Filipino Rotarians push worldwide ecology campaign

Batas Mauricio .

IN the history of Rotary International since it was first put up in 1905 in the United States, Filipino Rotarians have come to be acclaimed and accorded the honor and recognition of being the progenitor of what has come to be known as Rotary’s “polio plus campaign”. Polio plus was a project that Filipinos started in the Philippines way back in 1979 and which Rotary International and its more or less two million Rotarians worldwide have come to embrace with gusto.

Because of this fierce war against polio led by Filipino Rotarians, 99.99 percent of the world’s  countries today no longer have any polio cases. Indeed, it can be claimed without any serious contradiction from anyone that the world in general, and Rotary International in particular, owe this victory against polio (an ailment that caused the death of many children and adults in the past) to the pioneering socio-civic and charitable spirit of Filipino Rotarians.

But, time is coming when recognition of Filipino Rotarians will no longer be confined only to the success in the fight against polio. Under the able leadership of a 90-year old veteran and well-loved businessman, Joaquin “Jack” Rodriguez, the president of the Rotary Club of Manila for Rotary Year 2019-2020, Filipino Rotarians are bound to shine once again because of their campaign to plant more trees around the world and stamp out global warming and climate change, and to balance the ecology and promote environment restitution.

What Rodriguez wants to successfully accomplish during his one-year term (Rotary Year 2019-2020) as the leader of the 100-year old Rotary Club of Manila (the first in the whole of Asia) is the institutionalization and eager pursuit of the fight against environment degradation which, in the Philippines, is known to be the result of our country having some 3.6 billion deficit on trees. We lack around 3.6 billion trees, Jack told me.

This is the reason why Jack worked all his might to persuade the 10 Rotary International Districts in the Philippines to join him and the Rotary Club of Manila in a program that would ensure the planting and nurturing of trees. The program is called “Trees” or The Rotary Economic and Ecological Stratagem. Herself an environmental advocate, Champion District 3810 Governor Liza Elorde has thrown her strong support for Jack’s project.

Trees envisions, Jack said, not only the planting of trees by Filipinos, whether young or old, male or female, in every opportunity that is given to them to plant trees. They are also tasked to ensure that the trees they have planted would be cared for and would in fact thrive. One development in the country today that Jack attributes to Trees is the passage of the law that now requires each and every school children to plant and care for trees every year.

As explained by Rodriguez when we talked on June 28, 2019, his brainchild known as Trees, or The Rotary Economic and Ecological Stratagem, started on June 15, 2019 yet. On that day, some 231 Rotary Clubs from the different parts of the Philippines and other socio-civic groups joined hands and participated in the planting of trees across the archipelago.

Trees, by all means, is a very ambitious program, especially so because it aims to fill up the country’s deficit on trees, which, Jack said, is about 3.6 billion as of today. What is important, however, Jack told me, is that Rotarians and their “partners in service” have already taken the requisite first step to realize their collective dream. All of them are fired up by the thought that Trees is poised to gush forth more relevant benefits to the world, with cleaner environment resulting from new trees, and reversing global warming and climate change in the process.

If the “polio plus” campaign greatly helped countless children in the world, the Trees program being spearheaded by Jack Rodriguez and other Rotarians is expected to work out the miracle of a dying world rising again, as if in resurrection, owing to a cleaner environment, cleaner water, and more tolerable temperature ranges because of more trees. Long live, Champion president Joaquin “Jack” Rodriguez and the Rotary Club of Manila.

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com, mmauriciojr111@gmail.com