Island Forum | Many hands behind the scenes make a mighty force
Published 11:56 am Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Robert Olson
Island Forum
As many as 150 of your neighbors have been working behind the scenes this year to make Mercer Island and beyond a better place. On the Island, we’ve been honoring outstanding students, awarding scholarships, arranging international exchanges, serving senior citizens, planting trees, flipping pancakes at Summer Celebration, raising awareness about conservation, fixing up Rotary Park and supporting Boy Scouts’ upgrade of Clarke Beach.
We are all members of the Rotary Club of Mercer Island, one of over 33,000 Rotary clubs in the world comprised of over 1.2 million men and women, who strive to live the Rotary motto of “Service Above Self.”
A team of Mercer Island Rotarians just visited Islander Middle School to engage student leaders in discussions about ethical decision-making. We shared with them our “Four-Way Test” to apply to all we think, say or do: “Is it the Truth? Is it Fair to all concerned? Will it build Goodwill and Better Friendships? Will it Benefit all concerned?” The students seemed receptive and provided scenarios in which to apply these concepts.
During this holiday season, our club members will become slightly more visible as bell-ringers for the Salvation Army in front of local stores, helpers for the Lions’ Club tree sales, packers for increased First Harvest food bank needs, and supporters of our high school Interact Club, which helps give needy children a better Christmas.
Last year, the 12 or so MIHS Interact students who helped with the “clothing and school supplies shopping spree” said they got more out of the project than did the needy kids. The Interact students also fundraise to benefit the Dong Ha School for Handicapped Children and the DaNang Street Orphanage in Vietnam.
One of the students at MIHS this year is Can (pronounced John) Altuglu, Rotary’s exchange student from Turkey. He stays with families of our Club members and gives us new eyes as he discovers our culture, so different from his. He recently experienced his first MIHS Homecoming extravaganza and says he was blown away by it all.
Our Club is active beyond Mercer Island, in the greater Seattle area and internationally.
Mercer Island Rotary Club’s newest regional project in the spring will be “The Big Read,” a partnership with Rainier Valley Rotary Club, Seattle and Mercer Island schools and community groups to read and discuss Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild.” The purpose is to get school children and adults “on the same page” and foster discussion of the Alaska Gold Rush of 100 years ago. We are also part of the regional Music4Life effort to garner donated musical instruments for Seattle schools.
On the international front, we collaborate with other clubs to bring wheelchairs to people with handicaps in other countries; and our club members have traveled worldwide to help in Rotary’s polio-eradication efforts and to build wells, dams, schools and provide other needed essentials.
So far this year, our club has supported such international projects as a women’s workshop in Durban, South Africa to teach bead cloth sculpture to sell for profit, supplies for 50 toilets in an East Indian village, dams, education and wheelchairs in Akola, India. We’ve contributed to the Burned Children’s Foundation in Santiago, Chile, wheelchairs in Central America, and transportation of the sick to the Mama Maria Clinic in Kenya. We’ve donated funds for wells and irrigation system in El Salvador, the “Nepal Disability Awareness Campaign,” and a refrigerator for a Brazilian treatment center for the chemically dependent.
How in the world do we pay for all this? Through our financial contributions to The Rotary Foundation, which often result in matching grants, and through proceeds from our annual fundraiser, the MI Rotary Half Marathon. We’re well along in our planning for next year’s event, our 38th, to be held March 22, 2009. It’s hard to miss the nearly 4,000 runners who swarm on our Island in March to join in one of the five events.
The run also supports an aggressive colon cancer prevention campaign. This year we have joined the Washington Colon Cancer STARS program to help build more teams and sponsors and to tell the stories of individuals who have survived colon cancer.
We owe a large part of our success to the active partnerships with our city, schools, other Rotary clubs and local organizations. For that we give hearty thanks.
To learn more about us, browse a copy of our new brochure at the MI Library or go to www.mirotary.org. I’d love to hear your ideas and interests in Rotary as well, at president@mirotary.org.
Robert Olson is a member of the Mercer Island Rotary Club.
