Fifty-five incoming district leaders — DRRs-elect and district secretaries-elect — from 30 districts underwent elaborate training in various Rotary aspects such as growing members, strengthening The Rotary Foundation, working with grants etc at the Rotaract Zone Institute hosted by RID 3131 and held in Pune from March 21–24 this year.

In and out of the busy streets of Crawford Market, Mumbai, Shazmeen Khan, Insiya Chittorwala, and Rishik Singh, members of RAC Churchgate, RID 3141, were searching for notebooks, stationery items, chocolates and sports equipment.

Rotasia, the South Asian Rotaract convention, is on its silver jubilee year and was hosted by RI districts 3191 and 3192 from Feb 29 to Mar 3 in Bengaluru.

All the 10 tribal families at Sindalachiwadi village in Raigad district of Maharashtra are happy that they don’t have to suffer the daily ordeal while preparing meals in their mud huts. With their new biomass, smokeless stoves donated by RAC Panvel Elite, RID 3131, “cooking has become easy and painless for us. Also, the cooking time is reduced by around 40–50 minutes,” says Pallavi (35). Earlier, she recalls, “with mud chullahs we were exposed to ­excessive smoke, suffered from frequent cough and eye irritation.” Also, the chullah had to be fed with firewood from tree branches, thus it resulted in shrinking green cover in their locality.

Over the last eight years, Project Joy of Giving has brought smiles and happiness to at least 10,000 children, issueless aged couples and elderly people through distribution of sparingly used clothes, toys, ­cooking utensils, stationery items, bags, shoes and a range of groceries which were collected from houses across ­Mumbai. Explaining the flagship project of RAC Mumbai Salt City, RID 3141, club president Pranati Chheda says, “We do this project in three phases. A few days before Diwali we reach out to poor children in an institution or charity home and provide them with all useful items including clothes, utensils and crockery which we had collected in a special drive.”

Clown care or hospital clowning is a therapy involving visits by specially trained clowns to help lift patients’ moods with a positive power of hope and humour. ­Additionally, the sessions also lift up the spirits of the staff and the patients’ family. ‘Clown doctors’ attend specifically to the psycho-social needs of the hospitalised, using techniques such as music, storytelling, magic, and other clowning skills. The objective is to distract the patient from pain and frightening medical procedures, anxiety, loneliness and boredom.

A lot of people describe Rotaract as the future of Rotary. But I very much believe that Rotaract is the present of Rotary. The skills that Rotaract can bring to the Rotary table are fantastic and complementary to the skills that Rotarians have,” said RI President ­Gordon McInally, addressing the DRRs and DRREs at the Rotaract seminar at the Rotary zone institute in Bengaluru. He is a former member of Rotaract Club of South Queensferry, Scotland.

Though less than a year old, RAC Pune Synergy Next Gen, RID 3131, has got a charter president in Raghav Somani who is brimming with ideas and is ready to motivate his members to take up impactful service projects. “We have 21 members, 70 per cent of whom are businessmen and small entrepreneurs, and the rest are college students. Our maiden Project Social Santa donated around 100 food packets to homeless and destitute people at the Pune Camp area on Christmas eve,” says Somani.

From screening ­advertisements in cinema halls to organising orientation seminars and roping in celebrities, RID 3141 led by DRR Aastha Parekh has shown the way to enhance Rotaract membership in Mumbai.

It is rare to find Rotaractors dedicated to a single project for over 10 years. RAC H R College, Mumbai, is one such Rotaract club in RID 3141 that has been focusing all its efforts towards developing a cluster of ­villages in ­Sangamner taluk, Maharashtra, since 2012, through its Project Aashayein.