THIS ISSUE

Campo Amigo

and Diabetes

2

Conference

Focuses on

Youth

4

Color My

World!

5

Interactors Meet in Rome

6

¡Haz de tu vida

un sueño!

7

You Can Help! 9

Tutoring in the Capital City

10

Rapid Inter-

view: Joe

Brownlee

13

Bolivia focus—Two articles on great projects in this issue of Interact Today

H E W L E T T - P A C K A R D C O M P A N Y Interact Today A G L O B A L N E W S L E T T E R

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DON’T

MISS OUT

Submit your

article, get

published!

Check Out

the Interact

Video Con-

test

Don’t Miss Out! Submit Your Article, Get Published! Tell us about your service work and write for Interact Today—you do not need to be an Interactor to do so. Submit your article to our editorial team by sending an email to interact4today@gmail.com and we’ll get back to you. All issues of Interact Today are available on the Interact page of http://rotarianeconomist.com/. The next issue will be published in early 2015, so please send your article by December 31, 2014.

Check out the Interact Video Contest Interact clubs worldwide may participate in the annual Interact video contest. The deadline is December 1, 2014. Even if you do not send a video, it is worth looking at the videos that will be available on the Interact Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/interactofficial.

This issue of Interact Today features two articles on Santa Cruz in Bolivia. The first arti-cle is about Campo Amigo, a unique grassroots educational initiative championed by lo-cal health professionals and volunteers to serve diabetic children through an annual four-day educational camp. The second article (in Spanish) is about a gym-nastics program in one of the poor-est parts of the city. The program has achieved amazing success, in-cluding several national gymnastics championships for the participating girls. Both projects were supported by Interact and Rotary Clubs. If you would like your story to be told on this newsletter, please mail it to us at interact4today@gmail.com.

Campo Amigo and Diabetes by Interact Today Team P A G E 2 I N T E R A C T T O D A Y – S U M M E R - F A L L 2 0 1 4

Diabetes is a common and life-long condition. In the US, 9.3% of the population has diabetes. Most patients (about 95%) have type 2 diabetes, which is often associated with genetics or obesi-ty. By contrast, type 1 diabetes (also called juvenile diabetes) is an autoimmune disease whose exact cause remains unknown, but is likely related to viruses and genetics and has nothing to do with obesity.

Type 1 diabe-tes is usually diagnosed among chil-dren whose pancreas does not produce insulin any-more. Without insulin, blood sugars rise. Lack of treatment can lead to severe illness and death. Type 1 diabe-tes needs to be managed very carefully, but knowledge on how

to take care of it is often weaker in low income communities.

Campo Amigo

In Santa Cruz in Bolivia, about 10% of the population, mostly low-income individuals, is said to be diabetic. As elsewhere type 1 dia-betes affects mostly children. The cost of managing type 1 diabetes is high, and most families in pov-erty in Bolivia cannot afford to

send their children to camps where they could learn how to manage their condition.

Campo Ami-go is unique grassroots

educational initiative championed by local health professionals and volunteers under the leadership of Dr. Roxana Barbero to serve dia-betic children through an annual

four-day educational camp in Bolivia.

During the camp the children learn about diabetes (how to give themselves insulin doses, meas-ure their blood sugars, eat healthy meals, do physical activ-ities, etc.). The camp provides children not only with valuable training, but also with equipment such as glucose meters and insu-lin. The experience of the camp also helps fight the isolation in which some of the children with diabetes live. They can share experiences and feel part of a small community that shares their concerns.

Fundraising

Last year the Interact club of Washington DC raised $7,000 for Campo Amigo ($2,000 by its members and $5,000 through an application for a grant from the International Service Committee of its sponsor, the Rotary Club of Washington, DC).

To fundraise, two members of the Interact club completed a sprint triathlon, an international distance triathlon, a half mara-thon, and a long distance bike race. With two other members of the club, they also ran a mara-thon relay.

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The camp was held in Muyurina Campus, Santa Cruz, on De-cember 19-22, 2013. It was or-ganized by Roxana and her team at the Programa de Enfermedad-es no Transmisibles del Servicio Departamental de Salud de San-ta Cruz, and by Dr. Patricia Blanco from the Fundación Vida Plena de Cochabamba.

The funding raised by the Inter-act club covered most of the costs and the camp reached 53 children and youth from many parts of the country, including La Paz, Cochabamba, Beni, and rural areas.

