Newsletter of the Environment Fellowship of Rotarians

During our Rotary year 2011-12, the Environment Fellowship of Rotarians had also an active facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/envirorotarians with over 2000 persons connected, and now has its google+ account: http://gplus.to/envirorotarians. All of the family of Rotary are welcome to participate and translate what learned into concrete environmental projects. All are welcome to join us on these social media primarily to share the most successful, quality environmental projects, to share information about how it was possible to achieve such successful projects, as well as to share environmental technologies and other sites of interest on the internet, or offer articles related to relevant environmental concerns. Our gratitude goes to our Webmaster, Rotarian Simone Carot Collins of Perth in Australia, the founder and first chair of the Rotarians on Social Networks Fellowship: www.rosnf.net, as well as to Rotarian Herwig Niggemann of Bochum and Berlin in Germany who hosts our website http://envirorotarians.org

Besides our global activities constantly promoting and facilitating very many rotarian environmental projects globally throughout the year, the highlight of the year has been our successful participation with a booth the RI Convention in Bangkok, where we showcased a few examples of top rotarian environmental projects from each continent for our entire planet earth, among which: "Rotary Solar Lights" from Australia, "Romerike Climate Group" from Norway, "Keep the Desert Green" from Mongolia, Planting trees in Malaysia and Singapore, Saving humankind's largest remaining forest in Brazil, Straw-bale houses for Africa, "The Sustainability Trust" for sustainability and carbon reduction, as well as the recycling of school text books as well as the best way to prepare Fuel Bricks for Africa as done by Books for the World of the RC of Beaverton/Oregon in District 5100, through email: rj.lockard@frontier.com .

Supported from around the world, our booth in the House of Friendship- has been visited by thousands of Rotary convention-goers, and we have been in daily face to face conversation with hundreds of Rotarians, their spouses and guests, as well as with Rotaractors, all expressing interest and asking questions. Never before a Fellowship booth at a Rotary International Convention had given information so actively in so many languages. We were constantly sufficient members of the family of Rotary busy answering questions about our Rotary Fellowship and its dozen exemplary projects exposed from every continent in the following languages: Thai, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay, English, French, Spanish, German, Swiss-german, Norvegian, Italian and Esperanto. We thank Rotarian Martin Bands for his support!>

In Bangkok all of us who managed to, we immediately registered to attend the RI 2013 Convention in Lisbon/Portugal. See www.rotary.org

We hereby now invite all with an interest in and a passion for the Environment who will be at our RI Convention in Lisbon/Portugal on June 22-26 2013 to please confirm their participation by contacting our Environment Fellowship of Rotarians by writing me at kappenberger@gmail.com , taking the opportunity to also let us know if you'd like to help representing our Fellowship there. Would you email me now indicating your plans regarding your participation in Lisbon? As you will respond, kindly do also indicate to me any thoughts, recommendations, ideas, you'd like to contribute for this our Environment Fellowship of Rotarians to best serve the object of Rotary. Thank you ! We'll be able to have a stand at the Lisbon Convention only if we will have sufficient participation of Rotarians willing to be responsible for our Fellowship's stand/booth in the House of Friendship of the Lisbon Convention. As you know, RI requires the permanent presence of at least a person in charge, and the number of interested members of the Family of Rotary who come asking questions about our projects and fellowship does require our presence at all times. On the other hand, Rotarians who go to take care of a booth in the House of Friendship do pay only 50USD for access to the House of Friendship during the whole Convention... while who does not register in advance will pay 100USD when registering for the Convention on arrival in Lisbon.

Like every year, a substantial number of us participates in the annual RI - UN day at the United Nations' Headquarters in New York City, a unique opportunity for the family of Rotary to show its support for the best of the UN, the best organization humankind's leaders have been able to create. The UN had seen its birth in San Francisco after the second world war, especially also thanks to the work, support and proactive participation of some 50 key Rotarians leading delegations representing the world's nations. Given Rotary International's high consultative status with the UN and Rotary's global organization and membership, including Rotarians worldwide, Rotary has now a most unique opportunity to increasingly contribute significantly more towards attracting much sooner the unavoidable lasting world peace and better environment for all everywhere, especially through the participation and the skills of our quality Rotarians everywhere! Yes, Rotary has the excellent global organization and quality membership with the unique, ideal potential to contribute very significantly more towards the success of the best of the United Nations' efforts for humankind, for a so much better environment for all. We thus call on RI to now dare to make the best of this opportunity, daring to make a significantly better use of the huge potential Rotary has for proactively participating in forging the best-possible future for humankind!

Indeed, the environmental projects we promote globally are definitely facilitating the unavoidable victory of Rotary's Polio Plus. We have thus done our best to support and facilitate them whenever possible, especially also in Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as the North of Nigeria and Chad from where the risk of exporting Polio again is now immense, and, if it happened, it would postpone the victory on Polio by years, many billions of dollars more, besides the thousands of so created new unnecessary Polio victims. Each single Rotarian effort for Rotary to be active and succeed in these 4 countries is thus of immense importance! All efforts to eliminate polio in these 4 countries must be an absolute priority for Rotary at his time. The good shining exemplary action of Rotary can and will create an environment in which the destructive fanatics who try to forbid vaccinations will fade away!

