Jeff Zycinski – Author and BBC producer

President Katrina welcomed everyone to the meeting including the speaker for the evening, Jeff Zycinski.

In her piece of Interesting Rotary Information, Katrina highlighted an article from the R.I. News featuring Rotary’s New Programmes of Scale. The headline read, “By building on a proven concept - such as efforts to stamp out malaria in Zambia - Rotary’s new multimillion-dollar Programs of Scale grants help make good better.”

As part of the polio eradication campaign, Rotary and its partners have trained millions of health care workers and volunteers and vaccinated nearly 3 billion children. Polio cases have dropped 99.9 percent since Rotary took up the cause in 1985, and the number of countries with endemic wild polio has dropped to two: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“What you’ve done with polio is remarkable,” says Larry Cooley, a well-known international development consultant. “But it shouldn’t be a study of one.”

Rotary is stepping up to that challenge through Programs of   Scale, a new Foundation program awarding grants to Rotary clubs or districts with evidence-based interventions that are ready to scale. The first such grant, announced in February, will provide $2 million to Partners for a Malaria-Free Zambia, a member-led program focused on fighting malaria.

Co-funders World Vision U.S. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are also involved in malaria mitigation efforts and will each contribute $2 million to the program. This $6 million program will train and equip 2,500 community health workers in Zambia to support the government’s work to eradicate malaria in that country.

The link for more information is:

https://www.rotary.org/en/inaugural-programs-scale-grant-honors-those-leading-malaria-treatment-efforts-zambia

President Katrina then introduced our speaker, Jeff Zycinski, former BBC Producer and author.

Jeff talked about his career in journalism and as a reporter on various radio stations.  He has always preferred radio to television because the images on radio (conjured up in people’s imaginations) are much better than what people actually see on TV.  As a boy he listened to many different radio stations – BBC Radio 2 and 4 etc and even foreign stations like Radio Moscow and Radio Prague.

His first brief job, while studying journalism, was with Capital Radio in London. He then became a young reporter with Moray Firth Radio in Inverness and then on to Radio Clyde in Glasgow for 4 years.  In 1995 he worked for the BBC in Selkirk and then Inverness.  In 2005 he became Head of BBC Radio in Scotland, retiring three years ago.

Jeff told a series of interesting and amusing stories about his experiences in each of his jobs, including an impromptu interview with Margaret Thatcher in Glasgow that became news throughout the U.K., meeting Princess Anne at a Children in Need function, interviewing Gregory Peck in America.  He also spoke about the two books he had written since he retired from the BBC – “The Red Light Zone” which is about his career in radio and “Travels from my Twilight Zone” which is about his family (particularly about his father during WW2 in Poland), growing up in Glasgow and his own recent battle with tongue cancer which he has now recovered from.

After a series of questions from members, James Gibbons thanked Jeff for taking the time to come along to give a fabulous talk and was glad that he had overcome his cancer of the tongue.

Willie Talbot reported that the bonus ball had been won by Jim Peat. A Numbers Club draw was made: 1^st – Bill McCallum, 2^nd – Willie Talbot, 3^rd – Peter McCrossan

Secretary Ian reported that the agenda for the Club Assembly had been agreed with President Katrina and President-Elect Charles and would be emailed to all members.