have done in the community and what does this there were of some clubs where every member is a paul harris fellow there of the clubs where every member is a sustaining member some sustaining members give autumn outs i remember when i was probably her belmont i was looking at this amount and i said to a person how come you came up with three hundred eighty seven dollars and forty two cents you said it was my state income tax refund so anyhow it goes to show you where people's hearts  a lot of the fund raising is done as we said through local fundraisers here in belmont many of you have gone to spaghetti suppers or you went to the golf tournament so the belmont country club where you've gone to be paid breakfast on town day we're hoping to come up with some new fundraisers we're talking about the wine and cheese  evening there are a number of the things in the works by the way i don't think it's aware that the belmont club has added five new members in the last three months we're getting up there were read  membership in cambridge but hopefully with some people watching this program they may become into rest of the and will like to come to the belmont rotary meeting on a tuesday morning at seven fifteen in the library meeting room down in the lower level you probably gather that bob and i are both enthusiastic about rotary we've just had our three minute warning is there anything we had on our list that we haven't said i think i should say that this next tuesday there will be a meeting at the belmont rotary club because it's vacation time and a lot of our younger members and their kids are going to be out of state and traveling and we we always have we try to have been arresting speakers and we want the speakers to be able to have a decent sized audience so we decided that we would not hold our meeting next tuesday one of the things that spawn about rotary just as a final thing to say  rotarians are expected to attend rotary regularly it used to be a requirement that you had to absolutely had to attend sixty percent of the meeting or you might  down that's no longer true however bob and i feel very strongly about the fellowship in rotary and that's a very important thing for us when you can't make a meeting you  can make up i go to belmont often with bob when i can't get to my cambridge meeting on thursday i'll go the next tuesday morning with him and i've made up my meeting and one of the joys that we have as we travel is to make up meetings in other countries yes we or other states of we went to hawaii and we made up we had to make up to me to do this we missed two meetings in our own clubs and we had such a good time we met up a third one yes and we we've made up in san francisco and the cape we have here at the cape we when we travel we really like to go to these clubs and see how they run their clubs and see what kind of fundraisers they have and what kind of charities they are supporting in other parts we're having our district conference this spring in bermuda we've had a district office in montreal newport we get a tremendous education about what's going on in the rotary world and we hope this series and what you're going to be learning about rotary will open up your eyes and where hearts and your hearts to and you'll come by and see how the rotary meeting runs we're out by eight thirty so that people can get to work because most of us are still working and we do have a few retired people but we try to and every meeting at least by eight thirty so that people can get on to work and the work of rotary is helping people one person to make a difference like me like you