We were very pleased to welcome District Governor Iain MacDonald with his wife Winnie to our meeting of 15th August.
The traditional title of ‘district governor’ may now sound a little dated, but it is for those Rotarians who take on the responsibilities of leading one of the 503 districts of Rotary around the world. In our case Iain heads the area of the north of Scotland – a geographically large and diverse area.
Iain had recently returned from an international Rotary conference and spoke enthusiastically of plans for the future; especially of new projects and of changes Rotary wanted to make to reflect today’s society and needs. He emphasised the Rotary motto of ‘Service Above Self’ and the importance of looking outwards to the needs of our communities and to the many great humanitarian needs in the world.
Iain also spoke warmly of this year’s president of Rotary International – Kalyan Banerjee. From India and a man of great calm and tranquillity, who was inspiring in his encouragement for all Rotarians to ‘reach within to embrace humanity’ – for each man and woman to look inside themselves for the strengths to reach out to others. To make the point Iain had with him his personal ‘Meerkat’ – familiar from TV advertisements – and which Iain holds to be a mascot of community and of family living.
Earlier it had been mentioned that 12th of August saw the 30th Anniversary of the launch of the IBM personal computer, with software provided by a small start-up company from Seattle: Microsoft. Now a major world corporation and with founder Bill Gates a man of great personal wealth. But, interestingly, no longer the wealthiest man on the planet and that attributed to his major contributions to philanthropic causes. Iain made the point that the work of Rotary has been hugely supported in this way via the ‘Bill Gates challenge’ So far $355 million has been committed to Rotary on the basis that Rotary provides match-funding. It is one of the largest challenge grants ever given by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the largest received by Rotary in its 104-year history.
Our district’s support to that has so far amounted to $463,000 - well on plan to meet its commitment of $522,000 by June of next year.
Winnie concluded the evening by thanking Anstuther Rotarians for their donations of books for her literacy project for CHAS – for the children and their families.
A vote of thanks was proposed by vice president Roderick Skinner.
