"You and I are created for goodness"

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu says, ‘You and I are created for goodness’ during his keynote address Thursday, 18 June, at the Rotary World Peace Symposium as a part of the RI Birmingham Convention.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said Rotary's dedication to peace in the world makes God smile.
He said how he envisions God looking down on His creation and crying when He sees all the bad things His children are doing to each other. But, Tutu said, then God looks again and sees Rotary. Rotary's dedication to peace in the world makes God smile.
More on RI Convention Update

Arnab Goswami, chief editor of India's English-news network Times Now, which broadcast three days of live coverage of the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, used the incident as a case history of how media coverage shapes government response. Goswami said that in India and Pakistan, pressure from the media influenced how both countries' governments handled the crisis.
Goswami advocated a global perspective for the decision makers in the media. "The attacks weren't just an Indian story. When we look at conflict, we often look at it as someone else's conflict," he said.

Past RI President Rajendra K. Saboo encouraged attendees to forge stronger ties with the media to help get the good news out about Rotary's contributions. In addition, he suggested that media professionals apply to the certificate program at Chulalongkorn University, home to one of the Rotary Centers for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution. The program has already trained five journalists and several other professionals who regularly work with the media in peace and conflict resolution.

Accountability and telling it like it is are critical components of building peace, said Jan Egeland, director of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Egeland was the UN secretary-general's special adviser for conflict prevention and resolution from 2006 to 2008.

International Dolls Museum

Those of us who might have forgotten, the International Dolls Museum in Sector 23, Chandigarh, has been refurbished and is now ready for reopening.
The museum was the brain child of past Rotary International President Rajendra K. Saboo, who started collecting the dolls from various countries in 1983, and he would request every Rotarian travelling abroad to bring along a doll from that country.
Gradually he worked on that and collected over 100 such dolls, for which meticulously, the captions and historical background was put together with each doll.
He also spoke with the Rotarians in Ebingen, Germany, who gifted a beautiful working model of electrical toy trains and on its arrival, in 1985, our Club handed over the dolls and the train to the Chandigarh Administration, who housed it in the Sector 23 Bal Bhavan.
With the efforts of Mr. V.N. Singh, the nodal officer of the Le Corbusier Centre has worked on this dolls museum for past several months to give it a new look.
Rotarians must visit the museum and may be add to the collection by bringing in more dolls from different parts of the world where they travel

Indian Electorate and its Expectations

This would be the subject of discussions in our next Club meeting on 15th June 2009. One of the senior journalists, Mr. Sarabjit Pandher, a special correspondent with The Hindu and President of the Chandigarh Press Club would be speaking on the subject. Please join in the discussions.