Rotary projects around the globe
May 2025
United States
Inspired by the American flags placed beside headstones at military cemeteries, Rick Clark asked officials at Miramar National Cemetery in San Diego if Rotary clubs could similarly pay tribute to service members interred there. Clark, a past president of the Rotary Club of La Jolla Golden Triangle, is a Vietnam veteran who served as a Seabee, as members of the U.S. Navy’s construction battalions are called. He enlisted District 5340 leaders to recruit 400 volunteers to participate in the project, dubbed 2024 Operation Flags for Vets. “It was a powerful event that impacted so many people, including countless survivors who expressed their gratitude,” says another organizer, Michael Fuqua, a member of the Rotary Club of Rancho Bernardo and a retired naval captain. The district plans to repeat the event this Memorial Day. The initiative is supported by a new district committee formed to coordinate projects related to military members and veterans. The committee helped raise about $14,000.
Mexico
Dogs, cats, rabbits, and other pets took center stage during a Blessing of the Animals event co-organized by the Rotary Club of Tehuacán Granadas in Puebla state in January. “Around 1,000 pets and approximately 3,000 people attended the event this year,” reports Paola Ortiz Gómez, president of the club, which partnered with TAC Una Protección al Entorno A.C., a nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection of animals. Since 2022, the club has organized and promoted the special Mass. “We all believe that by fostering a culture of respect for nonhuman life, it teaches us to respect human life as well,” she says. “It fills us with satisfaction to see that entire families attend and not only receive a blessing for their pet but at the same time receive veterinary care,” learn about animal adoptions, and donate to the care of homeless animals.
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18.00,000
Flags installed by the district’s veterans memorial project in 2024
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80.00 million
Pets in Mexican households
Austria
To celebrate the centennial of Rotary in Austria, two journalists and longtime Rotarians created a podcast to inspire members and nonmembers alike. Christian Haubner, of the Rotary Club of Freistadt, and Verena Hahn-Oberthaler, of the Rotary Club of Perg, launched the Rotary Reloaded podcast in December. The German-language show features conversations with well-known guests inside and outside of Rotary. “We are targeting both Rotarians and non-Rotarians,” Haubner says. “And we want to do so from a personal perspective. This is our differentiated approach, giving guests personal insights that show how meaningful Rotary can be in people’s lives. We also talk about Rotary still being modern and needed by society.” His co-host agrees. “With the momentum of 100 years of history, we look into the future of Rotary,” Hahn-Oberthaler tells Rotary Magazin, the regional magazine for members in Germany and Austria.
Australia
Athletes with disabilities can enjoy all the beamers, googlies, and dibbly-dobblies through the cricket-themed activities organized by Australian Rotarians and Dream Cricket Australia. “The program’s core mission is to foster inclusivity and promote physical activity” in a supportive environment, says Ankit Agarwal, a member of the Rotary Club of Adelaide and a board member of the cricket organization. In November the club capped a series of athletics outings with its first Dream Cricket Gala. Agarwal was among club members who organized the day and mentored participants. The club supported the activity with a grant of more than $3,000 and recruited volunteers from high schools.
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$2.80 billion
Podcasting market value in 2023
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1.00728
Cricket’s first recorded rules
South Sudan
More than 100,000 books shipped to South Sudan have been unloaded and are in the hands of students. The materials, received in 2024 by the Rotary Club of Juba, include legal, pharmaceutical, and other science textbooks, along with 11 computers loaded with an additional 33,000 textbooks. The shipment had a value of over $1.5 million. “The books are of great value to the students because not all of them could access online information due to internet issues,” says Simon Yongo, a past president of the Juba club. The shipment was coordinated by Books for Africa, a Minnesota nonprofit supported in part by Rotarians. Charles Cogan, a member of the Rotary Club of Northfield, Minnesota, who led the project, says senior Rotary leaders helped the project coordinators connect with UNESCO and the humanitarian arm of the U.S. Defense Department. “The partnerships were the key here and turned a smaller project of one container into five containers with 100,000-plus books,” Cogan says. The project was supported by the Juba club as well as 14 clubs in Minnesota and Wisconsin and a District 5960 matching grant.
This story originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.