By Ron Saikowski Rotary Club of Conroe June 7, 2024

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. This passage from the Bible describes one of Rotary’s tenets. Our 1.4 million members and their families work together in a world of four billion to help bring about peace and understand. Rotarian Michael Hayes of the Rotary Club of Conroe chairs Rotary International’s “Rotary Action Group for Peace.” He works with other Rotarians worldwide to help to visualize the intangible PEACE as a reality. It is not through huge leaps, but it is through small incremental steps that we progress toward a universal peace and understanding. In a recent email to fellow Rotarians, Michael compares peace and our fragile eco-systems. 

The parallels between the environment and peace are remarkable. Both the environment and peace exist in similarly defined ecosystems. A large ecosystem, like a rainforest, or the Great Barrier Reef is much like a country where interrelationships within the ecosystem and country determine whether it is healthy or unhealthy, growing or dying. A smaller ecosystem, such as a micro ecosystem could be like the ecosystem that lives under a large rock, with biological organisms, bacteria and fungi, and the soil they live in. An example of a peace micro ecosystem could be you, your family, friends, and acquaintances.

Ecosystems have both fragility and resilience. When it is easy to disrupt an ecosystem, it has high fragility and low resilience. If an ecosystem can weather great disruption, it has high resilience. The same is true for peace. Small and large groups, communities, and countries become stronger the more resilient they become. They build that resilience through fundamental respect for each other, communicating and interacting as a single community, instead of being a community of smaller communities that do not interact and are capable of splintering and collapsing. 
So how do we build strength and resilience into our ecosystems? We build strength in environmental systems by working to reduce the limiting factors and promoting the factors which encourage growth, interdependence of organisms, and striving to reduce the effects of negative influences from outside the ecosystem. Studying and changing the factors which create fragility reduces weakness. In combination, increasing strength and reducing fragility promotes resilience and sustainability.

How do we build strength and resilience into our individual ecosystems, our communities, and our countries? First, as Rotarians, we focus on building strength by taking care of our mental and physical health. We focus on our relationships, and our service projects, managing them in accordance with the 4 Way Test, building respect and dignity for all. Finally, we use the principles of the IEP 8 Pillars of Peace to identify and eliminate limiting factors and working on those factors which promoting which encourage and promote healthy societies, good governments, and countries where its citizens exist with one another in peace. You are empowered to create peace, choose to take action.

These words of wisdom help us to understand ourselves, our community and the World. Rotarian Hayes also suggests implementation of peace projects in our communities and the world. These simple actions could be gardens, tree plantings, aid packages such as the Shelter Box Program that Rotary is involved in. This action toward Peace is one of the ways that Rotarians serve our community.

The Rotary Club of Conroe meets at noon Tuesdays at Honor Cafe, 103 N. Thompson Street. For more information on Rotary, contact Ron Saikowski at rsaikowski@comcast.net. 

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