by Dinah Eng

Fifteen-year-old Leo Nupolu Johnson was in school when the shooting began. It was 18 September 1998, and the country of Liberia was poised between two civil wars: the one that had ended in 1997 and the second that would begin in 1999. Now, in Monrovia, the capital, Liberia’s president had launched a violent attack to eliminate his rivals.

As the fighting accelerated, Johnson fled the school, and in the chaos that followed he was separated from his family. Ultimately he landed in a refugee camp in Côte d’Ivoire. Years would pass before he saw his family again.

Today, Johnson, 39, can reflect on his past from his home in Hamilton, Ontario. As the founder and executive director of Empowerment Squared — a nonprofit that assists and inspires marginalized youth, many of them newly arrived in Canada — he has begun to fulfill a dream he nurtured when he arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2006.

“As a child growing up in Liberia, I never had the experience of what a library looked like,” he recalls in a promotional video for the Liberian Learning Center, currently under construction outside of Monrovia. “Still, as a young man, I had this burning desire that no child should be allowed to go to school without access to books and educational materials. I set out on a journey to make sure that this was going to be a different reality for children going to school in Liberia.”

In 1998, all that lay in the future. Johnson remained in the refugee camp in Côte d’Ivoire until 2002, when civil war broke out there. He fled to the Buduburam camp in Ghana, which was host to approximately 50,000 Liberian refugees. One of the women there, a single mother whom Johnson often helped, was given an immigration document to complete. Because she couldn’t read or write English or French, Johnson filled out her paperwork and served as an interpreter during her interview. As a result, he was allowed to immigrate to Canada with her.

by Orly Halpern

During a meeting of about 50 teenagers in Israel’s western Galilee region, students were grouped in pairs and asked to identify how they were similar and different. Although half of them were Jewish and half were Arab, none of them mentioned that seemingly obvious distinction. When asked why, they told a moderator, “We are all human.” 

The meeting, involving students from four schools in Jerusalem and the western Galilee, was part of a peace education program designed and led by Arik Gutler Ofir, a former Rotary Peace Fellow.  It was supported by a 2016 Rotary Foundation global grant and implemented by the Rotary Club of Jerusalem, just one of the club’s many peacebuilding initiatives. 

The students stayed at each other’s homes and learned about each other’s food, music, and cultures. The project was so successful that when the grant money ran out, a local education board integrated the initiative — which had been co-sponsored by the Rotary Club of Mönchengladbach, Germany, and supported by Rotary clubs and districts in Australia, Germany, and the United States — into the civics curriculum.

“When you bring children from both sides to get to know each other, you create a situation where the other is not an enemy,” says Dan Shanit, a former medical clinician, researcher, and program developer who has served as the Jerusalem club’s president twice, most recently in 2021-22. “Enemies are anonymous. They don’t have a face. What you want is to know the face.” 

The pandemic did not just slow down the delivery of essential health services to vulnerable populations. In many cases, it completely cut it off. On 23-24 June, health days were organized at 60 sites in Nigeria. At two sites at Ikeja, Dr. Omolola Salako, a clinical oncologist, and her team witnessed hundreds of women queueing up to get their cervical cancer screening and tests done. Salako is founder of three organizations – Sebeccly Cancer Care and Support Centre, Oncopadi Technologies and Pearl Oncology Clinic, and has spent over 16 years providing quality care and education to cancer patients in Nigeria. She recently shared her experience with Sneha Saloni, a communications specialist with the Rotary Action Group for Family Health & AIDS prevention.

“Being at the Rotary Family Health Days was a wonderful experience. I have always known about Rotary. In 2020, soon after the lockdown, we worked together on a prostate cancer screening program. This year, we partnered with Rotary at the two sites in Ikeja and set up our mobile screening units.

When you look at the cancer statistics, most of the cancer types affect predominantly women. Each time a woman visits me accompanied with her little kid, for cancer treatment, it shakes me up. Most of the time, these women do not have strong family support. There is so much we can do to help them.

Finding Purpose in Pain

I lost my sister to cancer 19 years ago, and this is where it all started from for me. I found a purpose in my pain. When I do my work, I remember the incredibly difficult time my family had to go through. So, I am trying to do my best to help reduce the pain of others.

Each time I treat someone, I feel so happy seeing them win the cancer battle. To know and let them know that they are not alone in this and when my patients come back just for a follow up after being treated, I just feel so humbled. There is a lot of fulfilment in this.

While there is a visible lack of awareness, in many cases the treatment process is further delayed by the time it takes for cases to be detected and arrangements made to cover the treatment costs. Flying out to a different country is not an option that many can afford. The treatment journey is also not easy.

Wisconsinites can now order 5 free at-home rapid antigen COVID-19 tests through a new website

By Corrinne Hess - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin launched an online program Friday to get free at-home rapid COVID-19 tests as the federal government winds down its free testing program. 

Wisconsin residents can go to the Say Yes! COVID Test website (sayyescovidhometest.org) and place an order for a package of five rapid antigen COVID-19 tests at no cost. Supplies should arrive in one to two weeks. 

The state's new testing program comes as students across Wisconsin returned to school this week. 

“It is critical for Wisconsinites to have access to a COVID-19 test when they need one, and this program delivers tests right to their door,” Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Karen Timberlake said in a statement. “We encourage all Wisconsin households to have COVID-19 self-tests on hand to protect themselves and those around them.”

Taking a COVID-19 self-test provides results within minutes.

While Silicon Valley is among the world’s most affluent locales, hunger and income disparities strain food distribution programs in the area. For the past two years, the Rotary Club of Saratoga, California, has been a continuing presence at Martha’s Kitchen, a soup kitchen in San Jose, where members prepare food once a month.

The club coordinated the $95,000 purchase of a refrigerated box truck so the facility could collect perishables and goods donated by organizations such as the Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, a food bank that covered half the truck’s cost. “The soup kitchen itself does not have extensive storage facilities. The truck helps so food doesn’t spoil,” says Sangita Seshadri, immediate past president of the club.

With $3,000 contributed by the Rotary Club of Bangalore West, India, the project shows the power of international friendships. “Typically, people look at the developed countries giving to the developing countries,” Seshadri says. “There is need all over, and when we talk about partnerships, it is both ways.”

By Charley Hanney - Conley Publishing

MEQUON — It’s hard to miss the 17-foot-tall Mequon Town Center Gateway structure located at the northeast corner of Cedarburg and Mequon roads that serves as an entrance to the Mequon and Thiensville communities as well as the Town Center District.

But what is less visible are the multiple storyboards describing the rich history of the local community.

It was in 2004 when Thiensville-Mequon Rotary Club member and Mequon-Thiensville Historical Society President Bob Blazich had the idea to have informational signs mounted on bronze, tree-like pedestals for the Rotary Riverwalk Project along the Milwaukee River. But due to the high cost of the pieces, his ideas never went anywhere.

Until there were talks of creating a Town Center gateway.

“Several people approached me and said that they hoped to have some type of historical signage included in their plan. I, of course, was all in on that idea,” Blazich said. 

He proposed five storyboards focusing on Indigenous People, Mequon, Thiensville, The River and the Town Center. Former Mequon Mayor and current T-M Rotary Club member Connie Pukaite helped oversee the project with Blazich and helped him considerably with the wording of the storyboards.