(Aug 8, 2023)
René Mejia is a past president of the Bellflower Rotary Club and helps with the Camp Pendleton donation collection. He is the founder of California Exchange Insurance Center, a health-insurance exchange for physicians, insurance agents and the public. He has participated in 3 past District humanitarian trips.
Dr Zoraida Suarez-Grossman grew up in Venezuela and came to the US in 1981 for medical training. She is a Neurologist in Encino and was married to the late PDG Leslie Grossman (who passed away in 2021). She is a past president of the Greater Van Nuys Rotary Club. She is a cochair with René Mejia of the District Humanitarian Trip to Ecuador in April 2024.
7 Global Grant Projects are planned for the Ecuador trip: environmental multimedia education, potable water for Andean communities and 8 water-treatment systems, educating teachers for Down Syndrome students, self-confidence training for adolescent girls, pacemakers for low-income cardiac patients, and Operation Smile (cleft palate repair). There are 4 other projects: instruments for youth orchestra, toilets for impoverished families in the city of Manta on the Pacific Coast, a peace garden in Quito, and oral hygiene training. These projects are sponsored by local Rotary Clubs and supported by District 5280 Rotarians and the Rotary Foundation. (Interested Rotarians can sign up for this trip on the District 5280 website.)
Environmental education for the San Pedro River will include promoting clean environmental practices and active engagement of schools and communities for participating in cleanup and restoration of the river.
A side trip will be available to the Galapagos Islands, which are on the equator 600 miles west of Ecuador. The Galápagos have a large number of unique species including the giant tortoise (Galápagos in Spanish), tropical birds & iguanas, sea lions, and the world’s only tropical penguins. These unique species and their potential relationships with other species elsewhere were studied by Charles Darwin in the 1830s and inspired his theory of evolution of species by natural selection. Most of the islands’ territory is protected as a National Park and Marine Reserve.