Giving Back

Service Above Self

That is the Rotary motto, and our University District Rotary Club exemplifies its spirit. I just returned from a weekend in Vancouver, British Columbia with the Rotary District 5030 clubs - of which our club is a member. My neighbor and landlord Ezra Teshome was this year's District Governor, and he is pictured here addressing this weekend's district conference.

Ezra has been personally responsible for eradicating the disease of polio in his native country of Ethiopia, leading trips of Rotarians to immunize children there every year for twenty years. Only three countries in the world have not eliminated the disease - Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until they do, the world is not safe. Rotary has led the effort to eradicate polio, in partnership with many others, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates Sr came up from Seattle on Saturday night to address our Rotary conference on this topic. I learned the world is "this close" to eliminating polio.

I learned from the many other speakers in plenary and break-out sessions this weekend, that Rotary has changed lives around the world. Rotarians who funded an infant girl to get the surgeries she needed to grow up and walk again on prosthetic legs; the many villages in Guatemala, Mexico, and across Africa that have clean drinking water and new school houses thanks to Rotary; the disabled children in Nepal who are given dignity and wheelchairs; the children in poor communities here and abroad that have safe playgrounds built with Rotary dollars; the Rotarians who funded a 12-year old boys plans to end child slavery around the globe. Rotarians are changing the world through these acts of service above self.

And in this blog by and about real estate investors, the goal is to leave the world a better place for our having lived here. To learn to build community through ethical investment, and through compassion for those whose lives are being changed. To have the ability to "give back" after profiting from one's life work. This is truly to have lived, and lived well.

Happy investing.