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The meeting this week was held at the Persian Gulf Restaurant and was presided over by President Steve Day. Mohsen Babaeian was the official greeter, the Four Way Test was recited by PP Chris Gaynor, Janet Schwartz led the pledge of allegiance, Jim Crane provided the thought of the day including some wisdom by King Solomon “He who despises his neighbor sins; but he who has mercy on the poor, happy is he.” And “It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.” As usual PP Ed Gauld lead the song, “God Bless America.”
Two Rotarians were visiting from Dusseldorf, Germany (Hans and Astrad Christof) and presented WVRC with a chocolate symbol of their city (a boy doing a somersault in honor of their victory over Cologne in 1288). UCLA Rotaract President Sarah Huang was also in attendance.
PP Gordon Fell received a “Rotarian at Work” T-shirt for his service at Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) camp that took place at Lake Arrowhead and sponsored 150 campers for Leadership training.
This week we were inspired by the young speaker. Kaitlin Ryan is a rising fourth-year undergraduate at UCLA, majoring in microbiology and Genetics, and the International President of Global Medical Training (GMT), a club on campus that provides medical volunteering to underserved, rural populations in Central and South American Countries. GMT provides students with hands-on experience interacting with patients, as well as weekly workshops presenting various diagnoses, “mock Clinic” practice, and more.
Every year the students in GMT take three service trips to the Dominican Republic in Winter, Nicaragua or Panama in Spring, and Peru in the Summer. The students break out into groups of 4 or 5 and are paired with a translator. They visit a different village each day where they provide support for a local doctor and dentist by taking vital signs and patient histories, hand out prescriptions, fit eyewear, or just hold the hand of a nervous child in the dentist’s chair. Kaitlin’s enthusiasm and passion shined through and made it clear that the students were benefiting from the experience as much as the villagers they were there to serve. Leadership, empathy for those less fortunate, and the importance of listening to the patient’s perspective were among the lessons Kaitlin drew from her experiences.
Back at home the program focuses on weekly training for the students to prepare them for their missions. Basics of taking vital signs and patient histories, overviews of each organ system’s functioning and common disorders, and conducting mock clinics are on the agendas.
Since the meeting was running overtime, Steve, gave a two minute warning and allowed a couple of quick questions before concluding the meeting with a quote from James Fenimore Cooper, the author of “Last of the Mohicans” - “It is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience”.
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