NORTHLAKE MANDEVILLE
ROTARY CLUB NEWSLETTER
August 24, 2015
RYLA ROCKS
RYLA Chair Ben Motion, Mary Margaret Douglas, Avery Ferguson, President Steve Satteree
The Rotary Youth Leadership Assembly is one of our club’s marquee activities. Each year Each year, we sponsor high
school students to attend a week-long summer camp run by the club's district committee. At our June 30th meeting, Mary
Margaret and Avery described their just concluded stay to our members. They agreed that it was a transformative experience, one
with a lasting impact. Not only did they develop long-lasting bonds to their fellow attendees, but they discovered and
consolidated their abilities to listen to and to lead others. They now feel equipped and committed to find ways to make real
contributions to a better community and to a better world.
RAH-RAH ROTARACT!!
Victoria King is founder and president of the Tulane University Rotaract Club.
Rotaract clubs provide young adults an opportunity to engage with their community
through a framework of friendship and service. In her August 13th presentation at our
lunch meeting, Victoria displayed her energetic and innovative investment in helping others—actually helping others to help
others—in a way that focuses on the world-wide need for clean water. She described her internship at Mama Maji, a New
Orleans non-profit organization focused on raising awareness for the world water crisis and empowering women in
underdeveloped countries to change their world—our world—by addressing that crisis.
Victoria pointed out that women world-wide are the water gatherers, spending 152 million hours yearly at that task. In
under developed areas, this can involve trudging miles in search of the precious commodity. Her Mama Maji internship involved
Victoria helping to build the Chiga Community Water and Sanitation project in Kisumu, Kenya. In addition to Victoria’s hands-on
involvement in that project, her Rotaract club raised $10,000 for Mama Maji this Spring.
Service above self, indeed.
MISTER DISTRICT ATTORNEY
". . . and it shall be my duty as district attorney not only to prosecute to the limit of the law all persons
accused of crimes perpetrated within this county, but to defend with equal vigor the rights and privileges of all its citizens."
Those were the words that introduced Mr. District Attorney, the popular 1950’s radio show. They could have been used to
introduce Washington and St. Tammany Parish District Attorney Warren Montgomery, the speaker at the club’s August 6th lunch
meeting, What emerged when Montgomery tossed away his speech to be grilled by the membership was that his view of his job
extended far beyond putting the bad guys in jail. In addition to that duty he intends to use his office to reduce crime. A key tool in
that effort is his support for the alternative to prison programs—Mental Health Court, Drug Court, etc. Rather than sending
individuals with the capacity for rehabilitation to jail, where they are likely to learn more criminal behavior, they are involved in
less expensive closely monitored rehabilitation efforts in the community. Montgomery’s stated goal is fiscally responsible crime
reduction, a goal attained by recruiting high quality staff, employing updated technology and eschewing the practice of “pick and
play”—delaying a settlement until after the jury is selected in order to inflate the number of cases claimed as litigated.