20070609

To all concerned Rotarians and friends,
Jim Kushner and 5 other Inwood Rotary Club members, joined by New York Rotarian Bill DeLong, are on their way to Haiti. They will be working with Todd Shea, Founder of the Comprehensive Disaster & Response Services. Jim, Bill, and Todd have addressed major disasters , previously and are expeienced and reliable.Jim was written up in the Rotarian Magazine and has been on the back cover of the two latest issues. Todd has received a medal from the Pakistan President. Bill is a recipient of New York's "Liberty Medal" presented to him by Mayor Bloomberg. We worked together during 9/11.
They are in desparate need of money and supplies. These are the details:SUPPLIES NEEDED:Pain MedicationAnti-Bacterial OintmentAnti-Inflammatory MedicationAnti-Biotics ( cipro, penicillan)Medical GlovesBaby FormulaBaby Wipes
SEND SUPPLIES TO:TODD SHEAc/o EDWARD SANCHEZAVENUE INDEPENCIA # 201CONDOMINIO BUENA VENTORAAPT 104 ER PISO GAZCUESANTO DOMINGO DR
SEND CHECKS TO::THE GLOBAL GIVING FOUNDATION1023 15th STREET NW 12th FLOORWASHUNGTON, DC 20005 Phone: 202-232-5784 ( It is a 501 c3 organization)You must write in memo of check "TODD SHEA-HAITI "
I am the "Point Person" for Jim. Any questions:mailto:helenbreisler@aol.com" href="mailto:helenbreisler@aol.com">helenbreisler@aol.com Tel: 914-277-3117 or 718-622-2148
They need our help



Where We Meet
The International House of New York, also known as I House, is a graduate and professional residence hall and program center servicing various universities throughout the City of New York, including Columbia University, Juilliard School, New York University, the Manhattan School of Music, the Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, the Teachers College, and the City University of New York, among others.
Housing 700 students from over 100 countries, it is currently located at 500
Riverside Drive, next to Grants Tomb in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. The original entrance to International House is inscribed with the motto written by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: "That Brotherhood May Prevail." The piazza of the original, gracious entrance opens into Sakura Park, or would, if the gates were not kept chained shut.

History
The initial impetus for the I House was the YMCA official Harry Edmonds, who spearheaded efforts to obtain initial funding for the house after a chance encounter with a lonely Chinese graduate student at Columbia University in 1909. It was finally created in 1924 with funding from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (who later funded identical houses at the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley), as well as the Cleveland H. Dodge family, to foster relationships between students from different countries. Other Rockefeller family members to have served on the board of trustees include Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. John D. Rockefeller 3rd, David and Peggy Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, Jr., and Abby O'Neill.
The New York International House was the first of many international houses in a coast-to-coast movement to create a safe space for international students seeking to further their education. Other cities with international houses include: Berkeley, Chicago, Philadelphia, London, Melbourne, Brisbane (Australia), and Paris.
The chairman of the Board of Trustees is former Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, Paul A. Volcker. The Chairman of the Board's Executive Committee is William Rueckert, a member of the Dodge family, whose generous gifts contributed to the development of both International House and the Columbia University Teachers College.
I House's current president is Donald L. Cuneo, an alumnus of I House and Columbia University's law and business schools.

Notable alumni
There are currently 65,000 living I House alumni worldwide. Among the more notable:
Chinua Achebe, Nigerian writer, author of Things Fall Apart
Pina Bausch, German chroreographer
Mark Eyskens, Prime Minister of Belgium
Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Mexican novelist
Burl Ives, actor
Jerzy Kosinski, writer, author of Being There
Flora Lewis, journalist
Mark Mathabane, South African writer, author of Kaffir Boy
Ashley Montague, anthropologist
I.M. Pei, architect
Leontyne Price, opera star
David Sainsbury, British supermarket magnate
George Soros, billionaire Hungarian investor
Shirley Verrett, opera star
Dale Peck, US writer, novelist, literary columnist and critic
Nobel laureates Wassily Leontief and Carlo Rubbia
Kiran Desai, author


Source: Wikipedia and International House website





We encourage all civic-minded business owners, managers, and professionals to explore the benefits of Rotary membership. If you and/or your company would like more information about becoming a part of the legendary Rotary Club of Upper Manhattan, or would like to visit one of our regular meetings contact one of our Club officers at Marwill325@aol.com.




