Our speaker for the day was Julia Rayberg. Julia grew up in Rockland, MA, and is a graduate of UMass Dartmouth, where she majored in marketing. Julia explained how she initially became interested in Rotary, actually because her father, Gary Rayberg, is a past president of the Weymouth Rotary Club, and where Julia participated in Rotarian activities as a child. Julia is definitely a leader with a great desire to help people in need, in this case mainly women and children in Guatemala to improve their quality of life, but also men when the need presents itself. By her efforts and great organizational skills, she has been able to acquire the help of professional volunteers from this country, who go to Guatemala for certain periods of time and offer their professional services, including in economics, healthcare, and education. Explained by Julia was how we Rotarians in Lexington and elsewhere can actually apply for a trip to Guatemala in order to be there and observe and help out in any way that we can.  She mentioned that the months of January and February are be best, citing that is a great way to get away from the cold north weather and donate time and effort to a good cause, and participating in some nice relaxing extracurricular activities as well. Julia noted, one of the great things she learned was from an older man in Guatemala who told her the following about people in Guatemala, "they are not living, they are surviving". She also described certain things that the people are doing, such as having donated to them water filtration systems to produce clean water, and they themselves producing products that are for sale here in the United States. It seems that there is much hope, just from what Julia and her organization has accomplished. Of importance is the "ripple effect" of what is done in her group and how it affects in a positive way those around them, and it goes on and on from there. Her talk was well done, and both extremely interesting and inspiring.

 

Thank you, Julia.