Partners

The partner Rotary club in Bo-livia was the Rotary Club Am-boró in Santa Cruz. Other part-ner organizations – especially in terms of volunteers to run the camp, included the Red Bolivi-ana de Diabetes Juvenil (Marco

Baldivieso), mem-bers of the Sociedad de Endocrinología (Dr. Laura Mazzo-cato), the Fundación Niño Feliz (Teresa Aspiazu), and LifeScan for with test strips and glucome-ters, In kind contribu-tions were received from several firms, including Cascada del Oriente, TIGO, BELLCORP and Arcor, as well as Johnson and Johnson for insulin.

Low Cost, High Impact

All staff running the camp – in-cluding doctors, worked as vol-unteers. A total of 19 doctors, three nurses and one psychologist volunteered. For that reason the cost of running the camp was very low. Housing and meals were also provided at low cost thanks to a local NGO.

The overall cost of attending the four-day camp was only about $100 per child, including bus transportation from the child’s home (throughout Bolivia) to the camp, meals, lodging, and all dia-betes equipment and medicine .

Campo Amigo is a great example of low cost and potentially high impact projects through which In-teract, Rotaract, and Rotary clubs can make a difference on the ground by partnering with local teams with great experience and dedication.

Conference Focuses on Youth by Interact Today Team P A G E 4 I N T E R A C T T O D A Y – S U M M E R - F A L L 2 0 1 4

For the past three years, district 7620 has conducted evaluations of its annual district conferences using surveys administered through the web. Conducting such evaluations is important. Millions of hours and tens of mil-lions of dollars are invested every year by Rotarians in attending annual district conferences worldwide, yet these conferences are rarely evaluated thoroughly.

The 2014 conference focused on youth. A team worked hard for several months under the leader-ship of District Governor Peter Kyle and Conference Chair Sean McAlister to organize the confer-ence which took place in May.

Did district 7620 succeed in or-ganizing a great conference in 2014? To a large extent, the an-swer is yes. The conference was better attended than in previous years. Many participants were seasoned Rotarians. But this year Interactors and Rotaractors par-ticipated in substantial numbers as well, thanks in the case of In-teract to a first ever Interact Leadership Conference.

A total of 100 Interactors, Rota-ractors, and Rotarians responded to the evaluation survey for the conference. Almost 60 percent rated the conference as better than previous conferences. This is impressive (in the last two years most respondents rated the conference as on par with previ-ous conferences).

Satisfaction rates with the facili-ties and various aspects of the conference were high. Most re-

spondents rated various aspects as very good or good. The hotel rooms as well as the conference and hotel facilities and the con-venience of the location ranked at the top. The organization of the conference and the opportu-nities for fellowship were also well rated. Even the category on learning about Rotary was well rated, but as in previous years only one in five participants said that they had learned a lot of new information that is likely to be useful to them as Rotarians. Apart from an issue with the quality of the food, the cost of the conference was the category with the lowest ratings.

Some 26 different sessions were individually rated with at least ten respondents per session (this is a minimum number of re-spondents to ensure a reliable assessment).

Nine of the 26 sessions got 60 or more “very good” ratings: the

Baltimore area joint luncheon, the four youth sessions on Satur-day morning (Four Way Test, See Something Say Something, Jack Andraka, and Teresa Scan-lan), the Interact session on Sat-urday afternoon, Mother's Day brunch on Sunday with Wound-ed Warriors, and finally the hos-pitality suites on both Friday and Saturday evening.

Feedback from the open-ended qualitative questions suggests four main areas for improve-ment: providing better food (less chicken!), reducing the time spent on awards ceremonies, im-proving the audio system, and reducing the cost of attending. As to the qualitative feedback on what participants appreciated the most, the sessions focused on youth on the Saturday morning again stole the show.

Clearly, the focus on youth and participation of Interactors and Rotaractors paid off.

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Color My World! By Yoni Kalin One crayon at a time, CMW links children, teenagers, restaurants, patrons, and organizations in need in a community-wide effort to re-duce waste and inspire creativity.

Through our dedicated all-youth team, the Color My World Project (CMW) collects discarded crayons from restaurants across the country and donates them to schools, childcare centers, shelters, and or-phanages in need. Often, when our team-members donate a batch of crayons, they spend time coloring with the kids and teaching them about the importance of recycling and reducing waste.

