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KINGSPARK NEWS Club Number: 30119 2005-06 Rotary Year : Issue 6 : 15 September | ||
| This
is the biweekly bulletin of the Rotary Club of Kingspark Hong Kong Club Website: http://www.rotary3450.org/kingspark-hongkong | ||
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| Chief
Editor : Francis Wann Club Webmaster : John Wan | ||
| Editorial
(Houses in New Orleans) - By Francis Wann | ||
| District Website | RI Website | RI President | TRF | News Room | Global History Fellowship | ||
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Houses in New Orleans
As the death toll passed 500, half of the city swamped by contaminated water, people can't help wondering if it had been God's destiny after all. Rescue work was hampered by inflexible bureaucracy, and the Government was blamed for its inaction and misplaced priorities. People waited for days in attics and rooftops for help, and many died waiting. Natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, came on the heels of the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attack, must be a painful reminder for the Americans of the incompetence of their Government. While Rotarians all over the world are quick to respond every time a disaster strikes, tsunami or otherwise, we also need the co-ordination of our service partners like Oxfam to actually achieve our objectives. RI President Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammar has appealed to all clubs to initiate special projects in the wake of Katrina, and indeed the response was enormous. What we can do here in Hong Kong is to make immediate contributions, and with our experience during Tsunami, we should be able to achieve much more. As world leaders are still in New York for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations amid bitter arguments of a watered-down version of reforms, we might also remember that Rotarians were actively involved in the drafting of the UN Charter. And it reads "We the peoples of the United Nations united for a better world..." Well, New Orleans has always been in a state of poverty, destitute and neglect. Perhaps Katrina will make us think more about the real problems in perspective. And perhaps Bob Dylan or the Animals are still singing their blues..."There is a House in New Orleans, they call..." | ||
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President's
Column
We have resolved since our Board meeting in August that we do not have evening meetings regularly for the last Thursday of the month, but we will hold evening meetings when they are required. For the last Thursday of September, i.e., 29th September, 2005 we will hold a joint luncheon meeting with the Rotary Club of Peninsula South at the Salisbury Room of the Peninsula Hotel. The speaker is our outbound exchange student, Tiffany Li, to Canberra of Australia. She is jointly sponsored by our club and the Rotary Club of Peninsula South and she will talk about her experience in her exchange program. The last Thursday of October, i.e. 27th October, 2005, will be our Rotary Foundation Workshop for Area 8 and it will be an evening meeting. The last Thursday of November, i.e.24th November 2005, will be an evening meeting and it is scheduled to be a meeting with the new Ex-Com members of our 3 Interact Clubs. IPDG Alex and PP Edward, have each donated US$1,000 to the Annual Programme Fund of the Rotary Foundation recently. Thank you, PP Alex and PP Edward, for your generous donation. Including CP John's donation, so far we have reached US$3,000 this year. Our Club Foundation Chair, PP Peter Lo, has been promoting our members to support the donation to the Foundation and he has received excellent response from our members. Rotarian Spark Lam, Marvin Lai and Kennedy Tsang have agreed to donate one Paul Harris Fellow (US$1,000) each and many others have responded to support the Every Rotarian Every Year of donating US$100 each. I do hope that members who have not yet decided their amount of donation will make up their mind as soon as possible. Thanks to PP Peter for your great work and thank you for all your support. In our last issue of Kingspark News I have mentioned that we have accepted to host the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar from the U.S.A., but unfortunately the scholar has left Hong Kong without taking up his studies in the University of Hong Kong. Our host counselor, PP Raymond, will follow up with Rotary International for what we can do. I had my visit to Mongolia from 2nd to 4th September, 2005. Our IPDG and PP Alexander joined me in Beijing and we went to Mongolia together. The purposes of our trip was to collect more information about the proposed joint projects, namely, the bath house project and the English training room project, to follow up our water supply project and our sheep donation project, and finally to enhance our relationship as the mother club with our sponsored club. We were greeted at the airport by President Beree and Rotarian Chuca. After lunch, we were joined by AG Baagii, PE Regzen and VP Nyamaa and we had a meeting with the Mayor of Zuunmod and his engineers at his Mayor's office. The meeting was very useful. We were able to assess the needs of the community and ask many questions on how the bath house will be built and its maintenance after completion. We had a site visit after the meeting and then we had dinner in a GER restaurant. After dinner we went to visit a poor family living in the GER area. The breadwinner is a worker earning about US$35 per month to support a family of 6. Their standard of living is very poor. We have asked them whether they will agree to take care of 7 to 8 sheep under our sheep donation project and they have showed that they are happy to receive them. Our sheep donation project will allow them to keep the sheep for milk, but when they give birth to baby sheep the babies will be given to another poor family. We had some sightseeing the next day morning and then we left Mongolia. The trip was very successful and I will give a presentation to our club of how we can join with our mother club, the RC of Kowloon East, to build a public bath house in Zuunmod and to consider opening an English Training Room in Zuunmod. | ||
By Florence Hui [Florence Hui is a Rotarian of RC of Macau]
Recently I've been thinking about the 4-Way Test and I got the nice poem below from my Rotaract buddy in Nepal, Rajesh Bajracharya yesterday [14.9.05]. What a coincidence! Might it be an idea to include it in Kingspark News? Rotarian John Selway has already featured it in his Rotary history archive since yesterday [14.9.05] - http://www.selway.org/archive/presidents/1954taylor/taylor/examples.htm
Four
way test sleeps..... Everyone
needs a break So
does every Rotary For
every time, Rotary deceives Every
time the four way test sleeps
Rajesh Bajracharya | ||
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More on Communication
For example, the Pope's intention for the month of September 2005 is: That the right to religious freedom may be respected by the governments of all peoples. To help the faithfuls to pray for the intention, the Church has a prayer in the form of a Daily Offering. Thus, this month's Daily Offering is as follows - Eternal Father, I offer you everything I do this day. I offer you my prayers, thoughts, words, joys and sufferings in union with the Eucharistic sacrifice of your Son Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit who guided and empowered Jesus be my guide and strength so that I can be a witness to your love. I pray that the right to religious freedom may be respected by the governments of all peoples. I also pray that the proclamation of the Christian message in the new Churches may ensure its thorough insertion into the existing cultures. Amen. In Rotary, the Rotary International President issues his message monthly through The Rotarian magazine and RI requires each district governor to issue to Rotarians in the district a Governor's Monthly Letter (GML) in whatever format that would be appropraite. In our club, we have developed a tradition whereby the President would share with the membership his thoughts through a message on Kingspark News. And here comes the catch. All these messages and newsletters would be meaningless and futile if the members do not read them and read them intelligiently; and authors of these messages who fail to identify or meet the needs and aspirations of their readers do so at their own peril. | ||
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Views in any article in Kingspark News reflect those of the authors. They are not necessarily the views of the Rotary Club of Kingspark or of District 3450. You are welcome to write to Chief Editor Francis Wann or Club Webmaster John Wan on any topic, particularly in response to articles published in Kingspark News. We would publish all contributions as long as the authors identify themselves, the contents are not offensive or abusive, and would not offend common decency or common sense. You need not be a Rotarian to write to us and you have a choice to withhold your name in the published version. Where the contents make reference to statements or policies of individuals or organizations, we would try to obtain a response from the latter for publication in the same issue if possible. | ||
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Chief
Editor : Francis Wann The Board of Directors President
: Dominic Ko | ||
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