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"Doing Rotary right" . . . the Rizal High School Library Project . . .

Jo Williamson (right) settles in as her GSE experience begins.

Jo takes advantage of the trip to rest in General MacArthur's office.

Group Study Exchange is a red carpet event.

Jo is introduced to the Rizal High School Library.

10,000 old books for 33,000 students . . . Jo vows to help.

Furnitureland Rotarians begin collecting library materials and storing them in the Winter Bell plant.

Maitland-Smith, a furniture manufacturer with plants in the Philippines ships the books to Manila.

The books arrive at Rizal High School Library
Marico Enriquez, Director, RHS Assn of N.A.
Rene Reyes, Past President, Rizal H.S. Alumni Assn & Past President of RI of Southwest, Philippines
Local Rotarian, RHS Class of 1978
Cielito Cortez, Director, RHS Assn of North America

and are unloaded.

Joe Ona, Director, RHSA of NA
Marico Enriquez, Local Rotarian, Josephine Cruz, RHS Principal, Lorna Benardo, Vice Mayor, Pasig City, Rene Reyes, Domingo Caruncho, Past Pres., RHS Alumni Assn.

The Manila team adds a stamp identifying R/C Furnitureland, R/C Rizal-South and the Alumni Association of the Rizal High School as contributors to the project.

Lorna Benardo, Rene Reyes, Cielito Cortez,
Domingo Caruncho

For her effort, Rtn Phil Morris presents Jo Williamson with the Paul Harris Fellow recognition.

and Furnitureland president David Pruette names her an Honorary Member.

The High Point team:
Club President David Pruette, Club Project Chairman Joe Carroll, Project Facilitator Jo Williamson, Seamus Bateson of Maitland-Smith, who contributed shipping, Club Grant Facilitator Colby Walton, International Services Director Skip Nash. Not in picture: Sparky Stroud, materials storage.

What the project looked like from our perspective

rpmorris@Rotary7690.org

1999: Librarian Josephine Williamson was invited to apply for a place on the Group Study Exchange team that was forming to visit District 1140 in the southwest corner of London. Jo was selected as second alternate for the team. A member of the original team dropped out of the program, and Jo became the first alternate for the team. She waved goodbye to the team as it departed the Piedmont International Airport in Greensboro, North Carolina.

"That's too bad," she exclaimed. "Well, there is always next year!"

2000-2001: Jo applied again, this time to join the GSE team that would visit District 3830, Manila, Philippines. Jo's selection for this team is almost automatic. Team training commences. Jo learns more about Rotary. In her personal journal, Jo writes, "Saturday, January 20, 2001: I had my 2nd GSE meeting today. I was running late which was awful because we had speakers in today. I got a chance to meet Jack Green who is the district governor for this district which is 7690. See I did learn something today. Actually it was a very informative 2 hours. I have spent my life committed to service to others. Rotary is all about service to others. Service on a scale larger than anything else I've been associated with. Jack spoke to us about the various areas of service. I really like the International aspect of service that Rotary does."

Here is more information about the GSE visit to Manila.

For one of her 'vocation' days, Jo's hosts took her to visit the library of Rizal High School. Jo learned that this is probably the largest high school in the world. She was told that it has a student body of 33,000 students. She was dismayed to learn that the library contained only 10,000 volumes. Upon inspection, she discovered that most of the books were old and quite worn. She promised that when she returned home she would try to do something about this.

Jo's report to District Conference in Wilmington, NC described this library and her hope to do encourage Rotarians to do something about the imbalance between student population and library collection.

March 2001: Joseph Carroll, publisher of Furniture/Today, a trade publication for the furniture industry (Cahners/Reed Elsevier), joined the Rotary Club of Furnitureland. Like Jo Williamson, Joe Carroll was attracted to the International service aspect of Rotary. Joe's business requires him to travel throughout the world as spokesman for Furniture/Today. Manila is on his circuit.

When Jo Williamson reported to Furnitureland Rotary Club on her Group Study Exchange experience, Joe Carroll was in the audience. Along with the rest of the club, Joe was impressed when Jo Williamson challenged the club to make this a major International service project. Although she was not a Rotarian, she asked to serve on the committee as a primary resource. Quickly the board of directors welcomed Jo aboard, and adopted this project. Skip Nash, Director for International Service, convinced Joe Carroll to chair the project.

Joe Carroll accepted the assignment with a great deal of reservations. He made an announcement at a subsequent club meeting that he needed volunteers:

Someone was needed to ask local libraries for permission to collect books in their facilities. Jo Williamson volunteered!

Someone was needed to deliver collection boxes to the libraries and to pick up the donations. Skip Nash volunteered!

Someone was needed to warehouse the collected materials. Paper box fabricator, Sparky Stroud, volunteered space in his plant's warehouse to store the books.

Someone needed to find a way to ship the books to the Philippines. Joe Carroll located a furniture manufacturer, Maitland-Smith. Maitland-Smith has a manufacturing plant in the Philippines. Empty shipping containers regularly are sent back to Manila. Maitland-Smith agreed that they would ship the books to the Philippines.

Someone was needed to manage the intricate paperwork involved with obtaining matching funding from the Rotary Foundation, and to insure that all reporting requirements were satisfied. Colby Walton, with his immaculate attention to detail, was the ideal person to provide this coordination.

Chairman Joe Carroll announced at the next meeting of the club that he was quite overwhelmed at the spirit of those who stepped forward to form a winning team.

[Apart from this project, Jo Williamson joined the Triad Rotaract Club and was taking a very active role in that organization. She was inducted into the club in the Spring of 2002, and was quite involved with their presentation at District Conference that year.]

From the perspective of the Rotary Club of Furnitureland in District 7690, the project proceeded right on schedule. Over 6,000 books were collected from various sources: collection boxes at local libraries, from neighboring Rotary clubs and as a result of donations by individual Rotarians throughout the district.

The books were finally shipped to Manila.Seamus Batson, president of Maitland-Smith was presented a plaque thanking the company for their contribution. Seamus was quite pleased with what his company was able to do and asked that Maitland-Smith be kept in mind for future projects of this sort.

And after countless email messages and midnight telephone calls, Colby Walton produced the necessary paper trail that was needed to secure the appropriate district matching funds and Foundation matching funds.

On September 30, 2003, the Rotary Club of Furnitureland made Jo Williamson a Paul Harris Fellow. And at the same meeting, President David Pruette made her an honorary member of the club.

As I write this portrait of "Doing Rotary Right", Jo Williamson is using the last of the project funds to purchase more books for Rizal High School library.

How does it feel to be involved with this project? To a person, everyone feels great.

Working together, using the strengths that each of us has, we accomplished much more than any of us could accomplish alone.

We "did Rotary right!"

Thank you, Jo Williamson, for bring the project to our attention, and for providing your bibliographic expertise in helping assemble a useful collection of library materials…

Thank you, Skip Nash, for overseeing the assembly of the "Rizal High School Library Development" team, and for helping collect the library materials.

Thank you, Joe Carroll, for seizing the opportunity for managing the team and for arranging shipping of the materials. [And thanks for confirming your belief in The Rotary Foundation by becoming a member of its Bequest Society!]

Thank you, Sparky Stroud, for the use of Winterbell facilities to store the materials, as they were collected.

Thank you, Colby Walton, for tracking the paperwork and obtaining the necessary funding to make it work.

Thank you, David Pruette and thank you, members of the Rotary Club of Furnitureland, for making it work.