FOUNDATION MINUTE: NOVEMBER 9, 2026
Welcome to Week TWO of RI’s Foundation Month
The Rotary Foundation fully sponsors and funds the Rotary Peace Fellowship Program. This week’s report is based on the achievements of peace fellows as explained by the chair of TRF board of trustee for the 2026-27 leadership term, Jennifer Jones:
“Recently I met Selu Polley, a Ugandan police officer and a member of the 25th class of Rotary Peace Fellows at International Christian University in Japan. Growing up next to the Nakivale refugee settlement in southern Uganda — one of the oldest and largest in the world — Selu knew some of its residents….Nakivale is home to more than 286,000 people who have fled conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, and elsewhere, many of them women who walked for days and often weeks to reach safety. Their stories will stay with me forever. Every single one told me her husband had been murdered. Several had lost children to violence, hunger, or exhaustion. Through immeasurable grief, their presence was steady, dignified, and resolute. When I asked what they needed, not one asked for money. Not one asked for food or shelter. They asked for opportunity. They wanted the chance to build small businesses so they could feed their children and send them to school. Their request was simple and powerful: Help us create something that will last… With support from The Rotary Foundation, we are funding a sewing room where these women can learn a trade, earn an income, and build stability. Through those clubs, young people in Nakivale see themselves not as survivors but as leaders. As we celebrate Rotary Foundation Month in November and embark upon the 25th year of Rotary Peace Fellows, remember how far the Foundation has come, and the work of the more than 1,900 peace fellow alumni.”
https://portal.clubrunner.ca/4124/stories/message-from-the-foundation-trustee-chair
In Rotary,
Olabisi Gwamna, PhD
Mount Pleasant Evening Rotary
Editor, Foundation Minute.