Thursday, April 1, 2021
By: Whitney Ashe DollRead an update from the Embassy Relations Committee from late February and March 2021.
The Ambassador of Portugal spoke to the club on March 3, 2021, and was awarded an honorary membership at that time. A certificate of honorary membership was sent to the Ambassador of Chile, who had hosted a Rotary-planned Ambassadorial Reception on October 3, 2019, at his Residence. The honorary membership had been approved months ago, but the certificate had not yet been sent to him.
Letters were sent to the Ambassadors of Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana, communicating that a Rotary Global Grant had been approved in their countries for the training of women in peacebuilding. President Nancy Riker, Marcus Soriano (the project proponent), and David Klaus held Zoom meetings with the Ambassadors of Cameroon and Liberia to provide further information on the grant, which is underway. Letters have also been sent to the Ambassadors of Cambodia, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, Zambia, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Mongolia, informing them that our club’s International Service Committee had awarded grants to not-for-profit organizations in their countries. Letters have been drafted to the Ambassadors of Thailand, Turkey, and El Salvador but have not yet been sent.
The Embassy Relations Committee has begun planning for a second Ambassadorial Reception in the fall of 2021. It will depend on whether it is safe to hold an in-person reception, given the state of the Covid pandemic at that time. We have received tentative agreement from the Ambassador of Tunisia to host the reception on October 28, 2021. We still need to determine whether the venue he is offering has an adequate capacity to host the event. Meanwhile, the Committee is proceeding with plans for the event. We have prepared a Timeline of tasks to be undertaken between now and then, as well as an Embassy Contact List of all the Ambassadors and their Embassies whom we would like to invite.
Our relationships with our twin clubs are thriving. Our weekly Rotary meetings have been attended by members of our twin clubs in Athens, Paris, and Edinburgh. Several of us have attended, via Zoom, the meetings of our twin clubs in Paris, Edinburgh, and Santiago (Chile). Our twin club in Manila (Philippines) is planning a reforestation project which our club may be invited to join.Read More