Past president Hubert Singh announced Vince Cerullo, Adrian DeCoo, Ton Mennill, Lumi Mironescu, Bill Proctor, and Ray Taylor has Bell Ringers this week for attending the District Conference this past weekend.

Adrian Decoo was very happy to have attended the District Conference on Saturday believing that it had one of the best slate of speakers in recent history.  This included a survivor of the 911 attacks on the World Trade Centre, a Peace Scholar and a Polio Survivor.

 

Shawky Fahel is happy to be a member of our club’s Peace Committee and to see our first Peace Initiative Talk come to be.  The committee has several other programs and activities planned for this Rotary year.

 

Colleen James is happy that she has launched the Democracy In Action in Waterloo Region initiative, that is working hard to promote peace locally

 

Today’s program was the first of our Peace Initiatives Talks being organized by the club’s Peace Committee under the leadership of Richard Bruckeder.  Unfortunately, our originally schedule speaker, Dr. Edmund Pries had to undergo sudden surgery and was unable be with us today.  In his place we were pleased to have Professor Dr. Gavin Brockett with us who is an associate professor of History and Religion and Culture and associate dean of Arts: Student Affairs and Learning.  Professor Brockett will actually be our host on October 20 when we will have our meeting at Wilfrid Laurier University.  At that time, we will meet and hear from several students in the International Students Overcoming War(ISOW) program.  

 

 

 

Dr. Brockett is a history professor whos’ primary area of study is Turkey but also covers many other areas in the Mid East and has taught a course on Israel and Pakistan wars for several years.  In 2012 he had the opportunity to travel to Israel and the West Bank and witness firsthand the situation there and gained a better understand of “The Human Price of War”.

 

He developed a new course where he had students talk of their experiences in areas of conflict around the world.  The students reacted positively to this and wanted to find a way to bring additional students to the university to share their stories and to have the opportunity to study in Canada. They wanted to establish a scholarship program, but the university itself did not have the funds to support it.  The students believed strongly enough in this idea that they took it to the student governing body and proposed a $4 per student per term levee as part of the tuition to pay for the scholarships, which was voted on by the students and accepted.  Thus the ISOW program was created, and it remains student run at the university.  Today there are 16 international students with scholarships from around the world in the program.  When we have our next meeting on October 20, we will hear directly from several of these students.

 

There is no meeting next week as it is the Thanksgiving weekend. See details below for upcoming meetings.