By donating crayons, CMW is giv-ing children additional artistic op-portunities and lessening the bur-den on teachers while simultane-ously reducing thousands of pounds of landfill waste.

Through this process CMW team members find a passion for service and learn how to run a social ven-ture while also becoming role models and inspiring other youth to engage themselves in the com-munity.

Franchising social change, CMW creatively utilizes technology with

a "took kit" available on the CMW website so that new vol-unteers can train online and in-dependently manage their out-reach. CMW's goal is to create a new generation of change mak-ers with skills in negotiation, direct marketing, and collabora-tion within the realm of social entrepreneurship and beyond.

Inspiration

Millions of young children do not have access to artistic op-portunities, both within the US and internationally. In addition, thousands of youth in the Unit-ed States and beyond want to make a difference in their com-munity, but do not know how. In addition with more than 50,000 family style restau-rants, millions of crayons are being thrown out a year without good reason.

The idea for CMW began when I was sit-ting at an outback steakhouse coloring. I noticed after the meal, my server pick up the crayons that I had used along with the unopened pack on my table and toss both in the trash. I asked if they recycled crayons, at least the unopened boxes and he said that they do not. I was inspired to pursue start-recycling crayons because of the sheer number of waste.

Imagine…50,000 restaurants that give crayons and all the

crayons are thrown out instead of re-cycled. That is a lot of waste! From there I put together a plan and CMW was born.

The biggest challenges occurred at the start of the organization before we had credibility or restaurants backing our project.

After we got 10 restaurants on board, it became easier and easier to pitch to new restaurants. The hardest thing about running Color My World 130 restaurants later is keeping track of donations, restaurants involved, and volunteer participation. Managing 130 restaurants with 75+ volunteers gets tricky and as we expand some restaurants become less reliable.

All together these “issues” are only logistical problems because in the end if restaurants are recycling and volunteers are donating that is what matters more than simple stats that we can show investors. Color My World may be a simple idea, but from my experience it has had a huge impact on my life and my confidence to create change in my community.

This project was part of the Learn-Serve International program.

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Interactors Meet in Rome by Diego Miluzzi, Interact Club Rieti

In June 2014, all Interact clubs of District 2080 took part in the fourth District Meeting at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. The president of the Interact

Commission, Giulia De Luca Pesciallo, announced the creation of two new clubs. District Governor Pier Giorgio Poddighe then gave a speech in which he summarized some ofthe achievements of the last year and thanked all the clubs for their ccontributions. The presidents of the

various Interact clubs reported on their

activities over the past year. A few clubs presented videos. During these presentations there was plenty of emotion! Most of the activities organized by the clubs focused on service work. For example, some clubs collected toys for Christmas and gave them to a local pediatric hospital. The Interact Club Rieti sold sweets in a shopping center during

Christmas and Easter and gave the proceeds (1800 € for Christmas and 2300 € for Easter) to a non-profit organization fighting cancer. The Interact Club Cagliari Sella del Diavolo organized a party named Interact Music Night and gave the proceeds to the End Polio Now campaign. The Interact Club Sassari Silki organized a Halloween party for the construction of schools in Madagascar. The Interact Club Roma Appia Antica contributed to project Mato Grosso that serves disadvantaged populations in South America. At the meeting the clubs also discussed objectives and strategies for increasing the number of their members. Ideas such as orgaizing sport tournaments and parties for advertising the work of Interact clubs were suggested. After the presentations by the Interact club Presidents, the District Representative, Gilda Babudieri, passed the torch to the incoming Interact chair Elio Cucullo. The District Governor gave his tie to Elio as a symbol of friendship. The incoming District Governor Carlo Noto La Diega also spoke, including about his own experience with Interact. Overall the meeting was a significant event that allowed the Interactors to discuss ideas and make new friendships.

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¡HAZ DE TU VIDA UN SUEÑO, Y DE TU SUEÑO UNA

REALIDAD. SI QUIERES, PUEDES! por Cristina Pardo Rojo Esta es la historia de un sueño hecho realidad. Sucedió concretamente en Santa Cruz de la Sie-rra Bolivia y fue gracias a muchas personas que se entusiasmaron e hicieron propio este precioso sueño. Si quieres puedes!, era nuestro lema.

Si quieres puedes salir adelante, crecer, mejorar tu vida y la de los demás, estudiar, ser campeo-nes, apoyar a un mundo mejor, puedes compartir con todos, aprender, Ser, disfrutar y demostrar que no importa el color, la raza, la religión o la clase social, porque si quieres puedes!

