Rotary Area of Focus - Peace

Rotary Foundation
One of The Rotary Foundation's areas of Focus is Peace. Or, more specifically Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention.
"Rotary encourages conversations to foster understanding within and across cultures. We train adults and young leaders to prevent and mediate conflict and help refugees who have fled dangerous areas."
 
The contributions to The Rotary Foundation made by clubs and individually from members support all seven areas of focus including this important one.
 
Rotary’s Four Roles in Promoting Peace 
Rotary and its members are:
  • Practitioners: Our work fighting disease, providing clean water and sanitation, improving the health of mothers and children, supporting education, and growing local economies directly builds the optimal conditions for peaceful societies.
  • Educators: Our Rotary Peace Centers have trained more than 1,700 peace fellows to become effective catalysts for peace through careers in government, education, and international organizations. 
  • Mediators: Our members have negotiated humanitarian ceasefires in areas of conflict to allow polio vaccinators to reach children who are at risk. 
  • Advocates: Our members have an integral role as respected, impartial participants during peace processes and in post-conflict reconstruction. We focus on creating communities and convening groups that are connected, inclusive, and resilient.
 
Today, over 70 million people are displaced as a result of conflict, violence, persecution, and human rights violations. Half of them are children.

We refuse to accept conflict as a way of life. Rotary projects provide training that fosters understanding and provides communities with the skills to resolve conflicts.

Rotary creates environments of peace

As a humanitarian organization, peace is a cornerstone of our mission. We believe when people work to create peace in their communities, that change can have a global effect.

By carrying out service projects and supporting peace fellowships and scholarships, our members take action to address the underlying causes of conflict, including poverty, discrimination, ethnic tension, lack of access to education, and unequal distribution of resources.

Our commitment to peacebuilding today answers new challenges: how we can make the greatest possible impact and how we can achieve our vision of lasting change. We are approaching the concept of peace with greater cohesion and inclusivity, broadening the scope of what we mean by peacebuilding, and finding more ways for people to get involved.

Rotary creates environments where peace can happen. 

A Rotary Peace Center intends to strengthen peacebuilding in the Middle East and North Africa

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When government officials in Saudi Arabia went looking several years ago for someone who could help establish mediation and conflict resolution as a pillar of the kingdom’s judicial reforms, they ran into a problem. “This was a bit sad to hear, but they said they couldn’t find an expert in the field who could speak Arabic,” recalls Sherif Elnegahy. Fortunately, Elnegahy, a Rotary Peace Fellow from Egypt, had just co-authored a book on the topic — in Arabic — and it caught the eye of the justice minister himself. The Saudis had found their expert.

One of about 100 peace fellow alumni working in the Middle East or North Africa, Elnegahy has expertise that is in high demand in a region with a tremendous need for peacebuilders. Elnegahy, who completed his fellowship in 2016 at the former Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, remembers calling out the need for such a center in the Middle East on his program feedback form. Now, he has reason to celebrate. This month, after years of planning, Rotary is announcing its newest peace center partnership, with Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul. “It’s a dream coming true,” he says.
See the full story here.