Note From President Shernaz Vakil
BECAUSE WE ARE RCB
Last week, as we left the Mokhada fields and watched the grateful farmers and their families wave goodbye, it occurred to me that it was so easy to actually transform their lives; so why could we not do more?
Every Rotarian could feel the joy of impacting and improving the life and livelihood of a single family.
So, why not have a model RCB village totally invested in by our Rotarians where each of us could feel we had participated in this life-altering change?
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that just Rs. 25,000 invested by each member would give us what we needed to start the process.
And, as I pitched the idea to our Environment team, each one said they would love to participate. And the ideas kept coming: a medical centre, a special school… Project Chirag confirmed they would identify a needy village and complete the transformation of providing water and light and whatever else was needed to impact the farmers lives and livelihoods.
And they would complete it by our Founder’s Day in March, when we could inaugurate the project.
Our driver put it aptly when he said: “The farmers bless you all; you have done what the Government could not do all these years.”
So, PP Ramesh Narayan threw it all together and we got the blessings of both the Board and the Trustees soon after. Trustee PP Arun Sanghi said he would be the first investor at Rs 1 lakh. We would have a meeting early January to ask our members how they felt about improving the lives of our forgotten rural folk and providing equity or even sweat equity towards the project.
Nothing comes close to the joy you feel when you can impact the life of another even in the smallest way.
Let’s be part of this transformation and support rural India one village at a time!
— President Shernaz Vakil
