On Tuesday, March 25th, Rotarians assembled for our regular Tuesday night meeting. It began with two pieces of great news. Ioana has become our fellowship chair following Tracy’s departure. We thank Ioana for stepping into the role at short notice, and we look forward to the great nights out that she will be organizing for us. The other good piece of news was that our Peace Scholarship Committee would like to put forward Ling-Han Chen for the Peace Scholarship. The final decision will be the University of San Diego, but our PSC is fully confident that she is the right person for this opportunity.

There were a few presentations before the main speaker, one of which was given by PSR Frank. He informed Rotarians about the Vanila Project, a peace project started by the RC San Francisco No. 2 Club, of which his son and daughter-in-law are members. Frank is the Chair of the Project in Asia. The slogan of the project is ‘Turn mines into vines.’ This means clearing areas of landmines and growing crops there. Rotarians were very impressed by the sterling work that the Vanila Project is doing.

Then we heard from our speaker, Sebastien Lize. Sebastien is the executive director of Shanghai Young Bakers and has been in the role since July. He shared the history of the organization, which was founded in 2008 by French people missing French bread. The program takes on 17-23 Chinese students from difficult family backgrounds, who receive training in a French bakery. After six months of training, the students are fully qualified and can work as pastry chefs.

SYB now has over 500 graduates. It is highly impressive to see the great work that this organization has done since its founding. Sebastien also shared details about the challenges surrounding funding rules and how they navigate them. It was highly impressive to see the dedication and persistence that goes into making this organization function, despite the challenges.

The night then ended with an auction. There was a beautiful picture of butterflies painted by one of our Shanghai Sunrise Students, and some cookies made by SYB. The painting and the cookies were snapped up by our dear Frank and Markus Wiegand respectively for a whopping 1000 RMB each! In addition to this, 8404 RMB was raised in Happy Money. A fun night was had by all as we got to learn about a wonderful initiative helping young Chinese people, and also made our own contribution to its ongoing existence.