Rotarians set new goals at 'Chiguru'

For the members of the Rotary International (IR), Sunday was an occasion to reminisce past achievements and pledge for more milestones in the future.

In order to bring together its youth wing and encourage them to take up more social activities, the RI District 3190 organised “Chiguru”, an Inter-City General Forum (ICGF) on Youth Service, here. This Rotary International district includes Bengaluru, Tumakuru, Mandya, Ramanagar and Chithoor among other districts.

Rotarians, Rotaracts and Interacts from all the areas under the 3190 RI district showed up for the occasion. The ICGF is an annual event held in the month of September.

Speaking to Deccan Herald, Rotary Youth Services Director Karthik Reddy said they had several plans to further enrich activities under the Rotary umbrella.

Some of their immediate plans included increasing the number of ‘Interact’ clubs from the existing 120 to 500 and the number of ‘Rotaract’ clubs from the existing 57 to 200, by the end of this Rotary year (July 2016). Interact wing of the Rotary International is meant for students under18 years of age and Rotaract is for those between 18 and 30 years.

Skill-development
Further, this Rotary district has taken up activities for the benefit of government school students and plans to extend its scope in the future. As part of the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) ‘I am a Winner’, the organisation has taken up skill development for students.

The programme is aimed at government school students to instil leadership skills in them.  It is a one-day programme and they have already reached out to 8,000 children. They aim to extend its reach to 25,000 children, Reddy said.

On the occasion, author Dev Prasad (Author of Krishna: A Journey Through the Lands, Pitch it and The Curse of Surya), interacted with students on essential skills.

The Rotary Ratna Awards were also given away during the event. Rotarians Uday Kumar and Rajendra Rai were chosen as the Rotary Ratnas of the year. In addition, awards were also given to the best performing interact and rotaract clubs. Actor Puneeth Rajkumar presented the awards.