Author: Irina A Tanase, OIRC President 2023 – 2024
Each month, Rotary celebrates an area of focus, to create the opportunity for all the needs in that area to be highlighted, and all the efforts of the more than 1,4 million Rotarians in the world to be celebrated.
Since 2020, Environment is an area of focus for Rotary worldwide, and our efforts in this direction are concentrated on supporting activities that strengthen the conservation and protection of natural resources, advance ecological sustainability, and foster harmony between communities and the environment. This April, we in Oslo International Rotary Club reflected both on our club’s member presentation, Mirjana Joksimovic, on eradicating plastic pollution in water, but also on the impact that environmental challenges have upon communities everywhere. At the beginning of the month, our club hosted Rotary Your Leadership Awards in our District, with the challenges of conflict management and mental health as main topics. Later in April, our Club’s member Olav Espeland gave us a short presentation about the importance of vaccination, on World Immunization Day. The key to both preventing, approaching and managing local and international conflicts, mental health within different communities, and the spread of diseases is in creating a better environment for better lives.
May, which is the month of Youth Service, was quite a dynamic month in our Club. Earlier this spring, Ingrid Haugland, the exchange student that we are sending to France, together Oslo Rotary Club, joined the training for Rotary ambassadors, and we learned that starting from January 2025, we will host a student from Australia. And for the first time on the history of our Club, our Club has a candidate to the Rotary Peace Fellowship Program. We are very grateful for the presentation that Per O. Aukner from Eiksmarka Rotary Club, gave us on this program in January, and we are very proud of our candidate to the program, Tasmia Aksi. Tasmia was selected after a carefully conducted process by our Service Committee Lead Syed Nuruddin, she has an impressive background in the work with humanitarian programs, and we are very proud to have her as our candidate for the Rotary Peace Fellowship Program.
We started summer and the months of June, when Rotarians everywhere reflect on the importance of Fellowships, by gathering even more Rotary friends, and learning even more from their experience and that of their Clubs, with Creating Hope In The World. Sadaf Khalid, an international guest member of the Rotary Club of Islamabad Metropolitan is the newest friend that our Club gained and exchanged flags with. Both with her and with all the other visitors who joined our meetings through this Rotary year, we exchanged experiences with our fellowship work, we learned from them how to make the best of the efforts we make, driven by passion, together with like-minded Rotarians, and we gathered inspiration for the Rotary years to come.
At the end of May, our Club members Gul Capar and Øystein Mogensen represented our Club and the work with Youth Exchange on multi-district level at the 2024 Rotary International Convention in Singapore, and we are so lucky to have their take-aways from this fantastic gathering to build on, when planning our Clubs hopes and dreams for the Rotary year to come.
OIRC represented at RI Conference in Singapore
Sadly, we also have to see some of our members and friends relocating and this year we bid farewell to our cherished member Peter Anker-Möller who will be moving back to Denmark and to our dear Rotary Scholarship Grant student; Lindsey Scott who has now moved back to Canada after finishing her Bio Science Master program at the Oslo University. OIRC wish them all the best in their future endeavors and hope to see them again!
