Imagine a scenario when you have to switch off all the lights and fans in your house in order to have enough voltage to run the motor to fill your overhead tank. As power supply is erratic and inadequate, even though many houses in this area do have overhead water tanks, they are rarely used. While most hamlets have power, it is only single phase. The reliability of such power is also a question mark, due to the power outages and the low voltage. And if and when power goes, which is mostly during the rainy season, it won’t be restored for days, as the terrain becomes slushy and very difficult to reach.

Listening to Brazilian cellist and Rotary Peace Fellow Diego Carneiro in Chennai was nothing short of mesmerising.

In a world where violence and conflicts are tearing apart nations and wars are being waged in different parts of the world, environmentalist Sonam Wangchuk left the participants of the Kochi Institute with a different thought when he said: “when we talk about world peace, today’s problem is not the huge war going on between nations but between man and nature. I believe that the World War III is already on between human beings and nature.”

In an ambitious project to apply one of the latest technological tools — Artificial Intelligence (AI) — to revolutionise the learning methods of Indian children from underprivileged backgrounds who attend anganwadis, which are poor children’s equivalent to the plush and fun-filled playschools frequented by the rich and upper class urban Indian children, RI District 3012 has launched an interesting and futuristic project in Uttar Pradesh.

Anybody travelling to Chandigarh for a Rotary-associated visit is bound to hear about Rajendra Saboo’s contributions to Rotary, not only as RI President, RI director, district governor or club president… but right from his early years.

When past present of the Rotary Club of ­Bharuch, RID 3060, Rizwana Zamindar set out on her ambitious goal of bringing both dignity and financial independence through a socially accepted vocation to a group of sex workers in the cities of ­Bharuch and Ankleshwar, she was driven by a single mantra. That was “how do we create hope through the magic of Rotary to ensure a life of dignity and respect for all women, for after all this is the basic right of every human being.”

It’s a frigid January night, the second in a row to dip below zero degrees Fahrenheit in Chicago.

Believe it or not, but when she was growing up, your incoming RI President Stephanie Urchick wanted to become a spy! “I wanted to become a spy and work for the government,” she says with a twinkle in her eye.