Rotary International President, Barry Rassin, Visits Belize

Today, a welcome ceremony was held to commemorate the official visit of Rotary International President Barry Rassin. Rassin arrived in Belize with his wife on Monday as part of his presidential tour for the Rotary Year which commenced July first, 2018 and ends June thirtieth 2019. The last visit by an international president was some fifty-six years ago when Joseph Abey came to Belize. There are over thirty-six thousand rotary clubs across the world; ten District 4250 in the region includes Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. A Bahamian national, Rassin says that he is the first president of the community-based organization from the Caribbean and challenges Belize to grow is Rotarian population.

Barry Rassin, President, Rotary International

Barry Rassin

“I wanna make sure that in my travels around the world—and I’ll be in sixty, seventy countries this year—that they have a clear understanding of he culture that comes from the Caribbean because all of our countries have similar cultures—different but similar—and I want to make sure I give a feel for that culture in other parts of the world so they have a better understanding of what we are and who we are. It’s all about communicating our passion for what we do; if we could inspire other peoples to get involve with helping our world to get to a better place. If you are involved with rotary then you are going to do projects, you are going to help your community, you are going to help people around the world. We need to inspire people and understand we need have to have a passion and give back to our communities. No matter where we come from, no matter what environment we are from, we can always give back to others who need our help. And if we can inspire everyone else to do that, then everybody is helping to make our world a better place.”

Duane Moody

“Now Belize only has ten clubs; some may say that it is not enough to deal with the work that needs to be done in this area.”

Barry Rassin

“I am definitely challenging rotary in Belize to grow a little. My country in the Bahamas and Belize are similar in population size, and yet in the Bahamas we have a lot more Rotarians. So I am challenging them to catch up with us.”