In August 2001, I received a call from Bradley Sumner, a co-founder of the Kim Phuc Foundation. Readers may recall the front cover of a 1973 issue of Life Magazine that showed a 9-year old Vietnamese girl, badly burned and naked, running from the napalm that was used to bomb her village. Years later, ‘the little girl in the picture’ – Kim Phuc - became a Canadian citizen living in Toronto, and Rotary International had made her a Rotary Peace Ambassador. I was secretary of the

In its ongoing efforts to engage and support young people, Rotary sponsors Interact Clubs in secondary schools and Rotaract Clubs in post secondary schools or communities. There are two Rotaract Clubs in Kingston: one is the Queen’s Rotaract Club and the other, chartered on 19 November 2020, the Kingston Rotaract Club: community-based. It is always hoped that Interactors will ‘graduate’ to Rotaract if they enter college or university and stay in the Rotary family. This and mo

Over the past ten years, students from La Salle Intermediate and Secondary School (LISS) have run an Interact Club, a high school-based Rotary Club. As their teacher advisor and with the help of Rotarian Vicky Pearson, we provided guidance and support to students dedicated to making their school, and local and global communities better places to live. These extremely motivated student leaders have initiated, organized, and facilitated many school-wide and community events, as

In our big Rotary family, the youngest members, ages 10 to 18, belong to Interact Clubs – usually high school-based branches of Rotary. It is through one of these Interact Clubs that I became involved in Rotary. I was a teacher at Frontenac Secondary School working with a group of students who wanted to volunteer at a nearby senior residence to tutor computer skills such as email and web searches. All permissions and schedules were arranged, but they needed computers. On a co