Social media is one of the easiest and most effective ways to share your club’s story. Posting regularly helps your community see the impact Rotary is making, promotes service projects and events, celebrates members, and can even attract prospective members.
Does your club have someone assigned to a Public Image role? If not, now may be a great time to identify a member who enjoys storytelling, photography, or social media.
Need help getting started? We can connect your club with a mentor from a Rotary club that is actively and successfully using social media. Learning from fellow Rotarians is a great way to build confidence, gather ideas, and strengthen your club’s online presence.
Please reach out if you’d appreciate a mentor, or would be willing to be one!
~Stephanie Curtis,
Public Image Chair, The Burley Rotary Club, Stephanie.Curtis@imail.org
Hunter Levy
Dear all,
Hunter Levy here again, Rotary Peace Fellow Class 24 writing with another Peace Fellowship update.
The school year ended this May following a class trip to Rwanda as part of a Peace Department module called ‘Africa Study Visit.’ A group of 20 students alongside three university professors spent two weeks exploring Rwanda with the opportunity for each of us to select our area of interest and develop a paper predicated on the research we gathered. I chose the role of language of instruction (LOI) policy, which has a fascinating history in Rwanda given their shift to English in 2008 following a colonial past dominated by Francophone Belgium. This also connects closely with my planned dissertation topic of the role of language in education and employment in Tanzania.
Immediately following our final examinations, I returned to Morocco, where I lived for 26 months from 2017-2019, along with my aunt and uncle who came all the way from Ketchum, Idaho to meet me there! We traveled up into the mountains where I used to live and enjoyed the gorgeous late spring weather (see attached photos of the mountains and streets of Marrakech).
In June, I departed for my Applied Field Experience (AFE), an integral component of the Rotary Peace Fellowship. Partnering with Asante Africa Foundation, a regional organization focused on expanding educational access for East African youth, I’m running a 6-week extracurricular learning program in the northwestern region of Geita, specifically in an area called Nyarugusu. Working with three secondary schools and about 200 students (60-70 per class!), we are using storytelling as a means of learning and self expression, focusing on the use of Swahili language in order to maximize student confidence and encourage active participation. So far we are two weeks into the program, with plans to shift after two more weeks to a mode where students themselves are the ones developing their own stories (see video of a fun warmup game earlier this week here).
Game (After-school Program).mp4
The physical environment here is challenging (lack of running water, regular power outages) but I’ve become more comfortable by the week and my Swahili is progressing steadily. It’s surreal to be here after envisioning this experience since originally being accepted for the Peace Fellowship nearly two years ago now, and I’m doing my best to embrace the opportunity in all of its aspects (a few pictures of the environment attached).
In early September I’ll return to Bradford to meet the incoming Fellows (including Boise’s very own Emily Her!) and to dig into the dissertation writing process. Following that, I plan to return home to Idaho for Christmas before taking whatever step comes next. Part of those home plans include a trip down to Boise around New Year’s, so if the schedule aligns, I would love to come and meet with you all and share about this powerful experience in person.
Thank you again for your support and encouragement along the way. This has been a profound, life changing experience and I’m deeply grateful to have had these opportunities afforded to me through the generosity of the Rotary Foundation.
All the best,
Hunter
