India shines bright in TRF giving, clocking $32 million last year
When it was his turn to address the massive TRF Multi District conclave in Kochi, TRF Trustee Chair Mark Maloney effortlessly lightened the mood and lessened the fatigue of sitting through a long conference with his wit and humour. First of all, he bowed and paid his respects to King Mahabali, complete with his shimmering red veshti and glittering gold crown, who had been put in the first row for the event which just followed Onam.
As the audience burst into laughter, he said: “You may laugh but I am not going to get into trouble with royalty!”
Next, referring to the video shown by Mahabali on the various enchantments of Kerala that he and his wife Gay were going to miss as they were on such a short trip to the state, Maloney said he hoped to do it all on his next trip. “I particularly look forward to seeing Gay going down that zipline. That would be quite a show!”
Thanking the leadership of Rotary in India, particularly Trustee Bharat Pandya for extending tremendous support to TRF, resulting in India emerging once again as the No 2 contributor to TRF last year at $32 million, he referred to Pandya as “maybe the second most knowledgeable Rotarian in the world. I’ll accept that I am the encyclopaedia of Rotary (as stated earlier by Pandya). It’s not true, but it makes me feel good.”
Complimenting the India region for “the tremendous work that is being done here,” he congratulated the present and last year’s district governors and the regional leadership of Zone 5 — RRFC Gowri Rajan, EMGA Madhav Chandran and EPNC (End Polio Now chair) Chinnadurai Abdullah — for the phenomenal feat of collecting “$3.2 crore”.
He said by working together, Rotary and TRF, was helping realise so many hopes and dreams across the world, and recalled the 1985 RI Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, which he had attended. “Walking among Rotarians around the world, including some who outwardly seemed different than me, I became enchanted with the magic of Rotary.”
Bharat Pandya is maybe the second most knowledgeable Rotarian in the world. I’ll accept I am the encyclopaedia of Rotary. It’s not true, but it makes me feel good.
– Mark Maloney, Trustee Chair
During the 5th plenary session, he heard Dr Albert Sabin, creator of the oral polio vaccine, talk about the need to vaccinate all children and watched “the thunderous support expressed by Rotarians. That moment, 39 years ago was the dawn of PolioPlus, a significant milestone in Rotary’s commitment to the world’s children”.
Next year as club president, he had hosted a GSE team from Western Nigeria, and the following year led a return exchange visit from his district, and saw that two of the children in the seven families in Nigeria who hosted them had polio. “Since that exposure to the victims of polio, I have witnessed firsthand the incredible work of Rotary members and health workers ensuring that this terrible disease will soon be finished forever.”
Maloney then posed a query to the delegates — if they had a magic wand to address the challenges in their communities, where would they use it? To expand contributions to end polio? “Or invest in peace builders in a world raging with unrest? Would you provide sustainable systems for water and sanitation where there are none? Would you provide dialysis equipment for a public hospital used by the less fortunate in your community? Or support those rebuilding their lives after a natural disaster?”
Rotary, through TRF, provided the opportunity to Rotarians to use that magic wand in the area their communities needed the most. “Gay and I have had the opportunities to see Rotary’s magic wands in action in several places,” he said.
One of their most memorable moments, Maloney said, was during their visit to Hanoi in Vietnam in Dec 2019, just before Covid unleashed its devastation. They had joined Rotarians from Korea and California conducting vocation training for Operation Smile to correct cleft lip and cleft palate deformities in young children. The couple was paired with Pink (her English name), who was five months old. She was accompanied by her father, and Maloney carried her into the operating room. Once her surgery was completed, “which I watched fully without fainting, I carried her back and placed her into the arms of her father. Her father sang a lullaby to Pink, which was in French… remember Vietnam was a French colony. It was a lullaby we both knew and we were able to sing along.”
And then, magic happened. On that day, Rotary changed not only Pink’s life, as she no longer had the deformity and wouldn’t be teased or discriminated against, “but our lives as well. The young father, perhaps 25, who was a Buddhist, came up to us and in gratitude for what we had done, made the Christian sign of the cross for each of us. What a moving experience it was for both of us.”
