The Hamilton Rotary Club of Bermuda will be celebrating its 95th anniversary in a special dinner at Coco Reef on Friday March 15th at 7pm. All members of the public who are interested in joining us to celebrate some of the club’s longest standing members are welcome. Tickets are on sale for $50/person. Please contact brittany@link.bm for more information.

Current members of the club who will be receiving awards for their many years of service are: Kirkham Kitson and Danny Mannus both with 52 years of service each; Dr Gerald Bean (46 years); Russell Southern (44 years); Mansfield Brock (42 years); and Han Ueli Wernli (40 years).

The Hamilton Rotary was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Rochelle, NEW YORK, and became a member of Rotary International on February 6th, 1924. Our club was honoured by an official visit of the founder of Rotary, Paul Harris. It was our privilege to sponsor the Rotary Club of St George’s in 1951, Rotary Club of Sandys in 1972 and Rotary Club of Pembroke in 1981.

Hamilton Rotary’s current president, Dr. Raphael Loutoby, has spearheaded many new initiatives in the club. Between The Youth Development Holiday Raffles, our first ever 5K run and a few other fundraisers, Dr. Loutoby has ambitiously promoted literacy both in Bermuda via sponsorships to CedarBridge Academy as well as a programme in Uganda known as the Mitooma Literacy Project. When not leading Hamilton Rotarians, Dr. Loutoby is Senior Nephrologist at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

Another significant contribution of our club to the Island is the Healthy Bermuda Project which is being financed by a Rotary International grant and whose mission is to educate and increase the awareness of the Bermudian public about the risk factors of non communicable diseases. The Hamilton Rotary Club has also revived it’s Interact club which is a junior version of Rotary open to 14-18 year old students.

For those unfamiliar with the non-profit organisation, Rotary International was founded in 1905 and is dedicated to “Service above Self.” It is a non-political and nonsectarian organisation open to all. Rotary clubs exist worldwide (over 34,000 individual clubs with over 1.2 million members) and Rotary clubs sponsor many causes specific to their communities as well as international ones the clubs choose. There is a vibrant exchange programme that happens worldwide to promote understanding between people and to allow peace to prosper. Most notably, Rotary is dedicated to eradicating polio. Rotary is a key player in fighting polio and pairs with the WHO, UNICEF, CDC, etc to provide a staggering amount of vaccinations in the developing world. Rotary is so good at fighting polio that when the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation decided to tackle polio rather than building their own apparatus they simply gave their money to Rotary. I think that is a great endorsement that if you want to spend a dollar fighting polio that dollar makes the biggest difference when given to Rotary.

In the world’s present state, it is more important than ever to have groups of people who are concerned with the basic welfare of people and to whom truth and acting fairly to all concerned is paramount. Our local club invites guests to our weekly meeting at the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club in Tuesdays at 12:30pm should you wish to learn more about joining this worthy organisation.

• Press release from the Hamilton Rotary Club