It was with great sadness that we started the month of April learning of our District 5040 Governor Dave Hamilton's passing following a hard-fought battle with cancer. Dave visited our club last fall, and was characteristically optimistic about how Rotary would not only endure, but revive and thrive in spite of the pandemic. He shared his vision for clubs to be innovative and to support one another in trying new ideas and projects.
An online tribute service was held for Dave in late March before his passing. Here is the link to view the video capturing comments and memories of DG Dave from across the continent http://mortgage.evsuite.com/dance-like-dave/
Special thanks to Past District Governor Darcy Long for stepping back into the District Governor role to finish the year.
Thinking Big: The New BC Rotary Hearing and Balance Centre at the New St. Paul’s Hospital
On April 7th, we welcomed Jack Zaleski, retired engineer and fellow Rotarian from the Vancouver Rotary Club. Jack joined the Rotary Club of Vancouver in 1994, and currently serves as chair of its annual Bike-A-Thon fundraiser and as the chair of the Rotary Club of Vancouver Hearing Foundation.
The Rotary Club of Vancouver's Hearing Foundation has been the key sponsor of the BC Rotary Hearing and Balance Centre at St. Paul’s Hospital which has been a leader in supporting treatment and research for hearing-related disorders for the past 35 years – including performing the first cochlear implant in Canada in 1982.
Over 50,000 people in BC live with complete hearing loss. Another 400,000 have severe hearing loss. It is the third most common chronic condition in older adults and it's also a condition in children. Approximately 4 in 1,000 Canadian babies are born with some degree of hearing loss or will develop early progressive childhood hearing loss. One in 800 are born deaf. Today, 8% of children aged 6 to 19 have some hearing loss and it's a growing problem.
Jack shared with us the plan to raise $6 million (of the total $12M target) for a bigger, and even better BC Rotary Hearing and Balance Centre at the future St. Paul's Hospital. The new Centre will be a purpose-built facility offering testing, diagnostics, research, and patient care. It will bring multiple disciplines together under one roof and include exam rooms, surgical suites, research clinics, laboratories, and vital equipment used to locate, diagnose, and treat ear conditions.
The Rotary Club of Vancouver, in partnership with the St. Paul's Hospital Foundation, will be reaching out to clubs across District 5040 seeking donors with the resources to donate $10,000 or more over a 5-year period.
Our speaker on April 14th was Andreas Laschke from the Rotary Club of Trier, Germany. Andreas has been a Rotarian since 2012, holds multiple Paul Harris Awards and is currently a Board Member for Rotaract as well as a Youth Exchange Officer. His presentation described the “Doing Good Challenge,” an independent association that was founded on an initiative of a Rotarian family in Germany to engage youth in service. The program is approximately 6 years old and has received numerous awards in Germany.
The “Doing Good Challenge” consists of the following:
Teams of 3 to 5 youngsters create and organize their own service project, with no choice constraints.
Students from the age of 10 up to the completion of high school can take part.
The focus is on short, concise actions that have a direct effect and thus an immediate learning experience for participants.
Participants learn to recognize social needs and how to organize projectsas part of an independent team. Rotarians support the youth service projects by providing guidance related to project development and implementation.
Thank you Andreas for sharing your experience and learnings from this amazing program. No doubt a few members of our club's Youth Committee and our Interact Clubs will be in touch for more tips and inspiration!
On April 24th, our signature fundraising project, the Hoop-a-thon, took place over Zoom and almost broke the Internet! The Hoop-a-thon is our annual fundraising campaign that raises money based on pledges for the number of successful baskets achieved in a 1-minute timeframe from the free-throw line. Money raised from the Hoop-a-thon event fund our Rotary-Strathcona program for at-risk youth in our local community, including: scholarships, basketball programs and youth leadership training, such as the Girls Who LEAP https://www.girlswholeap.com leadership program in the Downtown Eastside.
This year's virtual online Hoop-a-thon event allowed us to bring together a dynamic mix of players and supporters. Due to pandemic restrictions, our Rotary team members stayed at home while a team of student athletes and international basketball stars represented us at the free throw line. In addition to youth participants in the Strathcona Basketball program who were shooting at the Strathcona Community Centre or neighbourhood courts, and our media sponsors and partners, Chris Gailus and Yvonne Schalle from Global BC TV, we also had celebrity athletes from Germany who helped our cause. Our fund-raising event featured basketball pros from the Rotary Club of Mittelmosel-Wittlich, the Römerstrom Gladiators Trier, and the amazing Doneck Dolphins Trier wheelchair basketball team.