Y nuestra experiencia comienza así…

Había una vez, una chica española Cristina (yo!) que decidió irse como voluntaria, con 21 años a Bolivia y concretamente a Santa Cruz de la Sie-rra. Dentro de todos los proyectos que había en Bolivia, decidió ir a trabajar al Proyecto Hom-bres Nuevos que dirigía Monseñor Nicolás Cas-tellanos, un obispo español, que lo dejó todo, para irse a trabajar y vivir con los más pobres.

En principio, cuando fue a Bolivia, Cristina lo hizo pensando que sería una experiencia de 3 meses, pero una vez allí, pasado el periodo de prueba y viendo la cantidad de posibilidades de desarrollo que había, finalmente se quedó por 7 años. Todo el trabajo que realizó allí, fue volun-tario y no cobró ningún sueldo por ello.

La experiencia se centró en 4 partes fundamentales, la vida en comunidad con todos los voluntarios de dis-tintos países que venían a colaborar, el trabajo con niños desnutridos, el trabajo con niños y jóvenes de la calle y el trabajo de gimnasia rítmica como alternativa a la calle y como punto de apoyo, para el desarrollo integral de niños, jóvenes y familias.

Lo que empezó siendo un juntarse varios niños, de un barrio marginal, de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia a jugar en una plaza de un barrio, terminó siendo una escuela de 600 gimnastas con todas sus familias, pro-fesionales multidisciplinares voluntarios de varios países, familias españolas de acogida, amigos bene-factores, y como no…, Rotary Internacional con el Club Rotary Amboró (Bolivia), Interact Amboró (Bolivia), y Rotary Club of Savannah, Georgia (EEUU), que apoyaron, a crear una escuela de Cam-peones nacionales e internacionales de gimnasia y lo mejor aún, que todos los que quisieran, pudieran ser titulados universitarios.

El Club Rotary Amboró, con Maria Nelly Pavisich como presidenta, vino a visitar el proyecto Hombres Nuevos para conocer y buscar algún proyecto que les resultara interesante para apoyar. Dentro de todos, les gustó mucho un equipo de gimnasia rítmica que ha-bían empezado entrenando descalzas en la calle, sin ningún recurso, salvo el humano de contar con una escuela de 600 niñas con 10 entrenadoras y una selec-ción de 17 gimnastas que habían sido con un traje que se intercambiaban entre todas, campeonas nacionales.

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¡HAZ DE TU VIDA UN SUEÑO! Para que nos centremos en el contexto del pro-yecto Hombres Nuevos, a continuación, doy al-gunos datos de interés ya que esta, era la reali-dad de nuestras gimnastas. Hombres Nuevos, proyecto de desarrollo integral situados en el Plan 3000, barrio marginal de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, con alto índice de pobreza.

Más de la mitad, de la población del plan 3000, estaba desnutrida y como he citado anteriormen-te, había además un alto índice de analfabetismo. Aquella realidad, al director del Proyecto Hom-bres Nuevos, le tenía muy preocupado, todos sus esfuerzos se centraron en alfabetizar, y sacar de la desnutrición a la mayor cantidad de población posible, además de apoyar en la salud básica. A día de hoy, la Fundación Hombres Nuevos con casi 25 años de trabajo en Bolivia, entre mu-chos de los proyectos que tiene, ya ha construi-do más de 100 colegios, y da de comer al día a más de 1000 personas, además construyó un hospital que apoya en la Sanidad básica y quirúr-gica de toda la población, que carece de un segu-ro básico y muere cada día, por falta de una revi-sión y medicamentos básicos. Por qué surge la escuela de gimnasia rítmica en-tre tanta pobreza?. Hay muchas necesidades más urgentes antes que hacer un equipo de gimnas-tas, verdad? Pues efectivamente, yo nunca pensé siendo entrenadora nacional de gimnasia rítmica y haber entrenado equipos campeones en Espa-