But to be able to wave these magic wands, “which are all coin-operated”, TRF’s goals would have to be met, the Trustee Chair said. For this Rotary year, the Trustees had set an ambitious fundraising goal of $500 million “and all of us have to work together as a team to achieve this goal. We also have to reach our endowment goal of $2.025 billion by 2025. When that goal was established in 2017, it seemed a long time away, but 2025 is upon us and we have got work to do. We are approaching that goal, and we’re about $250–260 million away,” he said.
This year, the trustees have set an ambitious goal of $500 million for TRF. We have to work together to achieve it.
– Mark Maloney
Once again spelling out what he calls ‘Mark’s magical markers’, Maloney said all the leaders in the hall would have to lead by example and make a contribution to the Annual Fund. “I also ask you to make a contribution to the Endowment Fund by December-end. Your personal commitment will set the stage for your district’s commitment to TRF.” Next, they’d have to contribute to their district’s PolioPlus Society with a minimum contribution of $100 and a commitment to continue that till polio is eradicated. If your district doesn’t have a PolioPlus Society, let’s get one started right away.”
Next came the mission to raise awareness of the Paul Harris Society and increase the number of individuals who make an annual commitment of $1,000 to it. The last was to put together a team to “host some sort of a legacy event with a minimum goal of $1 million to support the Endowment Fund. If every district does it, even if they are not all successful, and don’t reach the goal of $1 million, I am confident that we will celebrate at the Calgary Convention (June 2025) that we have achieved the $2.025 billion goal.”
He added: “You can say fine, that’s well and good, he will say all this because he is the Trustee Chair. But I am not asking you to do anything that Gay and I have not done. We are both members of the PolioPlus Society, as well as the Paul Harris Society, we have just established a fund in support of the environment and last February were the chairs of such a million-dollar dinner legacy event. If we can do it, you can do it too.”
In 1986, during a GSE visit to Nigeria, I saw two children with polio. Since then Rotary has done incredible work to end this terrible disease.
– Mark Maloney
Maloney inaugurated four healthcare projects worth ₹2 crore, done through global grants, all for the Ernakulam General Hospital. The first three projects, valued at ₹1.3 crore, have been done by RCs Cochin Central and Cochin Titans. These include providing 16 state-of-the-art haemodialysis machines, 18 beds, and 16 multipara monitors, for the dialysis centre, which is now known as the ‘Rotary Dialysis Ward’. This facility will now be able to perform 336 dialysis procedures every week and treat an additional 125 chronic kidney disease patients at a time. The major contributors for this project are Rtns Kochouseph Chittilappilly, Joseph Vachaparambil, Anil Varma and Dr C M Radhakrishnan.
The fourth GG project he inaugurated has provided sophisticated equipment to the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery department at this government hospital. It was explained that since 2021, this department has been doing bypass and lung surgeries and vascular procedures, and urgently needed crucial equipment to do more complex treatments, including open heart procedures, valve repairs, and congenital heart surgeries. This project, worth $600,000, has installed the Philips Live 3D echocardiography system which will allow doctors to visualise the heart with precision and perform more complex operations successfully.
Addressing the meet, Trustee Bharat Pandya said that if for over 100 years TRF had “touched lives and transformed communities across the world, it had been made possible by the passion and dedication of Rotarians. He complimented Zone 5 districts for not only meeting their TRF goal last year, but exceeding it. He congratulated the governors and regional teams for this feat, as also members of RCs Cochin Central and Cochin Titans for the outstanding projects they had inaugurated that evening.
“Whether it is cleft palate surgeries in the Philippines, paediatric cardiac surgeries in Mumbai or our medical missions in Africa, truly our global grants unfold the magic of Rotary and through our Foundation we can touch lives and transform communities,” he said.
