When a life-threatening illness stripped away many of her professional ambitions, Amanda Wirtz, a former U.S. Navy code breaker and professional violinist, turned to humanitarian service and Facebook to give her life new purpose. Wirtz was in her twenties and pursuing a career as a fitness trainer when a sharp pain in her abdomen sent her to the emergency room. Expecting something manageable like appendicitis, she instead found herself facing a rare tumor disorder that required her to undergo 30 surgeries over the next several years. Forced to rethink her life plans, Wirtz began focusing on...

With 12 children -- six girls and six boys -- the Labordes hardly needed to add another member to their family. But they did: Over 40 years ago, Julia Mullikin, a Rotary Youth Exchange student from the United States, became like another daughter to this large family in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico. "She's been a blessing for us," says Maria Victoria Hallal de Laborde who was 18 when Mullikin arrived in 1973. Like many exchange students, Mullikin remains close to her host family. So close that when one of Laborde's sisters was diagnosed with a rare, fatal disease, Mullikin arranged to send the...

Imagine a community where the residents are all free to plant, grow, harvest, and eat healthy food whenever they want without having to pay for it. Sound too good to be true? That's exactly what residents of more than 20 cities and towns in France are doing through a project called Potalib. Launched by the Rotaract Club of Versailles, Potalib was inspired by the Incredible Edible project, an international food-sharing movement founded by Nick Green in England. The Rotaract members obtained Green's permission to apply the concept in France, changing the name to "Potalib," a contraction of "...

Supporters of the anti-vaccine movement question the safety, efficacy and necessity of the very medicines that have so greatly reduced our children's risk of catching a host of once-common but potentially very serious infectious diseases, such as mumps, measles and whooping cough. And then there's polio, the disabling, sometimes fatal virus that was every American parent's worst nightmare until effective vaccines were developed in the 1950s — and which still infects children in the developing world. Some who oppose vaccines are well-meaning parents who have come to believe — wrongly in the...

Rotary continues to follow the developments surrounding the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and advice of the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, our partners in international public health. Strengthening the health infrastructure and supporting and sustaining the deployment of government health workers throughout these outbreak areas are greatly needed. Although Rotary has limited opportunities to respond at a corporate level, our strength as an organization is firmly rooted in the grassroots response of Rotary clubs and Rotarians. Clubs around the...