Rotary to work on preventing eruption of conflicts: McInally
| Date :26-Apr-2023 |
Staff Reporter
As world leaders jostle for power in battle for supremacy and heap hardships on the populace, Rotary International is unable to prevent the occurrence of wars inspite of its global footprint. “Had Rotary been so powerful, perhaps we could have prevented occurrence of war in Eastern Europe six months ago,” felt Gordon McInally, Incoming Rotary International President, while interacting with local mediapersons on Tuesday.
But maybe a dedicated programme for upliftment of communities might prevent start of the conflict itself in the first place as they later assume global dimensions, said McInally. So, the focus of Rotary International is going to be on enhancing its community participation with renewed vigour, wherein people would have access to dignified life and equal participation in resources, he added further. McInally is going to take over reins of Rotary International in July later in the year and before that he is on a visit to country for meeting the Rotary leaders. In fact for Rotary family of city, it was an occasion to remember as for the first time Incoming International President has ever come on visit to the orange city. McInally hails from Scotland and was accompanied by wife Heather, first lady, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and T N Subramanian, Directors, Rotary International for period 2023-25, from India. Dr Anand Jhunjhunwala, District Governor, Rotary International District 3030, and Incoming President Asha Venugopal were also present.
Elaborating on the idea of preventing conflict, McInally spoke about theme for this year, Creating Hope in the World, and for the same Rotarians would concentrate on educating people, improving the health and sanitation and most importantly promoting peace. With polio project now drawing to close, Rotary International is now focussing its energies on mental health, as post Covid-19 pandemic society is facing a bigger challenge in combating the same, more so among school children. A dedicated programme is going to be undertaken, individually and collectively and various strategies, including promotion of yoga and meditation, offering counselling services, disseminating information as McInally said early diagnosis holds the key to cure. There is need to remove taboo about mental health as same needs to be discussed in communities to work out a solution. To a question about environmental challenges, he was of view that though Rotary International cannot fight climate change, they are still chipping in with local initiatives like mangrove planting, setting-up recycling projects. The thrust is on making the changes visible on the ground level.
About the youth and India having the demographic advantage, the Rotary Club in country are adopting definitive strategy and one of them is Rotary Youth Leadership Award programme that is a huge success in South. Sharing details of the programme, Subramanian said, one of the clubs have been successful in promoting 95 start-ups as the individuals awarded are groomed to implement their ideas and they are being provided guidance, visits are arranged to industries and so on. Now the programme would be scaled-up and introduced in other parts of the country.