The Rotary Club of Anstruther was delighted to welcome two Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars to their meeting of 7th May. Robbie Adams from Hawaii and Diego Carillo Santoscoy from Mexico are pictured here with club president Derek Mathie. Both are studying for Masters degrees at St Andrews University and, whilst here, are hosted by the Rotary Club of St Andrews.

Rotary has a long tradition of fostering peace and international understanding through education. Since 1947, Ambassadorial Scholarships have given more than 41,000 men and women the opportunity to study abroad. Rotarians worldwide show a continued faith that today’s scholars will be tomorrow's community and world leaders.

Robbie’s Masters is in Peace and conflict studies, and for Diego International business strategy and economics. Both spoke of their families and homes and of their experiences working in differing and, often difficult environments around the world. They explained how these experiences had informed and shaped their beliefs, vision and motivation for the future.

Robbie has worked as a volunteer for a number of international charities in India and Tibet, has taught in Thailand and studied and worked with displaced people in Bosnia. Her hope for the future is to be able to work for conflict resolution and for the resettlement of displaced people.

Diego already has experienced work in Japan and in the Mexican Mission to World Trade Foundation in Geneva. He is particularly interested in and concerned with the economics of the multi-billion (illicit) drugs trafficking industries around the world. He has thoughts on using the economics of these huge ventures in the battle against them and hopes to be able to work within the Mexican government on drugs programmes.

It was a pleasure to listen to two enthusiastic and motivated young people and, following many questions, a vote of thanks was proposed by Andy Matthew.