12th Annual Peace Conference

The 12th Annual Peace Conference will be presented by Rotary International District 5300 and the Rotary Foundation on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at Azusa Pacific University.

This conference, like previous ones on Africa and the Middle East, will present ideas on how to eradicate poverty through entrepreneurship education that leads to new business formation and job creation.

The huge unemployment in Mexico and other Central American nations leads to migration North in search of jobs. The migrants say they would far rather stay home with their families and in the neighborhoods and culture they grew up in. But in order to put food on the table for their families, they take enormous risks to come North.

So a program directed toward Job Creation in Mexico makes sense for them and is something we Rotary Club members, with plenty of business-savvy, can direct our attention to.

Actually, Altadena Rotary launched such a program in Tijuana in 1999, in collaboration with CETYS Universidad which operates the Junior Achievement program across Baja California, and 1,600 students were impacted. Unfortunately, the leadership of the university changed and the JA program got side-tracked, but not before the Ministry of Education had investigated the JA program and found how valuable it was. Dr. Carlos Rodriguez Rubio, of CETYS, spoke at Altadena Rotary last year and presented a document on the value of a new collaboration between Rotary Clubs in District 5300 and in Mexico and with CETYS.

The population of Hispanics in D-5300 is rising rapidly and has reached 42 percent of the population. Very few Hispanics are to be found in Rotary Clubs here and it should be valuable to show them that we are interested in helping their youth. So Hispanic organizations, clubs, and Latin Studies programs at universities will be solicited to send representatives. Workshops will be held in the afternoon to develop practical projects and associations.

For details, contact"PDG Dr. Garbis Der Yeghian at mashdots@aol.com orC. Ray Carlson at ray@rotapreneur.com 626.797.5462

This information was obtained from the District 5300 website.