Promoting peace is one of the seven areas of focus for Rotary. Peace can have many meanings depending on the situations we are talking about. Most people go to the notion of peace as the lack of wars. Peace has so many aspects we will not be able to cover them all in this article.
I want to focus on a couple of aspects of peace. The first is that people cannot be at peace if their basic human needs are un-secure. It is hard to feel at peace if you lack proper shelter from the elements. Rotary clubs across our district are working with agencies and non-profit organizations to help those in their community who need proper sheltering.
The other element of peace that I would like to focus on and challenge us to continue to work on is making sure those in our communities are not food insecure. I know many of our clubs are working with their local food banks to help keep their stocks up. I asked our incoming club presidents and have mentioned to club members as I visited clubs that I wanted to ensure that no kid goes hungry during the 24/25 Rotary year and beyond. Working with the food banks is one of the ways to achieve that goal. The other way is to check with the schools in your communities to see which ones have school pantries. These pantries provide students with food they can take home over the weekend or during school breaks. What they take home may be their only food for the weekend.
Our district has a Peace Committee, chaired by PDG Janice Fulkerson, that is starting to build members and work on many aspects of peace. Continue to check our District 5400 website for updates.
Lastly, February is also Conflict Prevention Month. There is an aspect of conflict that is conflict resolution. Rotary’s Learning Center has some self-directed courses that can help address conflicts. If you go to the Rotary website at rotary.org and then log into your My Rotary, you can access the Learning Center. Once you go to the Learning Center, if you open the ‘Professional Development’, you will see the courses dealing with many topics of conflict.
Please take a moment to reflect on what you and your club can do to help promote any of the aspects of peace within your community. Thank you for what you have done in the past and what you will do moving forward.
Steve Gage
District Governor 2024-2025
