Rotary Foundation Seminar

Reg Ling on Polio Eradication

Fred McCrindle & Colin Maclean, Reading Abbey Rotary, on Launch Reading

More to follow...

V. Sreetharan on Rotary Peace Initiatives

V. Sreetharan is a member of Westminster West Rotary. A Rotarian since 1995, he is on the organising committee for the Rotary International Presidential Peace Conference to be held in London on 9th & 10th February 2024. Sree will speak about his journey from Drumming for Peace at the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London in April 2018, to the Lighting of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Beacons in all Commonwealth Capital Cities in June 2022, and the daunting task of organising a Presidential Peace Conference in London in February 2024. How and why is this so important to him?”

Iyiola Solanke on her Rotary Scholarship and her career since then

Iyiola Solanke was a Rotary Scholar in the mid 1990s. She studied Swahili in Tanzania supported by Rotary in London. Since then she has a hugely successful and varied career. She joined the Oxford Law Faculty in August 2022 and while chatting in the office kitchen during a break in a meeting, she and Karen Eveleigh had a great conversation about Rotary, prompted by Karen wearing her Rotary badge in the office that day. 

Iyiola Solanke is Jacques Delors Professor of European Union Law at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College. She was previously Professor of European Union Law and Social Justice at the University of Leeds Law School and the Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for the University. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Hawaii School of Law, Wake Forest University School of Law and Harvard University School of Public Health.  Professor Solanke is a former Jean Monnet Fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and was a Fernand Braudel Fellow at the European University Institute. She is an Academic Bencher of the Inner Temple.  

Her research focuses on institutional change, in relation to both law and organisations. Her work adopts socio-legal, historical and comparative methodologies. She is the author of ‘EU Law’ (CUP 2022), ‘Making Anti-Racial Discrimination Law’ (Routledge 2011) and ‘Discrimination as Stigma - A Theory of Anti- Discrimination Law’ (Hart 2017), as well as many articles in peer reviewed journals.  

She founded the Black Female Professors Forum to promote visibility of women professors of colour, and the Temple Women’s Forum North to promote engagement between legal professionals and students in and around Yorkshire. In 2018 she chaired the Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL and she is currently leading two research projects: Co-POWeR, a project looking into the impact of COVID on practices for wellbeing and resilience in Black, Asian and minority ethnic families and communities; and Generation Delta, a project promoting access to and success in post graduate research (PGR) study for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women. 

Other current projects focus on legal protection from weight discrimination as well as de-colonising European Union law.

Robin Weathersbee and Tom Conlin, Slough Rotary, on Dictionaries for Life 

Slough Rotary has distributed Dictionaries to schools in and around Slough for over ten years. They have often used Rotary Foundation grants to part fund the annual programme. 

Robin has been in Rotary for 49 years, a past president and current secretary of Slough. He was a member of the district Foundation team for several years and organised the Paul Harris Fellows’ lunch in Oxford for three year.  He has attended over 40 district conferences!

Tom is well known across the district as an organiser of charity trips to Serbia, Kosovo and other countries with lorry loads of aid, something he has been doing for 10 years. He was club president last year and will be again in 2024-25.

Stories from our clubs. We will have a series of 'three-minute stories', from seven or more clubs.

So far the confirmed speakers are 

Greg Wilkinson from Reading Abbey Rotary on a garden project at a local charity that supports adults with learning difficulties, supported by a district grant; Derek Smith from Cookham Bridge Rotary with an update on the Thames Hospice global grant funded project; John Hudson from Maidenhead Rotary on planning for a new project to provided toilets for schools in Zimbabwe, for which the club hopes to secure a global grant; Janet Eustace from Witney Rotary on an eye hospital in India part funded by a global grant; Maya Smeulders from Abingdon Rotary on the support over the years for rural communities in Uganda, using district grants; Mark Barrett from Reading Matins Rotary on planning for a new project to create a hub for young people in Reading with the charity No 5, hoping for a global grant; John Osborne from Reading Rotary on the club’s support over the years for the End Polio Now campaign.