Montreal

I wish that every Rotarian in the District might one day have the opportunity to attend a Rotary International Convention. It is hard to believe the common bond that you feel with, in the case of Montreal, 18,500 Rotarians form 135 countries. There are five plenary's with world class speakers, an House of Friendship showing Rotary projects from around the world, Host Organizing Committee events to show off oneof the great cities on earth.

Greg Morentson (Three Cups of Tea) talked about building schools for educating women in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Taliban have bombed or burned 2000 schools, but today there are 9 million children in schools, compard to 800,000 in 2000. 2.3 million are girls. Mortenson and the Central Asia Insitute have now built 178 schools, which are a "candle of hope" for this war torn region.

Bruce Aylward (International polio coordinator for the World Health Organization. He started his talk with "I don't have good news...I have great news." Polio has become WHO's #1 priority. There is a new vaccine and new resources from Rotary, the Gates Foundation and others. Here are the incredible results. Nigeria: 99% reduction. India (provinces of Bahar and Uddar Predesh): NO NEW CASES IN SIX MONTHS. For the first time, I heard officials of the World Health Organization say that polio will be eradicated in the near future. The overall number of cases are about the same because of an unfortunate, but very solvable outbreak in the European country of Tyrgystan, north of Afghanistan. It is the reason that we need to END POLIO NOW. The important thing is that WHO is winning in the difficult areas of the world.

There were other speakers at the conference that are having a worldwide impact: Dolly Partin (imagination Library), Bob Marusca, (Executive Director of the Boy Scouts of America), Jo Luck (President, Heifer International), Rocky Evangelista, President of the Taloy Foundation,, a polio survivor in a wheel chair who is now Lt. Governor of Ontario and an international advocate for people with disabilities, Queen Noor of Jordan(an American who married King Hussein), a Peace Scholar from Cypress forging connections between Greek Cypress and Turkish Cypress.

World class entertainment included Celtic Thunder, Cirque du Soleil and British Opera Singer Russell Watson.

Highlihgts of the speeches are avilable at a video gallery on the following link: http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNews/News/Pages/conv10june_videogallery.aspxk:

The complete proceedings will be available in six weeks. There are presentations that would be well worth running at club meetings.

Beyond the official events, there is a kaleidoscope of experiences.

Please plan to attend one of the future conferences: 2011: New Orleans; 2012: Bangkok, Thailand; 2013: Lisbon, Portugal; 2014: Sydney, Australia; 2015: Seoul, korea; 2017: Atlanta, GA;