Area Rotary leader attends conference in Barcelona

Rotary Club International held its international convention recently in Barcelona, Spain, and set for itself the completion of some lofty goals.

Jerry McClanahan of Cape Girardeau, Eastern Missouri District governor for Rotary Club International, said that amid high security the group still had both an enlightening and productive meeting. McClanahan and his wife, Barbara, attended the conference in Spain June 21 to 26.

Featured speakers for the event included Jerry Lewis, who received an award recognizing his work with Muscular Dystrophy Association, and Mikhail Gorbachev, former Soviet Union president, who received the International Humanitarian Source Award.

McClanahan said 19,400 Rotarians and their spouses from over 146 countries attended the conference.

Because of his long affiliation with Rotary Club, McClanahan said it was a chance to touch base with probably 3,000 of his friends from around the world.

"Yes, I guess you could say I'm a people person," he said with a smile.

"Meeting people from around the world gives you a whole different perspective. It allows you to look beyond Cape Girardeau," said McClanahan.

Before his experiences with Rotary, headlines from around the world were just news stories that barely caught his attention. Now, he says, everything that happens in the world has become personal.

"Now when there is a typhoon in China, I'm concerned, because I know people in China," said McClanahan.

What it's all about

The conference marked the beginning of McClanahan's tenure as Eastern Missouri District governor, but it wasn't his first trip abroad on behalf of Rotary.

"We have done a lot of traveling through Rotary Club," McClanahan said. "We've been to Nigeria as a group study exchange leader."

The purpose of that trip, he said, was central to all Rotary International trips: to study other countries and their cultures, and to at the same time recruit new Rotary members worldwide and to build worldwide brotherhood.

"That is really what Rotary International is all about," he said. "We look for professional and community leaders ages 25 to 40 around the world. And through that brotherhood, we are working at building world understanding and, hopefully, someday, world peace."

Because of that mission, McClanahan has been to a number of countries, including Denmark and South Africa. Rotary often organizes exchanges of teams. For instance, Rotary members from Missouri will be visiting Denmark next year, and a team from Denmark will likewise visit Missouri for four weeks next spring.

Broader horizons

Barbara, who almost always accompanies her husband on these trips, says the trips have definitely broadened her horizons.

"When you see problems around the world first-hand, it makes you realize the importance of the humanitarian projects that Rotary sponsors," she said. "We take for granted so many things living in America. Because of Rotary's humanitarian projects, now there are people around the world who have wheelchairs they didn't have before, people have better housing than they had before, they've got clean water to drink, and polio will, we hope, someday be wiped out."

Rotary's polio eradication project has become near and dear to her heart, as well as her husband's heart.

"Rotary started its polio project in 1979. We called it our 3H program -- Health, Hunger, and Humanity," recalled McClanahan. The program began in the Philippines because the islands had a high incidence of polio.

"When polio drops became available for four cents per dose, Rotary new we had to become involved in getting those drops to people who needed them," said McClanahan. In 1986, Rotary began a funding drive for the polio project. By 1988, they had raised $240 million to help begin the eradication of polio. It was all raised through Rotary's membership and donations the club solicited. "We had ended up doubling our original goal of $120 million," he added.

Since then, Rotary has been working with the World Health Organization and UNICEF to spend close to a billion dollars on polio eradication.

His hope, and Rotary's goal, is to have polio completely eradicated around the world within three years.

"Polio is now a major problem in only 1 percent of the world -- that's the 1 percent we are going after," said McClanahan.