Giving details of TRF’s Programs of Scale grants, he said in this $2 million are given every year for a big impactful programme. The first such grant was for a malaria-free Zambia, second was for mother and child health in Nigeria, and the third was towards a cervical cancer-free Egypt.
Pandya said that the evaluation of the first grant in Zambia, supported by the Gates Foundation and World Vision showed that in two years, the mortality and morbidity from malaria in Zambia had come down significantly, in some cases by as much as 50 per cent. “Learning about this, the Gates Foundation and World Vision were so happy with the execution of the programme and the result, that both the organisations are giving an additional $20 million, and TRF is matching this with another $10 million. So the initial $2 million programme has now transformed into a $30 million programme called the Rotary Healthy Communities Challenge which is to be implemented in four countries — Zambia, Nigeria, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo — to fight three diseases… malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases in children under 5.”
In the last six years, Mumbai’s SRCC hospital has done 4,200 paediatric cardiac surgeries with Rotary’s help.
– Bharat Pandya, TRF Trustee
This was the magic of TRF; “we give to TRF because its work is done not by hired hands but by Rotarians like all of you. These are the people you can trust with your money. We give to TRF because it is truly effective giving, with 92 per cent of the money being used only for the purpose for which it was given.”
The Trustee added that over the last 15–17 years Gates has given more than $1.2 billion for polio eradication efforts. When he came to the 2009 RI Assembly, he was asked why he keeps giving to TRF. “He said we look at a programme we want to implement ad hoc and then we look for an organisation that is head and shoulders into that programme. Bill Gates said they wanted to work for children and particularly polio eradication. Once this was decided, he added, there was no doubt in our minds that the only organisation to work with was Rotary. Such is our credibility.”
Giving one example of the magic that happens with TRF, Pandya said that the SRCC Hospital in Mumbai was started in 1954–55, mainly to offer corrective surgery for paediatric deformities mainly due to polio. With polio having been eradicated from India by 2011, by 2012 the hospital was shut down. It was taken over by Devi Shetty’s Narayana Hrudayalaya and reopened in 2017, and was dedicated to paediatric surgeries, mainly for the heart.
Last year, he had visited that hospital, and saw patients had come from rural Maharashtra to undergo surgeries. In the pre-operative ward, he saw on the beds children from six months to about 12–13 years. They were usually accompanied by their mothers, and as he went around from bed to bed, “in the eyes of the mothers I saw two emotions, anxiety and hope; anxiety about whether her child will come out successfully from the surgery and hope that at least there is an organisation like Rotary which had come forward to offer a chance of life to their child through such a costly surgery they couldn’t have afforded.”
In the last six years, the SRCC hospital had done 4,500 paediatric cardiac surgeries “out of which 4,200 were done with the help of Rotary’s global grants. The blessings of those people will come to you and your families,” he added.
You must create district teams to organise TRF legacy events to raise $1 million. We have to meet the $2.025 billion goal by 2025.
– Anirudha Roychowdhury, RI Director
In his address RI director Anirudha Roychowdhury said that Zone 5 is considered “the largest and strongest in the world” with 50,000 members. The immediate task before Rotarians in India was to create teams in their districts which can work for narrowing the gap — of around $400 million — to meet the $2.025 billion goal by 2025. “You must create teams which can organise TRF events that can mobilise $1 million as Chair Maloney suggested.”
AKS members Leema Martin, Arul Jothi Karthikeyan and RID 3204 DG Sudhi Jabbar, who will be the first from his district to become an AKS member, and Raj Siddharth, president of RC Coimbatore East, who presented a cheque equivalent to $100,000, were honoured, along with other major contributors to TRF.
Chairman of the event PDG Sunil Zachariah welcomed the delegates, RRFC Gowri Rajan, EMGA Madhav Chandran and EPNC Chinnadurai Abdullah gave a brief report, District Governors N Sundaravadivelu (3202) Suresh Babu (3203), Santhosh Sreedhar (3204), Sudhi Jabbar (3211) and Meerankhan Saleem (3212) gave an overview of their districts’ activities.
