Mark Balla is the President of the Rotary Club of Box Hill Central in District 9810 in Australia and Vice Chair of the WASh Rotary Action Group (formerly known as WASRAG). He was introduced to Rotary around seven years ago by a business colleague in Nasik, India. He joined his club around four months later in March 2014 bringing a small but significant project with him. Mark will tell us about this project and others that have developed since.
In the five and a half years since joining Rotary, Mark has attended and spoken at Rotary International Conventions in Brazil, South Korea, Canada and Germany. He has also presented at 10 Rotary District Conferences in Australia, the USA and India.
During his presentation, Mark will introduce us to the work that drew him to Rotary. He would like us to know that his club has many other wonderful projects including Operation Cleft - a project which provides surgery to children born in Bangladesh with cleft lips and cleft palates. In the 14 years since Operation Cleft was founded, more than 14,000 children have received surgical intervention thanks to Mark's club. Another project of note is Operation End Slavery. Over the past five years Mark's club has become involved in fighting slavery in Cambodia, Myanmar, Lao, Nepal and India.
Mark is married to Annie who has recently become a Rotarian herself. They have two adult children - daughter Paris and son Oscar who are both university students in Melbourne. Mark has a complicated relationship with his family cat and his golf handicap.
Toilet humour is serious business | Mark Balla | TEDxQueenstow
