Peace, polio, and a 70-year partnership.
A werewolf passed me on my way to United Nations Headquarters. It was the morning after Halloween, and he’d had a long night. Adjusting his furry mask, the wolfman turned a corner and found himself dodging several thousand distance runners.
There’s always something happening in New York. On the first weekend of November, after the Halloween parades and Saturday’s warm-up for the New York Marathon, the main event was Rotary Day at the United Nations, a happening dedicated to a decades-old partnership in positivity.
In light of the problems addressed that day – hunger, poverty, war, disease, homelessness, human trafficking – perhaps it was fitting that the event began with a wolf at the door and runners with a long road ahead. Still, the mood was upbeat from the start.
First on the scene was Louis Turpin, of the Rotary Club of Rhinebeck, N.Y., putting up a tent in the hallway. Arriving at 6:30 a.m., he was there to promote ShelterBox, an igloo-shaped shelter that comes in a green container the size of a beer cooler. Like a magician, Turpin produced a tent and moorings from the box, followed by mosquito netting, sheets, blankets, a water purifier, a children’s toy kit, pots, pans, and a stove. “I had to leave the tool kit behind,” he said. “You can’t bring a hatchet into the UN.” ShelterBoxes have saved lives and provided a protected space to refugees from more than 100 wars and natural disasters. “They can sleep 10 in warmth and dignity. We can’t promise none of those 10 will snore, but maybe that’s next.”
Soon the hall was filling with exhibitors. There was a smiling woman with the ideal Rotary name of Elsie Service handing out fliers for a water project in the Philippines supported by her Rotary Club of Commack-Kings Park, N.Y. There was Stephen Mecca, an engineer from the Rotary Club of Jamestown, R.I., with a pair of projects: a portable computer lab for students in the developing world and a “microflush” toilet. “It uses a single cup of water per flush – the water from the previous user’s hand wash,” he said. “After two years, it produces a rich compost for local agriculture.” Nearby stood Dennis Wong, who’d driven from Connecticut with his Peace Pole, one of more than 200,000 all over the world, each inscribed May Peace Prevail on Earth in multiple languages. The Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, and other luminaries have endorsed Peace Poles, and Wong had his sights on another: “I want to get a picture with President Gary!”
Rotary International President Gary C.K. Huang led a small crowd of snappily dressed attendees through a larger crowd on the way to the opening session in one of the General Assembly Building’s main conference halls. At 9:30 a.m., silver-haired Joseph Laureni, primary RI representative to the UN, gaveled the day under way. Amina Mohammed, a special adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, passed along Ban’s greeting to more than 1,000 Rotarians: “The work you do is very much in line with the UN’s work.” She noted that both organizations “see the world as it is, and as it should be.” Forty years ago, her native Nigeria offered schoolgirls like her a chance to learn in safety and advance in the world. Now, she said, her home country is “broken. Young girls who go to school are being kidnapped.” One of the UN’s goals is to rebuild such broken societies. “Rotary,” she said, “can help show the way.”
In his keynote speech, the man everyone called President Gary reaffirmed the partnership that began in 1945, when 49 Rotarians were among those who drafted the UN Charter in San Francisco. “In a way, we are a mini United Nations,” Huang said. “We are the united clubs of Rotary, with a common ground of service.” He quoted U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, who reportedly referred to Rotary as “the greatest power for peace next to the United Nations.”
“In a way, we are a mini United Nations. We are the united clubs of Rotary, with a common ground of service.”
Peace and polio were the watchwords of the day. Lest we become discouraged, Huang quoted Confucius: “It is better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness.” With that he held up a small flashlight on a keychain, an item each of us had received on arrival. All day, we flashed those little lights to signal solidarity, or at least to signal somebody we were meeting for lunch.
Between sessions, the halls were full of young people. Laureline Pinjon of France and Manoela Lopes of Brazil, each festooned with friendship pins from their Rotary-sponsored student exchange programs, had flown in for the day. “I started at 3 a.m., and I have to fly home tonight,” Pinjon said, “but I am so contente, so happy to be here.” Bespectacled Alanna Walker, president of the Rotaract Club at the United Nations, urged even oldsters to attend an afterparty at a nearby pub. “Open bar the first hour,” she said, planning to ply us with liquor to open our wallets for her club’s cause: lifesaving heart surgery for children. On Rotary Day, even a Mezcal Mule might save a life.
Sérgio Levy, of the Rotary Club of Curitiba-Cidade Industrial, Brazil, and a past governor of District 4640, spoke with cheery pride of his 40 years of perfect attendance. In 2006, when he underwent major surgery – “one thousand and two hundred stitches” – he was sure he’d miss a meeting. Instead, his club surprised him. “They met in my hospital room,” said the happy hundred-percenter. “Do you wonder why my life is Rotary?”
The afternoon featured breakout sessions on topics such as clean water, youth, peace, and entrepreneurship in Haiti. I sat in on a discussion of 21st-century slavery, featuring an all-female panel telling terrifying stories, including accounts of so-called “Romeo pimps” who lure girls into prostitution. Deepa Willingham, a former student of Mother Teresa and a past governor of District 5240 (California), showed photos of a young woman with a bar code tattooed on the back of her neck. “Girls are bar-coded. They have computer chips implanted under their skin, so they can’t run away” – not only in Bangkok or Calcutta, but in Houston and Atlanta. Still, there is hope. “There’s no reason to feel pessimistic,” said Sarah Wilbanks, of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, as her panel screened a YouTube video, The Girl Effect. (Check it out immediately.)
Anyone daunted by the hard road ahead had only to follow Ed Futa back to the main conference hall. Futa, past general secretary of Rotary International, dean of Rotary’s Representative Network, and an unofficial ambassador to the UN, couldn’t take a step without sharing a handshake or backslap with friends and admirers. He began his concluding remarks by tossing his notes aside. He brought a revival-meeting feel to the room, pacing the floor and firing up the crowd with a high-energy call to action. In five minutes, Futa touched on peace, polio, and the rest of the day’s issues, bringing the audience to its feet as he introduced “President Gary.”
Huang took the microphone, took a breath, and said, “He just said everything I was going to say.” That got the day’s biggest laugh. He spoke of the long relationship between Rotary and the UN, the spotlight the day’s events had placed on matters that matter, and the anniversaries we’ll celebrate this year: 110 years for Rotary International and 70 for the United Nations.
As night fell and we streamed toward the Rotaract party and a thousand other destinations, nobody was cursing the darkness. I saw the white sparks of Huang’s mini-flashlights up and down First Avenue. Confucius would have liked that. — Kevin Cook