Rotary Club Multan Cantt – Celebrating 18 years of Community Service, Sowing the Seeds of Love, Building Bridges and Connecting Continents. 

By: Salman Mubarak

Improving the human condition is a lofty goal and cannot be achieved alone. We all have an embedded desire to help our fellow human beings and try our best in our small domains to bring back the smiles and end the sufferings of the less fortunate.

From a humble begging, being the second club of Multan in 2001, there was much to be done and this young club of energetic Rotarians joined the Rotary family with big ideas and aspirations to contribute towards a world where disease prevention, youth development and women empowerment was not a priority.

“He Profits most who Serves Best “

Community Service Projects

Over the years RC Multan Cantt has achieved a unique place in the district with world understanding and playing it’s role as a truly international club with many Matching Grant Projects in the field of Blindness Prevention by funding more than 2000 cataract surgeries absolutely free and moving on to successful projects ranging from Prosthetic Hands, ( 47 amputees have been the recipient of these Prosthetic Hands )  Gift of Life, Free Surgeries for Polio Survivors, Tree Plantation to Screening for Congenital heart disease in schools of Special education in Multan District.

INNOVATIVE Meeting Venues

The most innovative idea of making Rotary Visible was a step away from the normative club meetings in costly and luxurious environments of board room settings in hotels with expensive meals. The club moves out to University auditoriums and lecture theatres for our Guest Speaker meetings to attract more audience and create a far reaching image of Rotary. This has helped the club in involving youth and the Rotary Club of Multan Cantt has always stayed ahead and has successfully chartered Rotaract Club of Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan in 2015 and Rotaract Club of AUM -Agriculture University Multan I’m 2018 and most recently Interact Club of Jinnah Highs, Multan was chartered on March 1st 2019.

The club has adopted the fortnightly meeting model and conducts its regular meetings in the conference room at Charity hospital and moved from Dinner to tea meetings. All funds conserved have been donated to Polio Plus Program and RC Multan Cantt have been among the top three contributing clubs towards Polio Plus since 2015.

INVOLVING YOUTH 

We have informal settings and invite Rotaractors to attend more often as we believe our youth is the torch bearer of Rotary and we should expose them to opportunity and let them explore and share our experiences so they grow to be better Rotarians and active members of society and responsible citizens of the world.

INVOLVING POLIO SURVIVORS 

Over the years we have actively involved the Polio Survivors to be guest speakers on World Polio Day for creating an impact and creating awareness.  This year we are focusing on projects to help  Polio Survivors. Our focus is to build 100 Wheelchair accessible Toilets and ramps through a Global Grant project.

TRULY AN INTERNATIONAL CLUB 

The international nature of club has transcended continents and we have contributed as partners in Matching Grants since 2005 and ensuring peace through participating in a project to develop Toilet Block and Physiotherapy facility in Amritsar, India in 2012. Most recently towards Water Projects in South America through Global Grants.  We believe all of us are connected to each other and can help communities and clubs in their projects with our humble contributions and be part of communities thousands of miles away through Rotary and make lifelong friends thus making sure Humanity Wins.                      

We at Rotary Club of Multan Cantt believe in harnessing the opportunity of international friendship through RFE Rotary Friendship Exchange  and VTT – Vocational training teams have hosted many Rotarians from USA, Canada and India and RFE team from D 5080 after we were home hosted as part of RFE in 2013 resulting into some life long friendships and paved they way for a multi club and multi district Global Grant project including 7 Rotary International Districts and 16 Clubs. This amazing Global Grant project was fully funded and approved in May 2018 and was completed in February 2019.

Author is a Social and Health activist. A Rotarian since 1999 and currently serving as District International Services Chair 2018-21