Group Study Exchange Team, India

Chuck Hanchett began the program by introducing the guests, and then calling on the 4 participating Club Presidents to review their Clubs’ accomplishments during this Rotary year, especially their fundraising events (bragging time!).  He announced that our District is already looking for a Team Leader and Team Members for the District GSE Team, going to the Mount Fuji area in Japan in November.  He recognized the 5 hosting families from the 4 participating Clubs in our part of the District this week.  The GSE Team is spending 4 weeks in our District 5280, each week with a small group of Clubs in different parts of the District, ending up at the District Conference in San Diego April 19-22.  (Tomorrow’s scheduled activities will be modified due to expected rain, Southern California’s version of monsoons.)

GSE Team Leader G. Gnanavelan (Past President of Madras Cosmos Rotary Club and an Assistant Governor of District 3230) presented his team, reviewed the history of his District and country, and showed a video of the Chennai area.  India has 1.2 billion people (1/6 of all people on earth) and has 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects, although almost all educated people speak English as a common language, from the heritage of British colonial rule.  Chennai (Madras under British rule) is the capital of Tamil Nadu state in the Southeast of the country.  The Tamil language is in the ancient Dravidian language family that predates the Indo-European languages related to Hindi that predominate in most of the country.  District 3230 Rotarians participated in relief efforts to civilians in the Tamil-speaking northern part of Sri Lanka after the recent end of their 3-decade civil war against the Sinhalese-speaking majority on the island.  Rotarian Gnanavelan is a builder of residential apartments in Chennai and Chidambaram.

R. Chithra Priya is a Motorcycle Racer (a rare female participant in a male sport) and a Wildlife Photographer.  She has competed in many long distance races in India.  She is involved in wildlife films and conservation, and also runs an art gallery.

Uma Maheswari is a Business Professor and is completing her PhD at the University of Madras.  She has traveled widely in Asia and has presented papers on cross-cultural business issues.  Her husband is in the leather export business.

M. Gunasekaran is a Broadcast Journalist whose parents were uneducated and lived in a remote town.  He has worked for top Indian newspapers and is currently a news anchor and talk show moderator for a regional news channel.  He is interested in promoting social equality and multicultural understanding.  His wife is a software engineer.

Velayutham Ganesh is an Entrepreneur and Event Manager.  He came from a humble background and is the first Rotaractor to be chosen for his District’s GSE Team.  He began as a Web Developer and now has his own graphic design company.

We will see these interesting Indian GSE Team members again at the District Conference in San Diego April 19-22, before they return to India.