By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Barbara Walters, who retired from the Kalamazoo Gazette in 2006 after 25 years, was first exposed to Rotary from the perspective of a skeptical journalist.
The Gazette assigned her to accompany Rotarians to Belize when Dowagiac's Dave Groner and Tom Dalton helped deliver an ambulance.
"What is Rotary?" she wondered, "and why would I want to spend three weeks in a school bus with a bunch of Rotarians who will all be wearing business suits and carrying briefcases? I wanted the Gazette to fly me down to report on what they did when they got there."
Thanks to that ride, though, Walters stumbled upon Rotary's secret, compelling enough to persuade her to join Kalamazoo Rotary Club in 1993.
"The reason Rotary International works better than many governments is it's based on fellowship, friendship and good will. That's why Rotary projects work. They work internationally on the basis of partnership with people in the host countries.
"Michigan people didn't just give the people in Belize things. That's patronizing. Water purification projects don't happen because we send down a bunch of filters. They happen because Rotarians from southwestern Michigan and other parts of the world go down to Central America or over to Africa and form relationships so they can be a part. From my observations as a journalist, that's why those projects work," Walters told Dowagiac Rotary Club Thursday noon at Elks Lodge 889.
Just in southwest Michigan, projects are as varied as literacy in Union City, cemetery restoration in Climax, Pavilion Park in Oshtemo, bike and walking trails in Hillsdale, a river walk in Grand Ledge, handicap ramps in Jackson, a field in Charlotte and a soccer complex in Coldwater.
Walters, who lives between Marcellus and Lawton, joined after reporting on the District 6360 caravan to Belize.
Last spring she led a Group Study Exchange Team to Belize, Nicaragua, and Honduras in Central America. An article about their trip will be published in the February Rotarian magazine.
Married for 40 years, she has two grown sons and five grandchildren. She graduated from the University of Michigan and California State University at Los Angeles. She lived in Malawi, central Africa, for three years as a teacher.
"I learned in Africa that the worst thing you can do is to give people things, which destroys their pride. You have to form a partnership, which most times turns into friendship and fun. I was so impressed with Rotary by the Belize project as a journalist that a year and a half later I felt honored to be asked to be a Rotarian. Two years ago I would have thought they were crazy. I went to Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch with the Oshtemo Rotarians and they worked well with Rotarians in Managua, riding in pickup trucks through mud and rain."
Rotary Group Study Exchange is for young professionals ages 25 to 40, including a team leaving southwest Michigan this spring for South Korea. They stay in Rotary homes and are immersed in the culture and exposed to their vocational counterparts.
Walters led a team that included a Kalamazoo Central High School French teacher, a Kalamazoo Nature Center vice president, a computer technologist for Bronson Methodist Hospital and a Spanish teacher.
They flew May 22 from Kalamazoo to District 4250, which encompasses the three countries.
"One of the most amazing projects we visited was the Belize prison taken over by the Rotary club," Walters said. "Twelve years ago a member said, 'This prison is the worst in Central America. The prisoners run the place. There are murders and rapes and ineffective rehabilitation. I could do a better job.' A government official said, 'Fine, take it over.' They formed a non-profit foundation. We spent a day there and talked to prisoners, who are being rehabilitated by rebuilding computers and giving them to schools. The recidivism rate has plunged. Prisoners are not ending up back in the same place. We visited four Rotary clubs, staying two to three days with each."
They toured an orange juice factory and learned about an ancient culture descended from people who came from west Africa in 200 straw ships 100 years before Christopher Columbus came to America.
San Ignacio, Belize, is a mountainous region where Dowagiac Rotarians delivered the ambulance. Ants are applied to heal wounds in the jungle. Tikal is an ancient Mayan civilization from 900 A.D.
Rotarians from Peten, Guatemala, moved the Michigan team by taking wheelchairs into the mountains.
"Guatemala is a country of volcanos," Walters said, showing a slide of a southern river choked with boulders and silt.
Another club runs a dental clinic for children. A picture of a manicure signifies Guatemalan clubs' joint Rotary centennial project opening a vocational school. "They roof schools and put toilets in schools – stuff we take for granted."
"Another project which impressed my team was Tranciones, which supplies wheelchairs and prosthetics and trains and employs adults all over Guatemala," she said. "These young men had all been disabled in some way. Some from birth. One was shot. One was in a car accident. A 25-year-old man said he was bitter until he started turning to the needs of other people, then he lost his anger."
They experienced the marketplace in Chichicartenango.
A city in Honduras proved "a very scary place to be," Walters said. "I love to be outdoors and I need to get outdoors every day. Every time I tried to take a walk, I kept running into men with guns – either they were bodyguards, guarding somebody else, or they were to be guarded from. They told me I could take a walk if I was sure to take off my watch and rings."
Building water filters not only supplies them with safe drinking water, but provides jobs.
"We went into homes and my reporter's instinct took over," Walter said. "I asked them if these water filters really helped them change their lives. A village president said they had."
Rotarians congratulated Bob and Dot Mullens on their 60th wedding anniversary.