Shernaz Vakil took over as president of the premier Rotary Club of Bombay (RCB) on Friday at a ceremony attended by the Rotary International (RI) president Shekhar Mehta.
Mehta exhorted the newly installed president and the members of the RCB to lead and share benevolently with other clubs in the region.
Vakil, who is also Managing Director Dai-Ichi Karkaria, a company she has led for 35 years, outlined some of the thrust areas in the year ahead. She stressed the virtues of moral humility and integrity and looked forward to a value-driven approach in every activity the club would undertake.
She said the RCB would be transforming the lives of the less fortunate people in three villages near Mumbai that constituted a complete gram panchayat. This integrated rural development project would be led by solar energy, and would include safe drinking water, solar lighting for homes and streets, sanitation, water for irrigation and best practices for effective farming.
Vakil added that the widely acclaimed 12-year-old Bhavishya Yaan (BY) project which enriches students in municipal schools would be taken to a completely new dimension in one school with the introduction of the hi-tech `BY2.0’. The objective would be to groom a generation of employers from amongst an underprivileged section of society.
She also outlined a project aimed at peace and conflict resolution called Yeh Zindagi, which would be rolled out in some municipal schools. This would be accompanied by a focus on the girl child, she added.
