United States

The Rotary Club of Conway-Morning, Arkansas, is aiming to deliver birthday messages to every child and young adult in the state’s foster care system. Between January and September, more than 2,100 cards had been mailed, with an anticipated 3,700 individuals to be reached annually. “These children already face great uncertainty and disappointments in their lives, and I strongly believe that to consistently remember them on their special day would give them hope to go on, and to show that others around them genuinely care for them,” says Mike Altland, a club member who started the campaign. A dozen or so Rotarian volunteers coordinate writing and forwarding cards to foster homes with the Arkansas Division of Children and Family Services and The Call, a statewide nonprofit that works with churches to match children with families. American Greetings, which operates a production facility in the area, donated a supply of cards and envelopes expected to last nearly two years, Altland says.

Mexico

The Rotary Club of Guadalajara Internacional in March began training girls from the city’s underserved communities in the Korean martial art of taekwondo. The Reconoce Tu Poder, or Recognize Your Power, program has trained dozens of girls, says creator Bertha Sánchez García, the club’s immediate past president. Sánchez García, a brown belt in the discipline, and Zulema Fernández Sariñana, a member of the Rotary Club of Guadalajara, developed a manual and a training regimen with the assistance of Patricia Mariscal Alcalá, an Olympian who is one of Mexico’s most accomplished female taekwondo athletes. “At the end of the program, each girl knows that she is capable of knocking down her obstacles by breaking a board with a kick,” says Sánchez García. The effort has been replicated by clubs in two other Mexican towns as well as in India.