At the meeting on Wednesday 22 March the Guest Speakers were The Venerable Dr Colleen O’Reilly AM, Archdeacon of Stonnington & Alex Kats, Chair of the Council of Christians and Jews (Vic) speaking on the topic 'Religion & Peace'.     

Our lunch meeting at No 35, Sofitel on Collins was the 33^rd for the 2022-23 Rotary year.

MC Philip Endersbee artfully opened the meeting while problems with software prevented meeting recording and access to our remote attendees until after the lunch break.

Before introducing member updates, President Adrian highlighted that on this day Rotary celebrates Peace and International understanding, which is reflected in the updates to be delivered alongside the featured panel discussion on Religion and Peace. 

He firstly introduced Sharmila Murali from Calgary, Canada who was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar at the University of Melbourne in 2011-12 for whom he was her District Mentor.  Sharmila spoke of completing her Master of Environmental engineering at Melbourne Uni following which she returned to Calgary, Canada, married and now has 2 young children with who she is currently holidaying in Melbourne.  She works with Jacobs, a Global water and sanitation engineering company.  Sharmila expressed her delight in reengaging with Rotary, and her commitment to join a Club in Canada on return.

Adrian then introduced visitors to the Club hosted by our Club Ambassadors for Rotary SAFE families Peter Berg and Ahmed Tohow - past Rotary Melbourne member, Dorothy Gilmour, who is now President Nominee RC Hawthorn, and Shakilah Wesonga who works on family safety projects with the Brotherhood of St Laurence.  Ahmed and Shakilah updated us on the Rotary SAFE Families’ African Australian Inclusive Communities Initiative. 

Before handing over to Chair of the day:  Ron Cullen, President Adrian highlighted next week Rotary District 9800 is mobilising on Wednesday 29 March to promote The Big Sell, in support of sales of The Big Issue in support of homeless people.

The meeting was a panel discussion on the role of religion in fostering world peace. Guest Speakers: The Venerable Dr Colleen O’Reilly AM, Archdeacon of Stonnington & Alex Kats, Chair of the Council of Christians and Jews (Vic).

There was much common ground on the need for peace and on how to foster it.  Ideas like respect for others, love your neighbor, don’t do to others what you would find hateful if done to you, and understanding respecting religious and other differences, were all seen to offer common ground for living together and fostering peace.  The need to focus on areas of agreement and to respect and understand the  position of those we disagree with was discussed. The pressures to align religious beliefs so tightly with the ideas of nations or various factions within a society that they cause a failure criticize behaviors that should be called out was raised was also raised.

Various ideas for fostering peace were discussed.

• Address some of the underlying pressures that both cause and seem to be a consequence of conflict; for example, ensure that people have access to food water medicine and education.
• Find better ways to reflect on the situation of others. Both speakers explored issues linked to the traditional Hebrew greeting Shalom and suggested questions that might be used to explore the needs of others.

Is everything in your world calm, complete, undamaged with everything where it should be?

• When building bridges with others we should recognize that concepts like love and justice are not enough. We need to find ways to link these concepts to action.

Their presentations prompted several questions and are well worth viewing on Rotary Melbourne’s YouTube Channel, by following Speaker Series #33: https://youtu.be/mB3jgeeKuMM

For the full meeting recording:  https://youtu.be/cGJt0R00gVY 

The winner of the Raffle for this meeting was Shakilah Wesonga. 

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