By Governor Elect Hennie de Bruin
Every Saturday morning a man comes to work in my garden. Most of what he does is routine – he has been working for me for years. If I am not there, like today, he sweeps the leaves, digs over the beds etc. Occasionally, when I am at home, I make full use of his time. I have been known to create a new water feature, build a screen wall around the pool.
One Saturday morning when RIPE Dong Kurn Lee woke up, he too gave thought to his garden, the world garden that is his during his 2008-2009 tenure. When he considered the extent of his garden and its many, many needs; when he thought about his gardeners, men and women from all walks of life, from all parts of the world, he became very anxious. The power of Rotary – he became aware that at the head of our incredible organisation, he had incredible power to do something really significant, to make a difference in the world. The extraordinary power and influence of Rotary, throughout the world … this power should not be wasted.
He says he felt staggering awe at the responsibility he was taking on. He knew that Rotary, a well established organisation, would probably carry on as before if he said nothing, sweeping and digging over the beds as it has done for so many years. If he did nothing, would anybody really notice? Rotary has developed expertise throughout the world in fighting hunger, providing potable water. Rotary was working at health issues: polio, malaria, TB, HIV and Aids. Rotary’s efforts at facilitating literacy did not need much support from him.
“Definitely”, he decided thinking of the wise South Korean saying which translates into: “If it aint broke, why fix it?”
And then he became aware of the number 30 000. He read somewhere that in the world, 30 000 children died every day, most often of avoidable causes or treatable deceases. He questioned and investigated - to use his own words
At first, I thought that it had to be a mistake. Perhaps there was an extra zero in that number, if not two. Perhaps the number was per month or per year. It was impossible, unthinkable, in the 21st century, that 30,000 of our most precious children could die, needlessly, every day. But there was no mistake. I asked, how can it be possible?
The answers were as heartbreaking as the number. Children die needlessly of pneumonia, measles,and malaria — for the lack of basic medicines, vaccines, and mosquito nets. They die of diarrheal illnesses — for the lack of a packet of rehydration salts that costs 10 cents. They die in the thousands, every day, because they have only dirty water to wash in and to drink. They are killed by illnesses that become deadly in combination with poor sanitation and malnutrition. They die because their families are trapped in a cycle of extreme poverty, a cycle that is not interrupted because there is no access to education. They die because their needs are not met in the areas of water, health and hunger, and literacy.
Once he understood the issues behind that terrible number, he knew what our emphases needed to be:
In 2008-09, Rotary will keep the service emphases we have had in so many of our past years, the emphases that are solidly grounded in our knowledge and experience: water, health and hunger, and literacy.
But this year, he said, I will ask you to focus your efforts in each of these areas on children, and on reducing the terrible rate of child mortality in our world. In 2008-09, I will ask you all to Make Dreams Real for the world’s children. This will be our theme, and my challenge to all of you.
Now I have worked as a psychologist and counsellor for the Department of Education for the past 40 years. It has often been my duty to counsel children who have lost their parents. I have visited homes, sometimes in the remotest places, walking distances where cars cannot go. When I heard DK Lee say these words, I immediately remembered many occasions when I had spent time with parents who had lost a child. I remembered, it was in November last year – the whole school had been traumatised by the death of a popular Grade 7 boy. He had died of pneumonia because his parents did not have the money for the taxi fare to the hospital. I do not know if you have witnessed that awful hollow sorrow of a parent whose child has died? Their dreams for that child, the child’s own dreams cut short. I remember wishing with all my heart that I could have done something – that I, that we, the more fortunate South Africans could have prevented that death. I would gladly have paid the taxi fare. I must tell the Induna in that area, please, tell your people, in cases of children’s life and death, phone this number. The taxi driver can get the fare from me…
Again I quote our incoming President:
We will Make Dreams Real by giving children hope and a chance at a future.
We will Make Dreams Real by bringing clean water to their communities, and by this I mean not only providing safe water to drink but creating the sanitation projects that keep children healthy. We will be as proud of building public toilets as we are of supplying drinking water, because by improving sanitation, we prevent water from becoming contaminated, and we avoid so many needless deaths.
We will Make Dreams Real by giving children the chance at health through improving their environments and their access to care. So much can be done to keep children healthy, with so little: mosquito nets, rehydration salts, vitamins, and vaccines.
And so much can be done with just a little bit more: a trained birth attendant, a simple clinic, a school feeding program, a visiting nurse. These are simple and direct ways to save children’s lives.
On March 12, 2008, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang released a report ‘Every Death Counts’, produced by the Health Department, the Medical Research Council and the University of Pretoria, revealing that about 75 000 children under the age of five, die in South Africa every year.
According to Dr Joy Lawn, author of the report and senior policy and research advisor, “At least 40 200 babies and children could be saved every year”. 22 000 babies die within a month of being born and a further 20 000 babies are stillborn every year (69 per 1000 births).
1 600 mothers, most with other children, die due to childbirth or pregnancy complications.
This brings the toll in South Africa to 260 children and mothers every day. South Africa is one of only 12 developing countries that are not making progress towards the child survival Millennium Development Goals
Our Rotary focus could not be more apt. As we speak a massive international conference aimed at meeting child mortality targets is taking place in Cape Town. The World Health Organisation report released before the conference substantiates the above findings.
According to the report “…we have many of the solutions now but they are not reaching those most in need, or they are not being implemented with the quality needed to save lives.”
And it is not only the disadvantaged whose children die. Every year children drown in unfenced swimming baths. Every day children die in car accidents because they are not wearing seatbelts, cross roads against red traffic lights. Every day children die because they have no safe place to play or must walk along busy roads to get to school.
DK Lee is correct: Children die not because nobody can help them but because too often, nobody does. But you and I, here in this room, are Rotarians and helping is what we do best…
and so it is our job to open our eyes to these needs ... all the world's children are our children ..."
I think of that Zulu truism: It takes a village to raise a child.
Every one of us in this room today has been allocated a garden in the year 2008-2009. What are you going to do in yours?
Is it going to be business as usual? Just maintenance? Have your club’s members water the same old plants? Rake the lawn and do a little weeding?
Get your club to focus its established efforts on lowering child deaths and you will save at least one child’s life this year.
You will never know that child’s name, but, it could be my grandchild or yours and for this I already say Thank you, thank you, thank you.
With real leadership from you, we will
Make Dreams Real