Our 2021 event also featured guest appearances and messages from the Strathcona basketball kids and coaches involved in the program, as well as Member of the Legislative Assembly and Minister of Advanced Education & Skills Training, Ann Kong, our Rotary District 5040 Governor Darcy Long and Assistant Governor John Bathurst, as well as representatives from our partnering Rotary family - the Rotary Clubs of Arbutus, Vancouver, Yaletown, Vancouver-Mountainview, and Vancouver Sunrise, the Young Professionals Rotaract Club, and the King George Interact Club.
How successful was our 2021 event? At the time of this story's publication, we are happy to report that we are on track to achieve and surpass our 2021 goal of $36,000! Thank you to our amazing "Hoop-a-thon "Meister" Gary and the Project Committee for all your hard work and for the magic that you created in spite of the challenges.
For anyone still needing to honour your pledge, or if you missed us this year....you can stilldonate directly to support the kidsusing our Charitable Impact online site here: https://chim.pn/238E2xX.
Finally, a big thank you to our Hoop-a-thon donors and sponsors,Global BC TV, Mott Electric, Hammerco Lawyers, Global Container Terminals, the Vancouver Basketball Foundation, the HoopLaw Tournament and the Strathcona Community Centre Association. We couldn't have done it without you!
The Beautiful Gate Orphanage's Peka Project
Our speaker on April 21st was Matthew Harrison, a member of the Rotary Club of Bowen Island. Matthew is an actor, husband and father. He is also a renowned teacher who created The Actor's Foundry, a virtual and in-studio training campus for professional actors around the world.
Three years ago, Matthew and his wife decided they wanted to increase their family size from three to four (they already had a 10-year old son). They started the adoption process and were finally matched with a little boy from Lesotho before Christmas, 2019. Three days after the paperwork was completed, Lesotho and South Africa closed their borders due to Covid-19. Seven months later, when Lesotho and South Africa briefly dropped their travel restrictions, Matthew flew into Johannesburg. He crossed the border into Lesotho and the next day met their new son at the Beautiful Gate Orphanage. After more than a month, the two finally flew home to unite with the entire family.
The orphanage Matthew visited does great work. However, it is at capacity and only mandated to take care of children up to the age of six. After that, the orphaned children are forced into a broken foster system where they very often end up victims of human trafficking or child labour. Despite being one of the smallest nations by population in the world, Lesotho sadly stands as #2 in the world for child human trafficking...with the numbers growing due to the impact of HIV.
When meeting with the orphanage owners, Matthew learned there was a ready answer to this horrible situation: the Peka Project. Through generous donations, Beautiful Gate was able to purchase land in Northern Lesotho. Peka is a rural property that will accommodate a new childcare centre and will be a working farm, school, and home to orphaned children from six years old to adulthood. It is early days but Peka is a way to give the un-adopted children of Lesotho a chance at a successful, healthy and happy life and a way for them to learn and then help re-invest and build their country.
The SACY Program...Because "Just Say No" Never Really Worked
Our speaker on April 28th was Art Steinmannwho shared his wisdom and experience gained from his accomplished career in substance use policy, education, program development, advocacy and health promotion work. Art recently retired from his position as Manager, Substance Use Health Promotion and SACY, for the Vancouver School Board (VSB), a position he held for 16 years. SACY (Support and Connecting Youth) is a joint initiative of the VSB and Vancouver Coastal Health in collaboration with the City of Vancouver, the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research and the Vancouver Police Department.
The “old” ways of managing substance abuse were based on approaches that tended to stigmatize, shame and blame; drive use underground; and disengage youth. SACY, while not new, acknowledges that adolescence may be a time of experimentation with substances, including tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. The SACY initiative engages parents, teachers, students, administrators and the greater community to strengthen school-based alcohol and drug prevention and early-intervention programs and policies. Prevent, Delay and Reduce are all used as viable strategies.
The SACY team uses a comprehensive approach to deliver coordinated prevention and early intervention strategies that emphasize relationships, connectedness, positive youth development, and social and emotional learning. SACY utilizes a number of unique activities including “Capacity Cafes” (where youth voices educate adults), community service learning opportunities, parent engagement and specific activities that involve Indigenous and multi-cultural communities. Internal and independent surveys have indicated SACY has generated positive results.
Some quotes from youth participants:
Thanks for not being preachy and lecturing.
I have SACY to thank for providing me with the resources to find direction in my life and the information on the slightly “taboo” topics that I couldn’t exactly go to my parents for.
I feel fortunate to have been involved in such a positive and valuable program.
And from parents:
I just want to say thanks for your advice about how to handle the challenges from my 13-year-old daughter.
I have learned from your workshops how to deal with anger, frustration, stress, emotional crisis when I had needed it.
I just wish I had joined in sooner as I would have never found this program if it wasn't for the "STEP Program".
Thank you Art for your career service and dedication to youth health and family wellness!
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