The Clubs 12th meeting of this rotary Year, and our 5003rd Meeting in the Club’s 102nd year.
The 60 or so attendees online and in-person enjoyed a lively welcome from Past president Bob Glindemann.
President Chris welcomed Members and Guests, including Charlotte Hornauer Tuba player from Germany. He also welcomed Harry Baugh from Tintern Grammar, a candidate for the Georgia, USA Rotary Student Program and his mother Bev.
President Chris then presented our member Rob McGuirk, Rotary Foundation District Service Award for his work on the Peace Bells Project, and for outstanding service in promoting the Rotary Foundation and its goal of world understanding and peace. The Award was originally presented to Rob at the District Changeover in June this year.
Rob then gave members and guests an update on the delayed installation of the Peace Bells in the Rotary Melbourne Peace Park.
President Chris then invited Maestro David Kram, our club’s extraordinary music specialist to the podium. David, Chair of our Arts Committee, has been assisting New Generation Service Exchange Program participant from Germany, (NGSEP) Charlotte Hornauer and an accomplished Tuba player, in making musical performance connections in Melbourne’s orchestral community. Alan Seale from RC Central Melbourne joined David on the podium then gave a brief outline of the NGSEP and the musicians they have been jointly sponsored in recent years by our two clubs.
Past President Robert Fisher then took over as Chair for the day and introduced Dr Helen Durham AO, CEO RedR Australia who spoke on ‘Humanitarian Action in a Challenging World: from Ukraine to Samoa’.
Helen has recently been appointed CEO of RedR Australia, a Rotary Melbourne Corporate Member with strong humanitarian principles, that supports people and communities in crisis and conflict.
Prior to joining RedR Helen was a Director with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Geneva, managing a department of over 400 experts including international humanitarian lawyers, armed forces delegates, policy makers, researchers and diplomats and an annual budget over 3 billion (AUD). As a leader and policy maker, heavily engaged on the ground immersed in peacebuilding initiatives and negotiating conflict resolution, Helen was able to share deep insights from her distinguished service in challenging environments around the world.
In her address Helen touched on the complexity of conflict resolution and the need for international organisation to prioritise and focus realistically on problems they are best equipped to respond to. This often-involved tough choices, but these could be ameliorated to some degree, in crisis situations, by early collaboration with multiple aid agencies, such as the Red Cross, UNICEF, the UN High Commission for Refugees.
Because women and children tend to be the by-standers in major conflict situations, it is important to support them – for children the impact can be worst in lengthy conflict situations, which are more prevalent in modern warfare, but empowering women is also the key to community resilience in keeping communities functioning and recovery after a conflict.
She shared her insights on the challenges of negotiating safe passage of women and children out of conflict zones. She highlighted the importance of non-judgemental diplomacy in negotiating delivery of humanitarian service when hardened attitudes of conflicting parties towards each other and naïve public opinion make compassionate assistance near impossible.
It was clear that Helen saw the deep interest of Rotarians in conflict resolution and peace building and this bodes well for future collaboration between Rotary and RedR such as their partnership with Rotary Melbourne supporting the training of Tongan community leaders on organising effective disaster recovery following the catastrophic volcano and tsunami that they experienced in early 2022.
Helen concluded on a positive note of optimism around the outlook for world peace despite ongoing conflicts and imperfect global leadership.
Technical issues prevented showing 2 video clips on RedR’s services during the meeting. These can be viewed by clicking these links:
Drought response in Kiribati: click here
Mentoring Midwives in Bangladesh: click here
