While on holiday in Bangladesh, Rotarian Julie Reza also got the opportunity to attend a regular meeting of the Rotary Club of Dhaka.
As is customary, at the start of the meeting Julie exchanged banners with the President of the Rotary Club of Dhaka and passed on greetings from our club and President Tony Loughran.
During the meeting, members of the Dhaka club gave updates on their various projects, several of which our club has helped to support. For instance, Julie heard about eye camps (which provide cataract surgery to individual that are unable to afford it) and safe water projects.
The Dhaka members also discussed plans for one of their members to stand as a candidate as District Governor for Rotary District 3281 – a discussion tht Julie learnt from and contributed to!
The Dhaka club has a long and interesting history. It recently marked its 85th anniversary. The club has a fixed meeting room,which has pictures of many past presidents lined up around its walls; some pictures of early Rotarians, sadly, were missing.*
There was also a display of banners exchanged with other Rotary clubs around the world, showing just how far Rotary connections can take you.
While there, Julie also received a copy of the Dhaka club’s newsletter, which mentioned her visit and reproduced our article on the Covid lab that we helped to support. As it was Ramadan Julie was also treated to the meal, known as “iftar”, at which the fast is broken – it consisted of a variety of snacks and finger food (such as bhajis), biriyani and a milk dessert and fruit.
While taking pictures around the meeting room Julie noticed several picture frames of Past Presidents were “empty”, and this was because there are no records or detail of those individuals.
We are very fortunate that our club already has close relationships with a number of other Rotary clubs – not just clubs in our city, cluster or district. For example, we are members of Pentangular – a set of five European clubs who work jointly on a Pentangular project as well as socialising. The relationship that we are now developing with Dhaka is also of great value, and it’s good to be able to see what the club is currently doing and possibly partner on future projects together.
Picture: Pictures of Past Presidents of the Rotary Club of Dhaka lined up along the wall. Picture credit: Rotary Club of Canterbury
*Do you happen to know anything about the following former Presidents of the Rotary Club of Dhaka? If so, do get in touch:
K D Ghoshe; DrL R Fawsom; Captn Dr M R Hasan; Hirandrel Dey; LA Aung and P M Baten.
