Women continue to face economic hurdles, declining levels of political participation, and challenges in the workplace, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. And the COVID-19 pandemic is among the factors that have extended the amount of time that experts estimate it will take to close the gender gap.
"There is no shortage of need, and the impact of even simple projects can be significant when the power of Rotary is focused on empowering girls," says Elizabeth Usovicz, Rotary International Director.
Across the road from what is now Sunnyside Nurseries, the stables are gone, but aspiring lawyer, Steven Potter's grandmother ran a horse boarding farm. It was a family-centered place for many kids through the 70s and into the 90s. There is a chance Ladner Rotary members may have met his grandparents. Steven, as a new member of Ladner Rotary, shared highlights of his life and career with other club members.
On a recent sunny winter's day a local day care centre brought a group of children to the StoryWalk sponsored by the Rotary Club of Ladner. Along 1 km of the Millenium Trail in Ladner, starting at Neilson Grove Elementary School, 5500 Admiral Boulevard, the children took the trail with parents helping them read a two-page spread of a story book at each of 21 stations. The children were running, hopping, skipping, and singing between each story board as directed at each station.
The stories along the trail are changed every month throughout the year, promoting reading literacy and physical literacy. StoryWalk is a collaborative project throughout Delta among the Rotary Club of Ladner and the two other Rotary clubs of North Delta and Tsawwassen, which have each sponsored their own StoryWalk, the Delta Child and Youth Committee, Delta Literacy Outreach and the City of Delta. -- photo Chris Offer
The babies have stopped dying. That is one stark impact over the past 12 years of Adopt-A-Village Laos (AAVIL), which Rotary Club of Ladner and some of its members have supported since 2014, along with various Rotary clubs in this region and in Ontario where the program began.
Our late friend, fellow club member and Past District 5040 Governor Michael Cruise, who passed away a year ago, bequeathed through his estate a significant donation to The Rotary Foundation Canada, in support of two of Rotary's seven areas of focus: Maternal and Child Health; Basic Education and Literacy. Thank you, Michael, with Beryl, for your forwarding thinking when you were with us, now and well into the future as your gift has a positive impact on so many young lives and their communities around the world.
Canada is prepared to receive 40,000 refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere. For the new arrivals and the local organizers settlement into new homes is a stressful, demanding process. Vancouver-based Peace Geeks is puttiing technology to work for them with an app developed to put refugees in touch, in various languages, with the many services they need to make a home for themselves. Beyond that, Peace Geeks, also based in Amman, Jordan, is putting technology to work for citizens, peacebuilders, human rights defenders, and humanitarian responders in regions where there is need for safer and more stable societies, responding to humanitarian crises, connecting displaced and conflict-affected communities, amplifying discourse for peace, and sharing critical knowledge -- inspiring local action to solve local problems, with a vision to make peace a lived reality for everyone.
During the 2016 US presidential election while studying as a Rotary Peace Fellow at Duke/UNC Peace Center, former Kelowna and Vancouver resident, Linda Low, founded “Facilitating dialogue" as a program convening diverse voices in facilitated dialogue to reduce polarization which had been emerging, particularly around the election. She spoke to Ladner Rotary on January 11, 2022.
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