ña, hacerlo en Bolivia. Antes había necesidades más urgentes como la desnutrición, la alfabetización y la salud básica. Y por ello, además de la gimnasia, ante-riormente me ocupe de otros proyectos. Pero, que fue, lo que nos hizo probar con esta activi-dad? Nos hizo probar, que había muchos niños de la calle, que desde los 4 años se drogaban esnifando pe-gamento, que muchos niños eran maltratados, trabaja-ban desde muy pequeños y las niñas, en sus primeros periodos menstruales, ya se quedaban embarazadas, además de ser analfabetos y no estar escolarizados y ser desnutridos, etc. Y ante esta realidad, varios voluntarios, buscamos dar alternativa a la calle, y para ello, cada uno de noso-tros, ofreció lo que sabía, para trabajar voluntaria-mente con los chicos, y en mi caso, ofrecí gimnasia rítmica, que desde el principio tuvo una aceptación tremenda y no quisimos desaprovecharlo. Es decir, utilizamos la gimnasia rítmica, como excu-sa , para escolarizar a todos los niños que entraban en la actividad, darles de comer, alfabetizar a los padres, atenderles básicamente en salud, trabajar las realida-des familiares, y apoyarles en su autoestima, en sus estudios básicos y universitarios, además de como personas de éxito.

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¡HAZ DE TU VIDA UN SUEÑO! Qué fue lo que tanto Rotary como Interact, apor-taron al club Hombres Nuevos de Gimnasia Rít-mica? Es importante destacar que hubo un antes y un después en el club con la entrada de Rotary al equipo. A mi me fascinó, personal y profesional-mente todos los recursos que nos brindaron:

- Desarrollo del liderazgo y desarrollo organiza-cional (brindado por Maria Nelly Pavisich a Cris-tina Pardo (directora) y a las entrenadoras de los distintos equipos internos del Club.

-Recursos, gracias a la gestión de Stanley Ros-holt, con el hermanamiento y apoyo conjunto con Rotary Club of Savannah, Georgia (EEUU) que consiguieron el equipamiento de una sala de en-trenamiento equipándola con espejos, espalderas, mueble para guardar el material, alfombra regla-mentaria conseguida de un Mundial de Gimnasia rítmica, maletas para los viajes, etc.

- Voluntariado del grupo de Interact Amboró con las gimnastas, haciendo un trabajo de integra-cióny autoestima.

- Apoyo multidisciplinar con varios miembros del Club Amboró. Dr. Manrique, traumatólogo, apo-yaba con el tema de lesiones deportivas. Protoco-lo, presencia y comunicación ante los medios co-mo periódicos y televisión.

- Apoyo a la comunicación Nacional e Internacio-nal y de Rotary en la presentación del proyecto, en Premios Internacionales como Premio Interna-cional Joven de la Paz (reconocido por la UNES-CO) y conseguirlo.

. Apoyo de Rotary en la postulación a las Becas Pro Paz Mundial de Rotary Internacional de la directora del Proyecto de Gimnasia Rítmica y Conseguirlo.

Por todo ello, y por la amistad que aún mantengo con varios de los Rotarios y en especial con María Nelly Pavisich y con los que trabajamos este proyecto, nunca me cansaré de dar las gracias por tanto apoyo moral, profesional, y económico para la consecución de material necesario para desarrollar con éxito esta actividad. A modo de conclusión, me gusta-ría compartir con ustedes, los éxitos personales y de-portivos conseguidos con las gimnastas de Hombres Nuevos gracias a todos y cada una de las personas im-plicadas, deportistas, benefactores, voluntarios, ami-gos, etc.

Éxitos: Mejora de su autoestima; Mejora del nivel deportivo; Mejora nutricional de las gimnastas; Me-jora de su rendimiento académico; Mejora sustancial de su salud física y mental; Mejora notable en su am-biente familiar y apoyo a la familia a sus desarrollo integral; En el Equipo de selección, todas han cursa-do estudios universitarios; Han sido campeonas na-cionales 7 años consecutivos; Primeras clasificadas en el campeonato internacional “7 estrellas”; Terce-ras clasificadas en un campeonato internacional en Guatemala; Participación en Panamericanos; Parti-cipación en Sudamericanos; Premio a la excelencia deportiva (Ministerio de cultura y deporte Bolivia); Premio al Proyecto del Año (Rotary Club Amboró); “Premio 10” al mejor proyecto deportivo Ministerio de Cultura y deporte Bolivia; Han Actuado para la Reina DE España; Han actuado para las primeras damas de la Cumbre Iberoamericana; Han sido invi-tadas por varios Ayuntamientos Españoles a hacer una gira por España, llamada “España- Bolivia, uni-das por la cultura y el deporte”; Premio Internacio-nal Joven de la Paz (reconocido por la UNESCO).

