HOULTON, Maine — The Houlton Rotary Club met for its luncheon meeting on Monday, Jan. 14, at Watson Hall. There were a couple of new faces as Chris Nickerson is back as a Rotarian representing Bangor Savings Bank and there was a seven day reading for Katie Sloat who is sponsored by Rotarian Scott Dionne.
The speaker of the day was Rotarian Travis Glatter, who shared his research on the Rotary Foundation and its inner workings of community to community. Glatter has been a Rotarian for 16 years, eight years in South Berwick and eight years in Houlton. He finds that the organization provides for meeting people that he would not ordinarily meet in his life. Rotary represents people from many walks of life and many different businesses. The Houlton Rotary Club does so much for the community and does it so well, according to Glatter.
Six key areas of focus in Rotary are peacekeeping and conflict resolution, disease prevention and treatment, water sanitation, maternal and child health, promoting basic education and literacy and economic and community development all around the world. These are big goals. But if one thinks about the ways that the local Rotary clubs and District works on these areas of focus the work starts from the ground up.
Each year in today’s world 20,000 are killed or maimed by landmines, 51 million people are displaced from their homes, 90 percent of people involved in armed conflict are casualties and 300 are soldiers. Rotary International has spent $142 million on peacekeeping efforts over decades. Over 1,000 students have graduated from the Rotary Peace Center program. Taking action means to participate in fellowship and civic activities on a person to person level.
On a local level Adopt a Block works with a character development program in the after school program and the boys camps with junior mentors who return to the program to coach younger members. Disease prevention and treatment can be tackled at a local level by working with community based health care organizations.
Water and sanitation studies show that 25 billion people lack clean water around the world with 1,400 children dying each day. Rotary has a goal to provide everyone with clean water by the year 2030. In Lebanon, for example, 24 Rotary clubs got together to provide clean water to all schools in a country that has been devastated by war and an influx of refugees.
Water tanks and filtration systems have been installed in 200 schools and the goal is to reach 1,535 schools. Glatter quoted Rotarian Arch Kemph who said that Rotary grants are for the purpose of “doing good in the world” and the first donation was $26.17.
In 1928 the Rotary Foundation was established with Klumph serving as the first chair of the board. In the past one hundred years over three billion dollars has been raised. To learn more about the inner workings of Rotary giving consult the website www.Rotary.org.