Rotary International and the United Nations
In 1945, forty-nine Rotary members served in 29 delegations to the United Nations Charter Conference. Rotary still actively participates in UN conferences by sending observers to major meetings and promoting the United Nations in Rotary publications. Rotary International's relationship with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) dates back to a 1943 London Rotary conference that promoted international cultural and educational exchanges. Attended by ministers of education and observers from around the world, and chaired by a past president of RI, the conference was an impetus to the establishment of UNESCO in 1946.


What is Rotary International? (Click on underlined words for more information)
Rotary International is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 31,000 Rotary clubs located in 167 countries.Rotary International HistoryThe Rotary Club of Chicago, Illinois, USA, the world's first service club was formed on 23rd of February 1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wished to recapture in a professional club the same friendly spirit he had felt in the small towns of his youth. The name "Rotary" derived from the early practice of rotating meetings among members' offices. Rotary's popularity spread throughout the United States in the decade that followed; clubs were chartered from San Francisco to New York. By 1921, Rotary clubs had been formed on six continents, and the organization adopted the name Rotary International a year later. As Rotary grew, its mission expanded beyond serving the professional and social interests of club members. Rotarians began pooling their resources and contributing their talents to help serve communities in need. The organization's dedication to this ideal is best expressed in its principal motto: Service Above Self. Rotary also later embraced a code of ethics, called The 4-Way Test, that has been translated into hundreds of languages.During and after World War II, Rotarians became increasingly involved in promoting international understanding.The Rotary International Foundation (Separate from the Foundation of the Rotary Club of New York)An endowment fund, set up by Rotarians in 1917 "for doing good in the world," became a not-for-profit corporation known as
The Rotary Foundation in 1928. Upon the death of Paul Harris in 1947, an outpouring of Rotarian donations made in his honor, totaling US$2 million, launched the Foundation's first program — graduate fellowships, now called Ambassadorial Scholarships. Today, contributions to The Rotary Foundation total more than US$80 million annually and support a wide range of humanitarian grants and educational programs that enable Rotarians to bring hope and promote international understanding throughout the world. In 1985, Rotary made a historic commitment to immunize all of the world's children against polio. Working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and national governments thorough its PolioPlus program, Rotary is the largest private-sector contributor to the global polio eradication campaign. Rotarians have mobilized hundreds of thousands of PolioPlus volunteers and have immunized more than one billion children worldwide. By the 2005 target date for certification of a polio-free world, Rotary will have contributed half a billion dollars to the cause.As it approached the dawn of the 21st century, Rotary worked to meet the changing needs of society, expanding its service effort to address such pressing issues as environmental degradation, illiteracy, world hunger, and children at risk.MembershipThe organization admitted women for the first time (worldwide) in 1989 and claims more than 145,000 women in its ranks today. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Rotary clubs were formed or re-established throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Today, 1.2 million Rotarians belong to some 31,000 Rotary clubs in 172 countries.