In contact with Rotary Clubs in every continent, we have proactively shared information and promoted rotarian Environmental projects globally. We naturally also promote the increased and always better use of alternative energies and we are in active contact with other RI Fellowships and Rotarian Action Groups as well as with organizations such as 'Sun Oven' and so many others with which we have also corresponded and/or cooperated. We feel that our fellowship's activity successfully results in increasingly enhancing Rotarians' experience in Rotary and so further improving Rotary's service to humankind, especially strengthening clubs, increasing enthusiasm and dedication for humanitarian service, and significantly improving the people's image of Rotary worldwide. We definitely feel that our networking at the RI Convention in Bangkok had greatly contributed towards this environment of constructive cooperation towards an always more sustainable future..

We observe that the EFR facilitates members of the family of Rotary to enjoy quality fellowship and inspires their Rotary clubs to initiate and participate in projects for a better environment for everyone on our planet earth. The resulting exponentially-increasing number of examples of Rotary Fellowship and Friendships among Rotarians from different clubs, countries, or continents tends to lead to increased enthusiasm and participation in Rotary, resulting in more active Rotarians and so many stronger Rotary clubs in all continents.

Ever since the Board of RI had encouraged us, our Environment Fellowship of Rotarians remains a fellowship which, among its goals, does promote and facilitates Environmental Rotarian Action Groups. We are happy that the first one we successfully supported was Wasrag, the now very active RAG on Water and Sanitation. New ones are being considered in the fields of reforestation, environmental education, waste management and recycling in particular, eco-tourism, as well as the creation of parks and gardens.

In many ways we actively also support climate change awareness, and among them the most unique is the 'top to top' expedition under the leadership of Honorary Rotarian Dario Schwörer, Climatologist and Swiss Alpine Guide, which most recently traveled to participate in the Environment Summit in Rio (Rio +20)

Aware that an always better environment drastically reduces the possibility of disasters happening, we also are devoted towards continuing to support Rotary's efforts in disaster prevention and relief, an area for which Rotary is particularly well-positioned from all points of view, starting from its global quality membership everywhere and its exemplary organization. As we advance and gradually tap into Rotary's unique potential in this area, we're aware that there's so very much that remains to be done, and welcome the support from all interested Rotarians.

An increasing number of Rotary Clubs have a significant EFR membership, but in District 2450, on the island of Cyprus, the RC of Nicosia-Salamis was the first Rotary Club of which the membership is composed entirely of members of our EFR. It's important to note that RI District 2450 is one of the largest and in many ways very important ones, as it reaches from Cyprus in its North-West, all the way to Armenia and Georgia to the North-East, and South Sudan to the South-West, as well as the UAR and Bahrain, a region where a robust growth of Rotary will be so very beneficial for humankind, worldwide understanding and peace, the object of Rotary.

As it's such an important ingredient for lasting world Peace, we're ceaselessly promoting 'Preserve Planet Earth' and appreciate all opportunities this gives to us for new friendships, sharing our know-how for good rotarian projects, also so attracting new good potential Rotarians, retaining them, as we advance towards the object of Rotary in an always better environment. We advance and develop friendships, often thanks to good environmental projects, often made possible through environmental Matching Grants with TRF of RI.

Since RI's Council on Legislation of 2010 when Rotary E-Clubs had been established and each RI District can form up to two Rotary E-Clubs, we have been in contact with most of them, and have many EFR members in them. We are communicating with them through the best of the always improved technologies which are available to Rotary globally. In fact, it is our experience that, by using them, a rapidly increasing number of Rotary Clubs are improving the quality of their fellowship and service to the community, attracting further the object of Rotary to the benefit of humankind. The same can be said regarding the Rotaract clubs which are now free to meet through the internet as they please, and we have been in active contact with many, answering their enquiries on environmental projects through which they were serving the community.

Yes, also in this Rotary year 2011-12, our Environment Fellowship of Rotarians has been forging ahead, proactive for our planet earth's environment, sustainable development, and peace. There are so many more global good news, of which some can regularly be found in Good News Agency published by Rotarian Sergio Tripi (s.tripi@tiscali.it)

Especially through the active Rotary service activities of its membership, the Environment Fellowship of Rotarians does proactively promote the Object of Rotary by facilitating the realization of good environmental projects globally, many with the support of TRF of RI. As best it can, our EFR does contribute, supporting The Rotary Foundation's improving its service to humankind. We welcome and acknowledge also Rotary International's contribution to the environment also by always smarter use of the internet and the best of the new communication technologies, and especially to the extent that RI increasingly distributes much of RI's tasks to be increasingly performed by its offices around the world, which is an enviromentally-friendly development which certainly does effectively contribute attracting world Peace!

We do welcome all comments and questions!

With best greetings and wishes I'm sincerely yours in Rotary service,

Marco Kappenberger
Chair, Environment Fellowship of Rotarians