You can help! Write for Interact Today You do not need to be an Interactor to write for Interact Today. And you do not need to be in high school either—we are also interested in hearing from teachers as well as Rotaractors and Rotarians working with high school students. We are especially interested in your service work. Please send us your article. We will read it and let you know whether we can publish it. We hope to publish the newsletter at least four times a year. To contact us, please send an email to our team at interact4today@gmail.com.

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Tutoring in the Capital City by Interact Today Team Brandon was a quiet student enrolled in a pri-mary school located in one of the poorest are-as of Washington, DC, the capital city of the United States. Students in that area tend to have very low scores on standardized tests.

Upon the recommendation of his teachers Brandon started to participate in the school’s tutoring program. He said little, but it was clear that he was absorbing the material being taught like a sponge. When the results from the District of Columbia’s comprehensive as-sessment system (DC-CAS) tests were an-nounced, Brandon achieved proficiency in both mathematics and English. For his efforts and success, Brandon received a well-deserved award during the fifth grade gradua-tion ceremony!

When Brandon received his award, he was enrolled in one of the worst performing public schools in Washington, DC (the schools has since made substantial progress under new management). The District of Columbia itself is one of the worst performing areas in the United States according to national assess-ment data. And the performance of the United States is one of the lowest among OECD and other developed countries according to inter-national assessment data.

Tutoring and other supplemental education programs can however make a difference. These programs have received renewed atten-tion in the United States. Under the much de-bated ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act adopted a dozen years ago, public schools that have not made enough progress in learning assess-ments for two consecutive years are in princi-ple required to provide tutoring services to children.

This makes sense given that there is scientific evidence that the programs can make a differ-ence in learning achievement if they are well implemented.

An Innovative Program

Imagine a group of elementary school students gathering in a school gymnasium as part of a tutor-ing session. The students are trying to estimate the gravitational acceleration force on an object at sea level, where Washington, DC, is located.

The students throw a golf ball in the air in the gymnasium. They record the time it takes for the ball to fall from apogee to the floor using a simple stop watch. They repeat the exercise 25 times. They also estimate the distance from apogee to the top of the ceiling, which is done by first measuring the distance from floor to ceiling and next by guessing by how much the ball misses the ceiling.

The students’ estimate of ‘g’, the gravitational ac-celeration due to the force exerted by the earth on the golf ball, turns out to be within three percent of the accepted value for Washington, DC, even though each of the 25 individual computations per throw varied widely. This showed to the students how approximate values, when averaged, may converge on true values with reasonable accuracy.

Two students perform the gravity experiment in the school gymnasium

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Tutoring in the Capital City Another experiment used a hygrometer, an instrument for measuring humidity or mois-ture content as well as temperatures. This was coupled with water and iced water in cans. Students had to figure out the temperature at which beads of water formed on the outside of the tin cans, which was followed by a dis-cussion of what fog is, how temperature af-fects relative humidity, why clouds form and sometimes rain or snow is produced.

Program Characteristics

These scenes are from a volunteer-based tu-toring program run in a public school located in Anacostia, the poorest area of the city. Un-til recently, few children at the school passed standardized mathematics and reading tests, but things have improved. The tutoring pro-gram has now been in existence for six years. It is run by Dr. Don Messer a member of the Rotary Club of Washington, DC in District 7620. Together with teachers, school adminis-trators, and a half dozen other tutors from his Rotary club Don designed the program in an innovative way.

The program focuses on mathematics and reading, and on the types of questions asked in standardized tests. This is not to “teach to the test”, but to ensure that children under-stand potential test questions well. Tutors work with students in small groups of three or

four to generate interactions and more learning. The groups meet once or twice a week for the en-tire school year. The goal is not only to help the students learn, but also to help them understand that there is a future for them that often they didn’t know existed.

Tutoring can work to improve learning – this is why so many parents who have the means to do so invest in tutoring. But children from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have such opportunities, which is why volunteer-run programs are so im-portant for those children. To work well, tutoring sessions should be active, varied, and even fun. Sessions should combine structured and unstruc-tured instruction, as well as individual and collec-tive work, and they should focus on specific skills. In Don’s small but effective volunteer program the first part of each tutoring session focuses on prior test problems from DC standardized tests.

