Hansard

I thank John Lamont for securing tonight’s debate and giving us the opportunity to speak about Rotary district 1020. As he said, the district stretches across south and much of central Scotland. Right across that part of our country, rotaries provide support and companionship to each other and to guests. They are also very much embedded in their local communities.

That is certainly the case in all five towns in my constituency, East Lothian. That engagement is multifaceted: groups do their own fundraising, they provide fundraising support for other local charities, and they provide stewarding at important community events, from the North Berwick highland games to the Haddington agricultural show.

This evening I want to focus on the Rotary Club of Dunbar. I declare an interest: on a number of occasions I have enjoyed Dunbar Rotary’s hospitality, in return for which the club has endured having me as a speaker for the evening. I want to focus on Dunbar Rotary’s international work, because, as members said, the club’s former president, Robin Hamilton, won the 2016 champion of change award for his work on the project in Kalimpong.

Dunbar Rotary’s connection with Kalimpong started in a very Rotary fashion: at a meeting in Belhaven in 2011, when Dr Miku Foning, from the Rotary Club of Kalimpong, was the club’s visiting guest. As Rachael Hamilton told us, Dr Foning described the situation for many people in Bengal, in north-east India. He talked about their vulnerability to trafficking, prostitution, slavery and forced marriage and how they were simply disappearing into one of those dreadful fates.

Robin Hamilton did not just listen to the story of his colleague from India but responded, by asking the simple question, “How can we help?” From that was born the Sadhu Singh project. Robin mobilised not just Dunbar Rotary but 16 Rotary clubs from across Scotland and indeed places as far-flung as the Czech Republic, to raise funds to provide a vocational training centre, where people at risk would be able to learn seven different trade skills, to enable them to find a sustainable way to live and to avoid falling into the hands of traffickers. The clubs raised funds themselves and accessed a Rotary International global grant of around $69,000.

All that bore fruit last year, when seven Rotarians from Dunbar travelled to Kalimpong and took part in the opening of the vocational training centre, as it was handed over to the Diocese of North East India, which will run it. However, Dunbar Rotary is not resting on its laurels. It is now raising funds for phase 2, which is a shelter for young women and girls who are at risk of trafficking. The project has been marvellously successful, but of course it is not finished.

I will end by returning to the local, because that is the great strength of Rotary—it stretches across the world but its roots are completely embedded in its clubs and their communities. Just last night, I was privileged to be a judge at an East Lothian Foodbank girl guides cooking competition, which was the culmination of a programme that East Lothian Foodbank had run with local girl guide units, in which guides had to cook with food that the charity provides. The approach was all part of the charity’s outreach programme, and modest prizes were provided by the Dunbar and Musselburgh Rotary clubs. Of course, that is not the Rotary’s only engagement with the East Lothian Foodbank; it also collects food regularly.

The great strength of Rotary is in how the local and the international are wedded together. I can do no better than end by quoting Dr Foning, who said to Robin Hamilton during one of their meetings:

“We are in the river together and must swim til we get to the other side.”

That is what Dunbar Rotary has been doing, whether we are talking about the river at the corner of its own street or a river that flows from the foothills of the Himalaya. What a marvellous project that has been.