CSRYE18 Session 5: "Opening Ceremony"
After dinner, everyone headed to the fine arts center for the Opening Ceremony. All the inbounds, re-bounds, parents, and Rotarians went straight to the auditorium while outbounds (me) went upstairs to line up for the Flag Ceremony to kickoff the Opening Ceremony. The Flag Ceremony at this conference was similar to the one at the All "IN" District Conference in April, except this time only the outbounds participated and all the students going to that particular country would walk behind their flag (while one person, leads with the flag). We would walk through the auditorium and then end at our seats (expect for the person carrying the flag who would go to the front auditorium and stand). It is kind of hard to explain how this worked, so I have a couple videos I took on snapchat in the "Film" part of my website if you are totally lost hahaha. Like last time, I thought the Flag Ceremony was very cool and I loved participating in it. One thing that I really liked about this one was how someone would introduce every country before the students then walked in.
Following the Flag Ceremony Don Moore (CSRYE Chairman), and Bruce Golden (Conference Chairman) both did introduction speeches to the start of the conference leading up to a very special guest who we were very lucky to have attend, Rotary International President, Barry Rassin. Barry continued the session with his presentation, which I found quite interesting. He talked about different experiences he has had with
being the Rotary International President so far and how individual Rotarians/ Youth Exchange students have made such a big impact on communities by putting service above self.
The few stories he told us during his speech were honestly very moving. One that I remember specifically was about a Rotarian working in a middle eastern country. If you are familiar with the Rotary and its goals, you would know that one of the biggest goals (one that we are very close to accomplishing) is to compleatly eradicate Polio from the face of the Earth. Last year there were about 11 cases, but this one particular Rotarian took it upon himself to make sure Rotary would get one step closer to accomplishing that goal. He wanted to vaccinate the children of the Taliban. One day after going around saying that he needed to talk to the Taliban, they showed up at his house, put a bag over his head, and drove him about 2 hours away. When they took the bag off of his head, there were many armed Taliban men. They questioned what he wanted. While many, I would image, would have been scared speechless, this Rotarian individual started talking about the Rotary. He talked about what the Rotary stood for, their plans, and specifically their goal to get rid of Polio. After talking, the Taliban agreed that for one day they would put their weapons down and not harm anyone so that the Rotary could come in a vaccinate their children. This was just one example of a story Barry shared about how one person, one Rotarian, really can change the world. His speech was filled with many more similar to this one and it was really quite interesting to listen and hear about all the good Rotary is doing.
