Clareta, who is Bali Project Development Manager for Habitat Indonesia, was introduced by Ginny, and she was assisted by Nenden who also works for Habitat.  Ginny had met Clareta through Susie at Melamun Hotel - so it seems that when we are looking for guest speakers, one strategy is to visit Melamun where Susie has many interesting contacts.

The history of Habitat for Humanity goes back to 1976 when it began in the US, and now it operates in over 100 countries.  The Indonesian branch began in 1997.  Archie mentioned that past US President Jummy Carter has been a keen supporter of Habitat for Humanity.  Here are some links

• the Habitat for Humanity web site is at http://www.habitat.org/ - and it works out where you are and gives you the Asia-Pacific version - but allows you to pick another region if you want
• there is an Indonesian Habitat web-site at http://www.habitatindonesia.org/
• Wikipedia has a good article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_for_Humanity_International
• the Jimmy Carter connection is described in the Habitat web-site - http://www.habitat.org/how/carter.aspx

Clareta had a really good slide presentation with over 30 slides.  This is a PDF file - it is 4.6MB, so will take a few minutes over slower connections - but is well worth the wait.

President Lia introduced District Governor Al Purwa to the members and visitors.

DG Al said he was pleased to be back in Lovina after a long break, and to see many tourists and improvements. He presented a theme card, to President Lia, and D3400 Directory sporting the colour for the year - burgundy, and a D3400 banner so that we will remember his visit. We paused for a group photo with the banner.

So now for the big picture, Rotary has over 1.2 million members in more than 33,000 clubs that are located in more than 200 countries (which is more than the number of countries that are members of United Nations). Usually, District Governors visit all their clubs in the first 3 months of the year, then evaluate and initiate actions based on the evaluation. District 3400 with 83 clubs spread across Indonesia makes this task daunting. For some clubs there are long road journeys after a flight. DG Al aims to complete the evaluations by November.

Our guest speakers were Suki and Planet from Yayasan Citra Usadha (YCU) – a foundation that has been working in the area of HIV-AIDS for many years now. YCU have a main office in Denpasar and a branch office here in Kaliasem, Lovina – it is directly opposite the Biyu Gallery and Mega Ayu Homestay. Suki and Planer are full-time workers for YCU and are assisted by many unpaid volunteers.

They had agreed that Ginny should do the talking initially – aided by a set of slides – and then they would all help in the question and answer session.

Ginny had already been working with YCU for many years when our Rotary Club started 3-4 years ago. So then by using our club as the way to work with them, more people became involved, and this project helped the club by giving us a local project with visible achievements.