It is a great privilege for me to update my Rotary family of the events and activities during the month of July. We had a hectic month in June since many of us were busy preparing for the Installation. July marks the start of the new Rotary Year and also the start of business in right earnest for the new team.
We lost two dear members of our Rotary family this month. Dr. Pratap Sapat passed away on 5th July. He was a senior member whose silent reassuring presence at the Club gave us a huge amount of confidence. We lost Dr. Badrinarayan Barwale on 24th July. A doyen of the Indian seeds and agro industry, his contribution to Rotary and the society around him is beyond the scope of imagination for most of us. May their souls rest in eternal peace.
There have been a couple of additions to our tribe. Jigisha Parikh and Jagar Thakur were inducted as members this month. Jigisha has been loaned the classification ‘Jewellery Designing’. Jagar is Vice-President of Fariyas Hotels & Resorts and has been loaned the classification ‘Hospitality’.
On 1st July, RCBMT conducted a Blood Donation Camp at YMCA, Lamington Road. Saifee Hospital Blood Bank team and Rotaractors of Lala Lajpatrai College were present in full strength to conduct the Camp. Some of us Rotarians visited the Camp to encourage and support them.
Tree plantation is being propagated not just by our Government but our RI President Ian Riseley is also encouraging each Rotarian across the world to plant a tree. The aim is to have at least, if not more, 1.2 million new trees planted across the globe every year by Rotarians. On 11th July, RCBMT organised ‘Green Guardian’ tree plantation drive at Maharashtra Nature Park, Dharavi.
This 35 acre piece of greenery in the middle of the city is an oasis in the concrete jungle around it. Many Rotarians from RCBMT and Rotaractors of Lala Lajpatrai College came to plant saplings at this park. We hope that the rains and caretakers of the park nurture these saplings well and they will turn into big trees over time.
We had some interesting speakers during the month. Capt. Rishabh Kapoor, a pilot of Air India, who flew a plane into the strife-torn, dangerous skies of Yemen in 2015 to evacuate stranded civilians, mainly Indians, shared his experience of this ‘Operation Raahat’. Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former Chief of Naval Staff, spoke on the changed perspective of national security in the new world which is very different from the traditional security mindset that predominantly meant military might. Dr. Pradnya Saravade IPS, Addl. Director General of Police of Maharashtra belied the typical image of a police officer with her soft-spoken, calm and composed demeanour. Her talk brought to the fore the fact that a lot of work and training, physical and in terms of sensitisation, is going on behind the scenes to help improve the police and policing around us. Mr. Satish Mathur IPS, Director General of Police, Maharashtra, showed a sharp analytical mind behind his affable and jovial nature. In a talk interspersed with wit and humour, he shared events and incidents from his long career in police and the learnings from them.
For the last several months RCBMT has been working on tying up a Global Grant of US$99,000 for conducting Paediatric Heart surgeries. This GG has many international Rotary Clubs as partners and as contributors. The submission of the GG application was stuck as one of the international Clubs, which was on board earlier, seemingly had some internal problems in their Club and finally informed us in July that they are withdrawing. We reworked the application and scaled back the GG to US$92,000 to fulfil all criteria of RI and finally uploaded the application.
This summarises the month of July for us all. I look forward to your wholehearted participation in our Club’s events and activities in August.
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