By Irina Anca Tanase – Club President 2023 – 2024
This Rotary year’s theme is «Create hope in the world», and it sounds like such a difficult thing to achieve. On the 2023 edition of our District’s Conference, we have learned that it’s as easy as sharing with others one’s story of following their dreams. We also got to meet the exchange students staying in Norway for this schoolyear.
The conference’s agenda brought up some of the most relevant challenges for our times: how to stop distroying the nature around us and how to start helping it revitalize and thrive, what kind of place should we open for Artificial Intelligence in our society, how to better help people affected by the war in Ukraine. Even more relevant, this year’s conference in our District presented some of the most important tools one needs to approach all these challenges, some of the bravest people that built their own way of making a change, and how sometimes the difference that we are willing to make comes from inspirating and motivating others to take action.
We have heard Nina Jensen, CEO at REV Ocean, a passionate environmentalist talking about all the projects that they are conducting to save the ocean, we have received a scientific insight into the challenges that marine life is experiencing from professor Thrond Haugen, from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Jola McDonald, an alumni of the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards 2016 shared with us her journey to New Zealand, where she traveled to rediscover her childhood and upbringing in a caravan, while Jasmine Harrison, winner of the 2023 Rotary Young Citizen Award i Rotary Great Britain & Ireland, amazed the audience with her story about having been the youngest woman to row the Atlantic solo, and the only woman to swim the full length of the British Isles. And we receivd even more inspiration when Olexiy Gusev from Lviv International Rotary Club, Ukraine, shared with us the still on-going adventure of surviving the war and engaging in the delivery of humanitarian help, and when District 2260 presented their project of travelling along Europe with a Fiat 500 in order to raise money for Polio vaccination. A special moment captivated the audience when the teenagers attending Youth Exchange in the Rotary year 2023 – 2024 entered the hall: young, still unexperienced girls and boys brave enough to live in a foreign country for a year, setting off to be better known with the world, to grow and to become who they need in order to create hope and to make the difference that they dream of.
After two days of inspiring stories, we became even prouder of our work in Oslo International Rotary Club, and even more motivated to make our dreams come true. If you feel like you need an inspiration boost, or if you are pursuing a dream to make a difference, and would like some company on the way, our club might be the right place for you. You way find us on www.facebook.com/OsloInternationalRotaryClub or on https://oslointernational.rotary.no/
