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 Rotary
in
Kenya
The first Rotary club in
Kenya,
the Rotary Club of Nairobi, was founded in 1930. It is the third
oldest Rotary club in
Africa.
Kenya
has a rich history and landscape, making it one of the most visited
and well-known countries in
Africa.
Its ethnic diversity and stability in a region that struggles with
conflict has led it to become a regional mediator for neighboring
countries such as Sudan
and Somalia.
Kenya
has also become known as a haven for refugees fleeing nearby
conflicts.
In spite of
Kenya's
many strengths, it will face challenges in achieving the
UN Millennium Development Goals
by 2015.
What are the UN
Millennium Development Goals?
The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG) –
which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of
HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the
target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s
countries and all of the world’s leading development institutions.
They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the
world’s poorest people.
World leaders will come
together in
New York
on 25 September 2008 for a high-level event to renew their
commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and
to set out concrete plans and practical steps for action.
Editor’s note: You can read more about the
Millennium Development Goals in another article currently posted in
the Make-up Programs section of the Rotary eClub One website.
A recent study concluded that
achieving these health and poverty reduction targets would cost
Kenya
nearly US$61 billion. In contrast, its foreign aid is less than $1
billion per year.
Although Kenya
has a larger middle class than its neighboring countries, around 46
percent of Kenya's
38 million people live in poverty, and 20 percent live in extreme
poverty. Much of Kenya's
territory is arid or semi-arid, making it difficult to become
self-sufficient in food production. Cycles of severe floods and
droughts also impact its food security.
Over half of
Kenya's
population is under 15 years of age. This high dependency ratio puts
tremendous strain on the country's health care and educational
programs. Additionally, child and infant mortality have increased
steadily in the last 15 years.
The HIV/AIDS epidemic has also had a
devastating effect, reducing life expectancy to only 52 years. On an
encouraging note, the prevalence of the virus has halved from its
rate in the late 1990s to 5.1 percent due to greater public
awareness and free antiretroviral drug therapy treatment.
Kenyan Rotary clubs engage in many education and
water projects to help combat some of the country's worst poverty
and health issues. They also sponsor 60 Rotary Community Corps
throughout the country.
 About
the Rotary Club of Nairobi
The Rotary Club of Nairobi is
the third oldest club in Africa (after
Johannesburg
&
Cairo).
In District 9200, which covers the East African countries of Kenya,
Uganda,
Tanzania,
Ethiopia
and Eritrea,
it is the oldest and largest with a membership of more than 95. The
club has a broad age spectrum and ethnic background, and both
genders are represented well.
Sponsored by the Rotary Club
in Leeds
and chartered on 11th September 1930. Its charter committee met on
11 March 1930, and next day the headline on the East Africa Standard
newspaper read…ROTARY
MOVEMENT COMES TO KENYA
These first Rotarians had a
constitution drafted and approved within two months. The Club
started with 12 ‘persons of high standing in the community.' And by
the year’s end, 16 Rotarians met at the
New Stanley Hotel for their weekly
luncheon. The speaker at the first regular meeting in
Nairobi
was Mr. H. Monck Mason Moore, later to become Governor of Kenya. He
gave an address on Colonial Constitutions.
The Rotary Club of Nairobi
was duly chartered in September 1930 although the charter documents
were not received until a year later. Since then the Club has gone
from strength to strength as every Rotary Club in
East Africa
today tracing its roots back to the Rotary Club of Nairobi. In the
subsequent years Rotary was founded in
Mombasa
in 1944,
Uganda in 1947,
Dar-es-salaam in 1949,
Ethiopia
in 1961 and
Eritrea
in 1997.
The founder members of the
club comprised not only ‘prominent’ citizens but also amazing
characters with the most fascinating backgrounds. For example, the
South African Trade Commissioner, Colonel Turner and the Very
Reverend Dean Wright had come to the Colony with a predetermined
assignment; one to encourage business with South Africa
and to spread the gospel respectively. Other professional Rotarians
were engaged in local business adventures and are credited with the
foundation of some of Kenya’s
leading organizations. Among these was Ernest Beasley Gill the first
qualified accountant in
East Africa
whose practice later became today’s Deloitte & Touche.
Over the years, the club grew
in leaps and bounds and its members comprised people who made a
difference in the growing colony all the way to post independence
and present day Kenya.
The seed planted on that day 78 years ago has seen it sprout to form
the largest District in Africa (9200) comprising some 101 clubs in
Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and with a total
membership of 2,600 Rotarians out of the 22,000 Rotarians in 50
countries in Africa.
Rotarians in these countries, just like all the
rest the world, promote international understanding and goodwill by
means of material, technical, and professional assistance to their
local communities and beyond.
Rotary projects undertaken by the Rotary Club of
Nairobi address pertinent community concerns among them alleviation
of illiteracy, access to clean and safe water, fighting diseases
where Rotary has contributed financial and material support for
polio eradication through its PolioPlus Campaign, poverty
eradication and many other service projects.
Editor’s notes:
Rotary District 9200
comprises the five
East African countries Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania
and Uganda.
The geographical variation ranges from beautiful coastal beaches
(both in Kenya and Tanzania),
to Mt.
Kilimanjaro,
the highest mountain in Africa and Lake Victoria, the largest fresh
water lake in Africa.
The Big Five - lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo - still
roam the vast savannahs and bush land. The equator passes through Kenya and Uganda. The total population of all
five countries is about 130 million in an area of 3,139,000 square
kilometers (1,211,975
square miles)
The Kenyan city of Nairobi was founded in
1899 on the site of a waterhole of the pastoral Masai as a railhead
camp on the Mombasa-Uganda line. (Nairobi
in Masai means “place of cool water.”) The city became a substantial
town by 1900 and the center of the prosperous European-dominated
highlands farming area. Five years later it succeeded
Mombasa as the capital of the British East Africa
Protectorate, a colony of the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century.
People flooded into
the city, and it grew from a population of 9,000 in 1920 to 80,000
in 1950. This influx of people, many of them white settlers, caused
friction with the local Masai and Kikuyu tribes. The white settlers
established plantations and large agricultural farms in the area.
Nairobi
was officially declared a city in 1954.
After independence, Nairobi grew rapidly.
Today it is the largest city between Cairo
and Johannesburg and has
evolved into an international center with a spirit of its own.
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