"Say Hello" - Best Practices

The Rotary Club of Sherman Oaks Sunset, California, USA has implemented a successful program tied to International Mother Language Day since 2009. The project celebrates Rotary's World Understanding Month and UNESCO's annual International Mother Language Day (in February, but can be implemented any time), and encompasses all five Avenues of Service.

Volunteers teach 11- and 12-year-old students (New Generations Service) how to say Hello, Thank You, Please, Peace, and Love (Community Service) in 44 different languages (and still adding) (International Service). The translations were gathered from many sources; Club Members include natives of Japan, Bangladesh, and India. A frequent visitor to the Club from RC Stockholm-Borgen, Sweden provided Swedish. Everyone in the Club was involved (Club Service) in tracking down friends who could provide translations. A former Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar pitched in, as did Rotarians in Israel, Thailand, and Ghana.

Thinking outside the box, Project Chair and 2009-2010 Club President Mel Powell contacted an old friend, Bob Miller, the Hall of Fame television announcer for the National Hockey League's Los Angeles Kings, and obtained translations from Kings players native to Latvia, Slovenia, and Slovakia. "The Kings have a Swede and a Russian as well, but we were already covered, "explains Powell. "The team went on a winning streak after we got the translations, with our translators scoring some key goals, so Rotary must be good luck."

During the second year of the program, the presentation yielded a surprising result. After Rotarians taught three languages chosen based on the students’ history studies, a student raised his hand and asked to teach classmates his birth tongue, Farsi, and he came up and did so. That evening school principal Claudia Moreland, a member of the Rotary Club, arrived with tears in her eyes—“that boy is not a good student, is not popular, never raises his hand or wants to be singled out”--but our Rotarians moved him enough to want to volunteer, because here was something he could do that his classmates could not, so he could teach them.

The project caught the notice of the publications department in Evanston and was featured in Rotarian Magazine’s World Roundup in late 2009. Any Club in the world can implement this project, and Sherman Oaks Sunset is happy to share our collection of languages.

Want more information? Contact Mel Powell at rotarymelpowell@aol.com