Rotary International Milestones

1905 First Rotary club organized in Chicago, Illinois, USA1905
Second club formed in San Francisco, .
Rotary Club of New York organized in 1909,
First Rotary convention held in Chicago1912.
The Rotary Club of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, becomes the first club outside the United States to be officially chartered. (The club was formed in 1910.)
1917 Endowment fund, forerunner of The Rotary Foundation, established
1932 Four-Way Test formulated by Chicago Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor
1945 Forty-nine Rotarians help draft United Nations Charter in San Francisco
1947 Rotary founder Paul Harris dies;
1947 First 18 Rotary Foundation scholarships granted
1962 First Interact club formed in Melbourne, Florida, USA
1965 Rotary Foundation launches Matching Grants and Group Study Exchange programs
1978 RI's largest convention, with 39,834 registrants, held in Tokyo
1985 Rotary announces PolioPlus program to immunize all the children of the world against polio 1989 Council on Legislation opens Rotary membership to women worldwide
1989 Rotary clubs chartered in Budapest, Hungary, and Warsaw, Poland, for first time in almost 50 years
1990 Rotary Club of Moscow chartered first club in Soviet Union
1990-91Preserve Planet Earth program inspires some 2,000 Rotary-sponsored environmental projects1994Western Hemisphere declared polio-free
1999 Rotary Centers for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution established
2000 Western Pacific declared polio-free 2002 Europe declared polio-free; first class of 70 Rotary Peace Scholars begin study
2003 Rotarians raise more than US$118 million to support the final stages of polio eradication





Rotary International Administration
Rotary is organized at club, district, and international levels to carry out its program of service. Rotarians are members of their clubs, and the clubs are members of the global association known as Rotary International. Each club elects its own officers and enjoys considerable autonomy within the framework of the standard constitution and the constitution and bylaws of Rotary International. Clubs are grouped into 529 Rotary districts, each led by a district governor who is an officer of Rotary International and represents the RI board of directors in the field. Though selected by the clubs of the district, a governor is elected by all of the clubs worldwide meeting in the RI Convention. A 19-member
board of directors, which includes the international president and president-elect, administers Rotary International. These officers are also elected at the convention; the selection process for choosing directors and the nominating committee for president are based on zones, each of which comprises approximately 15 districts. The board meets quarterly to establish policies. While the Rotary International president is the highest officer of RI, the chief administrative officer of RI is the general secretary, who heads a staff of about 600 persons working at the international headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, USA, or in one of seven international offices around the world.
Object of Rotary.

The Object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster: FIRST. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service; SECOND. High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian's occupation as an opportunity to serve society; THIRD. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian's personal, business, and community life; FOURTH. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service. The Four-Way Test From the earliest days of the organization, Rotarians were concerned with promoting high ethical standards in their professional lives. One of the world's most widely printed and quoted statements of business ethics isThe Four-Way Test, which was created in 1932 by Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor (who later served as RI president) when he was asked to take charge of a company that was facing bankruptcy.This 24-word test for employees to follow in their business and professional lives became the guide for sales, production, advertising, and all relations with dealers and customers, and the survival of the company is credited to this simple philosophy. Adopted by Rotary in 1943, The Four-Way Test has been translated into more than a hundred languages and published in thousands of ways. It asks the following four questions:"Of the things we think, say or do:
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?"



Four Avenues of Service
Based on the
Object of Rotary, the Four Avenues of Service are Rotary's philosophical cornerstone and the foundation on which club activity is based:
Club Service focuses on strengthening fellowship and ensuring the effective functioning of the club.
Vocational Service encourages Rotarians to serve others through their vocations and to practice high ethical standards.
Community Service covers the projects and activities the club undertakes to improve life in its community.
International Service encompasses actions taken to expand Rotary's humanitarian reach around the globe and to promote world understanding and peace.





R.I. Mission Statement: The mission of Rotary International is to support its member clubs in fulfilling the Object of Rotary by Fostering unity among member clubs; Strengthening and expanding Rotary around the world; Communicating worldwide the work of Rotary; and Providing a system of international administration.

History of Rotary Youth Exchange Since 1927, students and host families all over the world have had their horizons broadened and their lives enriched by the generosity of Rotary's Youth Exchange program. Administered by Rotary clubs, districts and multidistrict groups, the program today involves more than 82 countries and over 8,000 students each year.The first documented exchanges date back to 1927, when the Rotary Club of Nice, France, initiated exchanges with European students. Exchanges between clubs in California, USA, and Latin American countries began in 1939, and exchange activities spread to the eastern United States in 1958. In 1972, the RI Board of Directors agreed to recommend Youth Exchange to clubs worldwide as a worthwhile international activity that promotes global peace and understanding.


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