FOR Rotary Year 2008-09, Rotary International President Dong Kurn (DK) Lee chose the theme “Making Dreams Real” to impress upon the membership his thrust towards reducing child mortality – the 4th goal of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) which aims at lowering death rate of children under five years old by two-thirds in 2015.

In his message to the Rotarians, RI president DK advised that when choosing service projects, the club must select one that will have the most positive and most lasting impact. He noted that “to ensure a better world for many generations, we must begin by taking care of our youngest generation.” This is why for the year 2008-09, he asked Rotarians everywhere to focus on the most precious resource of every community – our children.

Statistics show that in 1993, infant mortality rate was 34 for every one thousand; and in 2003, it was 29. RI president DK noted that “every day, around the world, children die needlessly of pneumonia, measles, and malaria. Thousands die from lack of the most basic resource: clean water. And many more die from a combination of factors, in which malnutrition and poverty play major roles.” With Rotarians at the forefront of undertaking projects that will provide food and water, health care and schooling, many children will have the chance at a long and full life.

He asks Rotarians “to Make Dreams Real for these children and their families, and to work with me toward the Rotary dream of a happier, healthier, and more peaceful world.”

With this in mind, Rotary Club of Iloilo president Manny Posecion is embarking on a project which will first assess the needs of the target beneficiaries – residents of Brgy. San Rafael, Mandurriao, who are mostly families of the former tenants of the Pison fishpond. The village has been the adopted barangay of the club for so many years where RC Iloilo poured in most of its humanitarian projects – deep wells, literacy, health, and livelihood. The residents were already starting to relish the outcome of these projects until this havoc came.

Relief materials were immediately brought to the devastated area where Rotarians and Anns distributed high priority items such as purified water, clothes, medicines and food. The flood further aggravated the residents’ vulnerability to diseases, lowered their resistance, destroyed their houses and other properties, destroyed books, school records and computer equipment, contaminated deep wells, and dampened not only their material possessions but their spirits as well. These, of course, caused some shifts in their needs priority.

RC Iloilo president Manny has directed the Rotaractors of the University of San Agustin to conduct a survey of the barangay residents to ascertain their most pressing need that would quickly enable them to cope with the impact of the floods and spring them back to normal life. The information gathered from this survey plus the priority service emphases recommended by RI’s presidents focusing on health and hunger, water, and literacy; and the responsibility to love, care for, and protect the children in our communities – and everywhere in the world would be the bases for the choice of the Project of the Year of the Rotary Club of Iloilo.

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