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‘Rotary Club stands for welfare of all humanity’

By Paul Eseghene
21 November 2017   |   3:40 am
I will like to use this plantform to reach out to people to take more recognition in terms of supporting the system to sustain the communities.

Rotarians Adeshina Kadri and Oluwaolorunlanke Olaleye speak to PAULA ESEGHENE on the lofty goals of the Rotary Club and other issues.

Please introduce yourself
My name is Rotarian Adeshina Kadri, the immediate past president, chartered president of the Rotary Club Magodo Central, that is, the first president of the club, but now the pass president of the club. I work with one of the oil and gas companies.

When and why did you join Rotary?
I joined because of my desire to help humanity, because of the passion. So far, I have enjoyed being a Rotarian.

Tell us more about Rotary Club?
Rotary International is a non-profit organization and was founded by Paul Henry over 160 years ago. It has about 1.2 million members worldwide and of course the impact of Rotary worldwide cannot be overemphasized. What we do in Rotary is service to humanity and we have different areas through which we serve humanity; through education, health, the provision of water etc. Those are some of the areas we reach out to humanity.

Have you been a member before Magodo Central came up?
No, I was never in any Rotary club before I joined the Magodo, Central. It is the first Rotary club where I became the president. There must be an existing club that will sponsor a new club; so at that stage that is what we call the provision stage; so it was at the provision stage. Our sponsoring club which is like mother club was holding a meeting and I got to hear about the meeting and I decided to attend the meeting and I joined. May be from my contributions and interest I became a president. 

Tell us some of the projects you executed during your time as the president at Rotary Magodo.
When I became the president of the club, even at the provision stage we already participated in some projects in collaboration with our mother club. we did your first health event, where we did medical screening for people within the Magodo community, we gave people drugs, we checked blood pressure and some other things. we had massive turn out of people from the community, that was our first project. Also the two small boys, who had problem with their digestive system because they took in caustic soda and we saw the newspaper publication asking for help for these kids, we responded in collaboration with our mother club which is the Rotary Club G.R.A. we donated cash. we also did a lot of projects, we renovated a primary School. There was a time we gave out about one hundred fifty mosquito nets. Those are some of the projects we did during my time in office. We empowered some people to acquire skills in terms of entrepreneurship, to set up business for those that needed just a little push.

What can you say about your successor?
At the time he joined, he showed a lot of enthusiasm which is very key in Rotary club. If you did not have that you will not go far. You will break along the line because Rotary is an organization where you keep giving out and not expecting to get back. so only a few unique personalities have that kind of attitude who want to give without expecting anything back, so he demonstrated those qualities and which were the things that catapulted him to becoming the president of the club. The work continued where I stopped because you can’t finish the work in Rotary. The work is big, enormous and when you come into Rotary it is one thing to be a Rotarian and another to become the president of the club. Now you have to develop more leadership and management skills; you have to take a lot of pressure.

Introduce yourself
I am Rotarian Oluwaolorunlanke Olaleye, the president of Rotary Club Magodo Central.

Where did you join the Rotary Club?
I joined Rotary Club in Magodo and it has been a wonderful experience.

What are the benefits of rotary club in the host community?
Any place where rotary club is the community has a lot to benefit. The purpose of rotary is to give back to the community. Rotary is community-based. We will not take it for granted, the society is what makes us, who we are. so, it is always good to also give back to the society and we appreciate where we are by the grace of God and by the purpose of all people within our communities, like our teaches, students, fellow workers, fathers, everybody has done one thing or the other to make us who we are today and in our little way we have also come back to say thank you and thank you will continue until the day we die and that is because we will continue and that is why rotary keeps on giving and giving to the society. The major thing is to try to elevate a lot of people who don’t have resources that will make life meaningful. Today one of our major goals is polio eradication and addressing environment change.

What are some of the projects you will be embark on in office?
We are hoping that we will consodidate on some of the things my predecessor has done, like at the primary health center, he has made commitment to them that will provide them screeners for pregnant women and we were not able to active it then, we will still provide it because we have made our commitment on that and we also want to do more up grade that primary health centre to make it cater for the kind of people that come into it.

There are some schools that we visited when my predecessor was there, that we have not really finished our projects in those schools, we will also like to go back to complete those projects; then there are two knew projects that we like to do, like the tree planting projects, we will like to continue, because it is one of our major focus in this particular year to help the environment, to help and sustain the people around us. we will also want to do water project in Ikosi local area, we are already taking with the oba of Ikosi where and how we should go about it. so there are lots of projects, that I can’t start counting all we have in mind but I can tell you that we are doing a lot.

Tell us about the upcoming event.
The upcoming event is the club investiture, it is platform where the club showcases its new executives to the public to let them know that we are starting a phase in our club and we are also using the appointments to do fund raising for the forthcoming projects we want to embark on, we are using that platform to reach out to well meaning people in the society that have this resources and are willing to partner with rotary, to put smiles on the faces of a lot of people. we are aware that there are a lot of people who want to give back to the society to take the advantage to partner with Rotary to also reach out to people.

Anything you will like to add?
I will like to use this plantform to reach out to people to take more recognition in terms of supporting the system to sustain the communities. A lot of people are seriously in need of help in our country especially at this particular time when the economy is down. people are groaning under the weight of change but in it all, we have people whom God has blessed. you can show appreciation to God that has blessed you by stretching your hands to those in need. Rotary gives us that kind of foundation; people can come and partner, you can come and be a member, it will really go long way and when we can synergise our ability will be able to reach more lives and make a lot of difference.

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