Sanjay and Nehal were born into an ­underprivileged family in ­Bhavnagar, Gujarat. Their grandfather and parents lived in the backyard of the Rotary Service ­Centre established by the Rotary Club of Bhavnagar, RID 3060, in 1975. As they took care of the centre, doing all the sweeping and cleaning work, and struggled to make ends meet, the very idea of educating their children in good institutions was a distant dream. “They have now been at our centre for 45 years, but in those days, when their two children were young, life was a daily battle for survival, and the future seemed uncertain. But destiny had something brighter in store for them,” says Manish Kothari, past president of RC Bhavnagar.

In a unique initiative, the Rotary Club of Kozhencherry, one of the oldest service clubs in RI District 3211, has expanded its 37-year-old ambulance service to a full-scale funeral management project titled Pranama, that was launched in Jan 2025.

The latest beneficiaries of a mega Rotary project in ­Bengaluru to mend little hearts are a group of children from Ethiopia. They have been helped through the Rotary Needy Heart Foundation (RNHF) based in Bengaluru, which is an offshoot of the Needy Heart Foundation (NHF) and was set up in 2021 by past president of RC Bangalore Indiranagar O P Khanna, whose dream was to provide a new lease of life to children and adults from economically disadvantaged families. Together, the RNHF and NHF have helped mend the hearts of over 12,000 children and adults since 2001.

The Council on Legislation is where Rotary members meet every three years to discuss and vote on proposals to move the organisation forward. Representatives from Rotary districts around the world gathered for the 2025 Council on Legislation (COL) held April 13–17 in Chicago, Illinois, USA, voting after much debate to approve a dues increase, and also deciding to allow clubs to be chartered with fewer members.

When a group of Rotarians led by their Rotary Club of Pune Central (RID 3131) president Brig (retd) P K M Raja took the three-hour long 130km trip to Satara recently to see the outcome of the hard work they had put in to do major repairs to an ancient dam which had sustained major structural damages over seven decades, and saw a flock of birds seated on the embankment of the water body holding the copious, shimmering water, they were left gasping in delight.

At the Disha conclave held in Jaipur for the training of incoming district governors, DGNs and the district leadership teams from Zones 4 and 7, incoming RI Director K P Nagesh, who is in charge of these zones, asked the district leaders to aim high and take TRF-giving and membership to new highs during the next two years.

At the recent Disha conclave, a goal-setting seminar, held in Jaipur for the incoming governors of Zones 4 and 7,  the one message that was given by every leader was to focus on Rotary’s membership with the central aim to attract new members, retain existing ones, increase the gender balance in Rotary in India and swell the number of Rotaractors and Interactors.

Building peace requires thoughtful, sustained efforts and meaningful partnerships,” said RI President Stephanie Urchick, speaking at the Presidential Peace Conference in Istanbul. Held from Feb 20–22, the event centred on Healing in a Divided World.