January 30, 2020: Strategic Planning Session.
Head Table: Our President Brent Shackleton, invites, all major chairpersons, to join him at the head table.
Today at Rotary: Our speaker was Dr Alicia Cundall who described her work in Africa with a volunteer organization called EM Global. This organization specializes in emergency medical training and scholarships. This is a new organization and Dr. Cundall is a major player in it. They have a team of about 4 Canadian doctors and have recently completed a project in Tanzania in which the team travelled there to train doctors there in emergency medicine. Dr. Cundall explained that the local doctors in Africa are well qualified except that they lack the tools and new skills that are not available in their country but that can be supplied by this team along with the training. In her talk, Dr. Cundall gave us the picture of how very practical a portable ultrasound machine can be in Africa especially for emergency work. The team did this training and provided the machine for the team they were training. They even used the ultrasound to demonstrate its usefulness when there just happened to be a bus accident.
In addition to such trips with the team to do on site training, the plan is to sponsor African doctors to come here on a scholarship program and be more fully trained in emergency medicine. The budget for a scholarship program might be $30,000. 00 for 3 years ($10,0000.00 per year). The budget for a team to go and do an on - site project would be about $15.000.00 and would include tools such as ultrasound to be donated.
Dr Cundall emphasized that it is so important to do work that results in a benefit to the recipient doctors. Training a whole team and giving them tools they can use after the trip is over is much better than a doctor going to a site in Africa to treat patients.
The Rotary club of Stratford international projects committee has provided $5000.00 to EM Global. This organization is attracting donations from sources who see to benefits and hopefully it will also attract donations from other Rotary sources.
Dr Alicia Cundall was introduced by Patrick Feryn and thanked by Wendy Wilkinson.
Scribe: Norm Bird
Guests: No Guests today.
Foundation Draw: The prize today was donated by an anonymous Rotarian and won by Al Wakelin.
Make-ups: Gordon Sherwin, on January 15 and 22, 2020 at the R. C. of Stuart.
Please, if you do a make-up, please send me an email at naroutzidis@naeng.com.
January’s Attendance Committee: Charlene Gordon (I/C), Craig Pearce, Peter Maranger, Karel Hodgert, Doug Page, Patricia Riehl, Tony Carter, Colleen Devine.
February’s Attendance Committee: Ryan Erb (I/C), Rick Orr, Elizabeth Gaffney, Dan Kane, Debra Swan, Michael Fox, Katelyn Aitcheson, Clare McCallum, Wendy Anderson.
