Rotary

Rotary Club of Beijing

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Unauthorized websites

We want to point out there is no updated website of the Rotary Club of Beijing. The only official site http://rotaryclub-beijing.org/ is currently dormant.
Any other website claiming to be of the club is unauthorized and do ignore the content.

On my website I bring some news of recent activities of our Club but it is not as such the official website of the club. Any content here is my personal view.

Visit of our Special Representative

The present group of Rotary, Rotaract and Interact clubs in China is seen by Rotary International as a special “District”. As such we do not have a governor as itis the case for districts, instead we have a “Special Representative” (SR), Rtn. Richard. Officially our club is in District 0052 with Club Number: 60724.
Our weekly meeting of 20 October at the Kempinski Hotel we had a special guest: Richard , our SR.

He came over to discuss progress of Rotary in China and to learn about our club.
Before the lunch he met with members of the board.
As for now in China we have 28 Rotary clubs, 10 Rotaract clubs and 12 Interact clubs.
I joined the club on 11 January 2005.

What is Rotary?

See here a few slides about what is Rotary. For more, see the international website.

 

 

World Bank talk in Rotary Club of Beijing

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Rotary lunch 25 August 2020

During our lunch in the Kempinski Hotel Liangmaqiao we had a World Bank talk in Rotary Club of Beijing by our new member Ben, to speak about a fascinating subject:
“China’ s infrastructure development – lessons and practices”

China has had a spectacular success in developing a massive infrastructure that has generated rapid economic growth and helped to lift 800 million out of poverty.
Many developing and emerging countries seek to understand how China was able to finance and develop such large-scale infrastructure.

Ben Reja, World Bank Practice Manager for Transport Infrastructure based in Beijing, discussed China’s model of infrastructure financing and how the World Bank has been supporting various local governments to build up their infrastructure in an environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable way.

New members

Not only the World Bank talk that day, we were also happy to see two new members, Christin and Ben, being officially inducted.
The Rotary Club of Beijing is sparing no efforts to attract new members to serve the community.

Beijing Rotary and Rotaract

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Rotary lunch

Another busy week for Beijing Rotary and Rotaract. We started with our weekly lunch in Kempinski Hotel on Tuesday 29 September.

Happy to see our friend Andreas back in Beijing and back to the club. More than ten years ago I had sponsored him to become member. Now he will hopefully soon be our member again.
Earlier we had our Social event for Beijing Rotary.

We still have a number of Rotarians and Rotaractors who could not yet return to Beijing.

Rotaract social

On 30 September Treffyn organized a social Rotaract evening in a Chinese restaurant close to 3.3. It was our first “life” get together.

Good choice, good authentic Chinese dishes, simple environment, lots of beer – and vodka thanks to Treffyn. Pretty cheap too.
Restaurant details: “Shijinyuan” in Sanlitun East Second Street, next to the north gate of the Armed Police Beijing Corps Hospital. Name in Chinese: 十锦园.

Thanks to Danny, president of the Rotary Club of Beijing, to join us.
Yeah after that dinner I still had to rush to Morel’s Restaurant as it was the “official drinking evening” for Renaat. Many bottles emptied…

Care for Children

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Our weekly lunch

During our Rotary lunch in Kempinski on 15 September we welcomed Care for Children to give a presentation.
Nice turnout, as members were interested in the presentation.

Speakers always get our banner as a token of appreciation.

Care for Children

Some members participated online using ZOOM.
CfC was established as a charity organization in the UK in 1998. Since 1998, it has pioneered family-based care in China, helping transform their child welfare system. Foster care now represents one of the primary methods of care for orphaned and vulnerable children.
Working under the Ministry of Civil Affairs with the Chinese Association of Social Workers, it has trained thousands of family placement workers throughout the country to provide long-term support to children and the families they join, and hundreds of thousands of children’s lives have been transformed.

The speakers delivered a very professional presentation:
Dr. Zhang Qiuling, Research Manager. She is an International child development specialist with Doctor degree on Child Development. More than 20 years of research and training experience in child protection, child development and family care & deeply understanding of child welfare and social service system of China.
Erin Wang, Training Manager. Master of Educational Psychology, University of Sydney. Ten years of experience in curriculum design and field training in child development and family care.

For more details, see: https://www.careforchildren.com/index.html
In short:
What We Do: We partner with governments across Asia to place orphaned and abandoned children into local, loving families.
Where We Work: Care for Children has been working in China for twenty years, Thailand for seven years and Vietnam for two years.

Rotarians meet in Beijing

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Informal meetings

After months of restrictions due to the virus, Rotarians meet in Beijing again for informal meetings and simple social events.
Many of our members are locked out of China; especially our Rotaractors have a tough time as many are students or professors/teachers, unable to return.
We did restart with some modest lunches and dinners just to meet each other.

Hilton “BBQ”

Initially on 28 July we had planned an outdoor BBQ in the Hilton (3rd East Ring Road) but due to possible rain the hotel gave us the restaurant on the 2nd floor for our private dinner.
It was also the handover from the 2019-2020 team to the 2020-2021 team.

I managed to bring in some more young people who were able to mingle with the Rotarians.
Good service of the Hilton staff left everybody happy!
We had so many nationalities present, too many to mention…

A farewell dinner

Sadly in Beijing people come and go. One of our past presidents of the Rotary Club of Beijing is leaving us, as he got a new assignment in Europe.
One of our “core members” organized a small dinner at her home, to say farewell to our members leaving us. Our host did a wonderful job, so much delicious food, drinks and we even had a mini KTV session, revealing some hidden talents among our members.
I took part with a Rotaractor to help out for the service, we dressed in our Rotaract uniform!

We all hope we can slowly get back to normal to do our “service to the community”! Most of our projects are for children in need.