Kevin Smith may have had the most difficult tenure of any Rotary Club of Nipissing Presidency in recent memory.
“You start prepping to become a President quite early. So, I was in Florida around March and we came back early, and our Rotary year starts July 1st and I was just thinking, this is going to be one hell of a year coming up,” says Smith with a laugh. “I said to the outgoing president if he wanted to just keep going that would be fine and I could take a break!”
However, Smith has hit the ground running and this 2020 version of the club has been extremely active since the summer, despite the limitations the global pandemic has set on people and organizations.
“Everything changed, we had weekly meetings in person, and we couldn’t do that. All our fundraising was shut down. No meetings, no fundraising, what could we do now?” says Smith.
“Well, we got up and running on Zoom. Then the next question was, what can we do? Yes, we have been challenged, but we have a little bit of reserves, we can’t just roll over. To me, that’s the death of a club. If you can’t find something to keep members engaged and keep people feeling worthwhile, I mean that’s why they joined a service club in the first place. They want to feel like they can do something.”
Smith says that’s when the ideas started rolling in from Rotary Club members, including finding a way to help with the shortage of hand sanitizers.
“One of our members is a volunteer fireman and he said they didn’t have the funding, but they could really use some donations,” says Smith. “The local OPP detachment had also run out. So, we bought some sanitizer, we put it together for donations, and then the OPP re-donated that to the paramedics in the surrounding areas.”
The club continued to help in different ways around the area over the next few weeks.
“We joined Clean Green Beautiful North Bay doing community clean-ups. We didn’t need a budget for that, we just split up and cleaned up various areas around the city. Those are the feel-good situations and Clean Green Beautiful is a tremendous project.
"Then we were contacted by one of our members who said there is a face shield manufacturer in town who wants to see what they can do to help the community and are looking for a partner. So, a division of North Bay Plastic Moulders called ProtectOn said they can sell us the face shields for a really good price and the Rotary Club can distribute them. Well, we were all on board for that. We also had our members doing some food bank delivery donations.”
Being involved and giving back to the community is one reason why Smith originally joined the Rotary Club Nipissing in 1991, but he says the main draw was its global reach.
“I was 31 at the time and I just started going to different clubs and what really appealed to me was the international scope of rotary. You can’t be a Rotary Club and not do anything international, it's part of our mandate. There are many ways you can participate, such as youth exchange, group study exchange, and I loved the attitude which is “we don’t give a handout, we give a hand up” and the club is pretty rigid about that. It’s not about just giving away money for a project, in order for us to get involved internationally there has to be somebody on the ground in that other area who is willing to not only ensure the project is done successfully but ensure its longevity.”
And even in a global pandemic, they have found a way to do something of international significance.
“There was an orphanage in Costa Rica which normally got all their funding from the tourist hotels in the area,” says Smith.
“Covid shut everything down and there was no money coming into the orphanage because the hotels weren’t bringing in any donations. So, we partnered with a club in Orleans, Ontario as one of their members was from that area in Costa Rica, and we did a virtual garage sale. That raised $4,000 which we sent to a Rotary Club in Costa Rica that in turn donated it to the orphanage to keep them operational. That just blows my mind with the reach you can still have in these times. We’ve been challenged no doubt but we’re still moving forward and trying to do things to support our community and internationally as well. The whole world is our backyard and we need to focus on the people that don’t just need help here but those who need help around the world. And if we can do something to provide that help then we are going to do it.”
Coming up later this week is World Polio Day, and this may be the biggest cause the Rotary Clubs have donated their time and commitment towards.
“The end polio program, also known as Polio Plus, is a big mission for us,” says Smith. “In fact, we are down to two countries in the world where polio is a pandemic and that is Afghanistan and Pakistan. That has seen billions of dollars raised to fight polio. We are getting close, of course, we keep saying that but then COVID-19 threw us a curve in terms of getting out and immunizing people. I get shivers even thinking about it being eradicated.”
Smith says that there have been roadblocks along the way.
“I admit at one point there was definitely some donor fatigue among rotary clubs saying we’ll have this done in 10 years, then 15 years and then we’d run into civil wars in areas where we couldn’t vaccinate. Polio is incredibly contagious and once it gets a foothold, it just spreads like crazy and we would get locked out of areas. You can’t do vaccinations when there are civil wars going on. Bill and Melinda Gates were huge for us to keep going. They gave us a massive amount of support and cash and they just matched us dollar for dollar with our donations and it seemed to rejuvenate everyone in this eradication program.”
Smith continues, “When they stepped up and said they thought we were doing amazing work and they wanted to help, it just seemed to put a spark back into this program. The last time I looked, we’re down to 47 cases worldwide. We’ve been close before though, so I always preface it by saying we’re close, but we’ve been close before. However, we hit a huge milestone this past summer when Africa was declared polio-free and that was massive. The feeling you get, I mean you’re just one cog in a wheel, but you’re seeing what happens when you put all those things together and the feeling you get is it just blows your mind when you see those things get accomplished.”
And Smith says the will of the members of his club to continue to find ways to give back during these times is more than he could have ever expected when he took on the role of President.
“I know they probably get tired of hearing me say it on the Zoom meetings for our club, but I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I’m so proud of the efforts they have put in. We’re not a huge club, we’ve got 28 members and to see this group step up day in and day out and do all the things we have accomplished, it just blows my mind. I’m incredibly proud to be a member of this club. It would’ve been nice to have an easier year, I was kind of hoping for one, but that went out the window in March!”
