Exchange students from District 6990 get together.

When I was 16, like most teenagers, I was focused on my own life. I hadn’t really thought about joining a service club or dedicating myself to helping others. But that changed when a high school friend began talking to me about Rotary, and its local and global actions. I was captivated and wanted to learn more. So I took my first steps in Rotary as a member of the Interact Club of Lauro de Freitas. Through the club, I was able to contribute in small ways to changing my community for the better.

Gabriel de Jesus Abade, right, reconnects with his exchange counselor, Richard Bates, during the 2015 Rotary International Convention in São Paulo.

It was also there that I first came into contact with the Rotary Youth Exchange program through exchange students who lived in my district. It aroused something inside of me, and I felt an urge to also go away and experience something new. I took part in a youth exchange to Freeport, Bahamas, in District 6990 and it changed my life in so many ways I can’t explain. It is still shaping many of my current decisions. A lot of what I do today is related to the change I went through nine years ago. The exchange opened my eyes to a world bigger than my own neighborhood, city, state, and country. And there was no turning back.

I returned to Brazil with a sense of duty. Rotary impacted my life and I felt I needed to “pay it back” somehow. My mom felt the same way. She even became a Rotarian. I became a member of the Rotex in my district, a group of youth exchange alumni who assist new inbound and outbound students during their exchange, from 2010-15. We hosted five exchange students and received countless others for shorter stays. During carnival, which is a huge event in my hometown of Salvador, exchange students staying in other cities in Brazil would come to our home to experience carnival with Rotary supervisors.

A perfect picture of Rotex, special people, special moments, and lots of laughter.

My sense of needing to give back also prompted me to become a Rotaract member. The club, Salvator-Aratu, is a very active one, and we were able to impact our community in a rather impressive way. Our projects included distributing food to the homeless, supplying hospitals with mattresses, organizing medical clinics, and funding tutoring for public school students. There I made some wonderful memories and friends, with whom I still keep in contact. I guess that’s precisely how I feel about Rotary: it’s a big international family. Among Rotarians, I feel at ease, at home.

In 2015, I decided to attend Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in Germany to study the European legal system. I participated in the local Rotaract club and met some fascinating people. During my first meeting, I met a lovely girl named Julia, and we’ve been dating for over 2 years now. That’s precisely what amazes me about Rotary: this capacity of bringing people together despite their historical or geographic backgrounds, overcoming cultural barriers and creating this special art of global thinking/belonging.

I’m currently in Brazil and preparing to defend my bachelor’s thesis. I’m not quite sure what is yet to come once I’ve graduated. But one thing I’m sure of: whether in Brazil, Germany, or elsewhere Rotary will always be a part of my life.

Learn more about exchange opportunities through Rotary

Villagers in Basari Akura use a newly installed pump.

Basari Akura is a predominantly farming community in the Volta region of Ghana. The nearly 1,000 people that live there lack access to sufficient clean water, undermining health, education, and productivity of both adults and children. My club, the Rotary Club of Hohoe, is working with USAID and the government to extend the benefits of the Rotary-USAID Partnership water, sanitation and hygiene program in Ghana to Basari Akura.

On 27 July, I visited Basari Akura with the partnership program leaders in Ghana: Ako Odotei, chair of the project management committee and Theophilus Mensah, the project manager. We were also joined by a member of the Rotary Club of Ho, the other Rotary club in the Volta Region, and a local representative from our USAID partner, Global Communities.

We went with community leaders to the site of a new borehole that Rotary and USAID are drilling about 500 meters from a stream that inhabitants depend on for water. The project manager made us aware that the water test and pump test results were satisfactory. The chair of the community’s water and sanitation committee (WATSAN) who was with us expressed his joy at the addition of a new water source, which in his words, will ease the pressure and struggles for clean water.

We learned that the 935 people living in Basari Akura depend on an existing borehole, which was insufficient for the number of inhabitants. Squabbles and even fights erupt due to misunderstandings about whose turn it is to use the borehole. Students spend most of their after school hours fetching water instead of studying.

The stream that supplies the current bore hole.

The slow-flowing stream that supports the current borehole, as a source of water, is very bad. The water was greenish. We saw and heard frogs around, as well as cattle foot prints in the mud. We were told that the stream dries up in the dry season. I would have never imagined that, within the same country, some have to resort to frog-infested water, which they share with cattle, while others, especially in urban centers, enjoy clean tap water.

The community leaders told us that they used to suffer from Guinea worm until the arrival of the existing borehole. The most common current ailments are malaria and diarrhea.

Despite the challenges, we noted that the community has a very good WATSAN committee of nine members, five of those women. The committee has a good accounting system, collecting a monthly fee from users of the existing borehole, depositing it in a bank, and using it for maintenance. They had already designated two people to be their pump maintenance personnel.

By the end of our visit, we had the rare privilege of witnessing the first flow of water from the new borehole funded by the Rotary-USAID Partnership. It was clean and flows well. It is our intentions and hope to continue working in collaboration with our partners and Basari Akura to ensure that the community maintains good management practices of the water facility, and also explore other avenues we can to make life and health better for the community.

Learn more about the Rotary-USAID Partnership