To See, You Must Sometimes Close Your Eyes

Past Rotary International President Rajendra K. Saboo's visit to the Institute for the Blind in 2017 was not his first. For years, our Club, Rotary Club Chandigarh, has been associated with the Institute - organizing leadership programmes for its young residents and supporting them with Braille machines and Braille paper.

But this visit was different.

That afternoon on 10th April 2017, Raja Saboo did something no one expected. He tied a dark patch over his eyes and asked to be led through the building. Step by step, he navigated the maze of stairs and corridors, alongside the children, experiencing for a few minutes what they live every day -a world without sight. 

There was no media around. It was not a photo op.  It was empathy in action.

This is Raja Saboo. The man who doesn't just speak for others - he steps into their shoes to truly understand their life.

Youth should help create a better, safer and happier world: Kalyan Banerjee

Rotary is spending nearly US$ 5 Billion every year on humanitarian projects.

 

Rotary spends nearly US$ 5 billion annually around the world on humanitarian service projects alone, informed Kalyan Banerjee, the world President of Rotary International.

Talking to the media in JW Marriott, Kalyan Banerjee felt that Rotary's strengths include its ability to attract leaders from different vocations around the world, as well as its role in promoting peace.

My goal is for Rotary to become the preferred organization for today's generation to join and participate in, to make the world better, safer and happier," he said.

He informed that it was for the first time that Rotary was invited to World Economic Forum at Jordan and Mumbai which he addressed and would be participated in the last week of January at Davos, Switzerland, to engage the businesses in the humanitarian services.

As president of Rotary International, Banerjee oversees Rotary’s top priority of eradicating polio, a crippling and potentially fatal disease that still threatens children in Africa and Asia.

Since 1985, Rotary club members worldwide have contributed more than US$1 billion and countless volunteer hours to the effort. Rotary is also working to raise an additional $200 million to fulfill its commitment for a $355 million challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Great progress has been made, and the incidence of paralytic polio infection has plunged worldwide from 350,000 cases in 1988 to fewer than 1,300 in 2010, he said, and already even earlier endemic states like UP and Bihar had no polio case reported for the last over 18 months.

The third Indian to be the world president of world's largest humanitarian service organizations, Rotary International, Kalyan Banerjee, arrived in Chandigarh today for a two-days visit, and addressed a meeting of over 1000 Rotarians in the morning at Shivalik Public School, Mohali.

Banerjee is a director of United Phosphorus Limited, the largest Indian agrochemical manufacturer, and the chair of United Phosphorus (Bangladesh) Limited, who took over the reigns of Rotary International on 1^st of July 2011, and gave to the Rotary world the theme, “Reach Within to Embrace Humanity”.