These tests are augmented by problems that tutors or teachers prepare to emphasize special themes. In mathematics for example, a package would con-tain around 80 problems, ranging from routine arithmetic operations to data analysis (histograms, bar charts, tables), basic geometry, and problems that require reading to make sense of what is to be done. The problem set is paced by student pro-gress, not by a time schedule.

Tutors make sure that if a problem is difficult to understand for one or more of the students, all stu-dents understand what the problem is driving at before they start to work on the problem. Students work on the problem until all have finished, but if the tutor sees that at least one student remains con-fused, a group discussion is launched to help the students get the correct solution. The tutors also try to interject simple science illustrations within the problems to be solved, as illustrated earlier with the gravity constant and hygrometer experi-ments.

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Tutoring in the Capital City

Learning from Good Practice

When implementing a service project, read about what constitutes good prac-tice in the field and consult with people who have experience in the area. The literature on tutoring and out-of-school-time programs suggests that in order to achieve impact, it is best to:

(1) provide consistent and sustained instructional time, for a total of at least 40-45 hours;

(2) provide tutoring to small groups of students, preferably less than ten at a time;

(3) follow a curriculum that is rich in content and takes into account the specific needs of students while being also closely related to what students learn during the regular school day;

(4) ensure that tutoring sessions are active and varied (for example by combining structured and unstruc-tured instruction, as well as individ-ual and collective work time) and focused on targeting the develop-ment of specific skills;

(5) foster positive relationships be-tween tutors and students;

(6) and foster collaboration between teachers and tutors with support of administrators, including for con-structive evaluation.

All of these features are at work in Don’s tutoring program in the Capital City of Washington, DC.

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Impact and Recognition How successful has Don’s program been? No impact evaluation is availa-ble to say for sure, but success rates at standardized tests have been systemat-ically higher for tutored than non-tutored students year after year. The results, albeit not based on a ran-domized study, are encouraging. In part thanks to this program, the Ro-tary club of Washington, DC, was recognized two years ago as Volun-teer Group of the Year by Chancellor Henderson of the District of Columbia Public Schools. For the Rotarian tutors, the experience has been highly rewarding. And in Don’s case, there was no better re-ward than having a fifth-grader tell him: “You know Dr. Messer, you’re my grandpa.”

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Rapid Interview: Joe Brownlee by Interact Today Team Joe Brownlee is General Manager and Chief Strategy officer for Rotary International. He plans and coordinates strategic initiatives for the organization He joined Rotary as its general auditor and has since held the positions of stra-tegic planning manager and global launch man-ager for Rotary’s streamlined grant model. Brownlee holds a bachelor of science in busi-ness administration and accounting from the University of South Carolina. He volunteers with several charities for children. Joe was inter-viewed by Interact Today in Baltimore where he was a keynote speaker at the D-7620 conference.

How did you first get involved with Rotary?

It's a long story. I got a rotary scholarship when I was in high school thanks to the Rotary Club of Beaufort in South Carolina. I was disconnected from Rotary after that for 20 years but then I joined Rotary International in 2004 as a staff member at the world headquarters in Evanston.

What do you do for Rotary International?

My background is in accounting and auditing. I am currently the chief strategy officer so I think about the future of Rotary and what the organi-zation could look like for youths like you and how it could fit your needs in the future. I led the work on the Future Vision model, the new grant-making model used by The Rotary Foun-dation for international projects. I am now work-ing since July 1 of this year on developing a more thorough strategic assessment of where we want Rotary International to be in the future and how we can engage the youth of the world.

How do you see Rotary 20 years from now?

I would like Rotary to be better integrated so that Interact, Rotaract, and Rotary clubs can all work together. We are all trying to do the same thing and we need to see practically how we can achieve more together. Interactors bring new and fresh ideas. Rotarians are typically older and they bring a lot of experience and mentoring op-portunities I think there are great opportunities

for Rotarians to share those vocational and mentoring skills with Interactors. By working more closely with Interactors, Rotary clubs can also attract new mem-bers and grow, so this is a win-win proposition.

What is your greatest experience with Rotary?

My travels as a Rotary staff have provided great op-portunities for interaction with volunteers worldwide. On a more personal basis, I have two small children, two girls aged three and four. One of them needed a heart transplant and Rotary was right there and really helped us get through this as a family. Rotary really shows commitment to help their own and others.

What are some of the best projects you have seen?

I have worked among others in the water and sanita-tion area and I have seen great projects in Ghana, Honduras, and Nigeria. This is one of the areas where Rotary has developed great expertise over the years.