Ken Masson is the co-founder of the Rotary Club of World Disability Advocacy. The Club is a diverse group of people from around the world who share two common goals: to advocate for people with disabilities and to make Rotary International more welcoming for people with disabilities.
You can learn more and become involved on their webpage: https://www.rotary7910.org/Stories/rotary-club-of-world-disability-advocacy
Ken Masson is the co-founder of the Rotary Club of World Disability Advocacy. The Club is a diverse group of people from around the world who share two common goals: to advocate for people with disabilities and to make Rotary International more welcoming for people with disabilities.
You can learn more and become involved on their webpage: https://www.rotary7910.org/Stories/rotary-club-of-world-disability-advocacy
Welcome to this episode of Talking Rotary. I'm Peter Tonge and I'm a member of the Rotary Club of Winnipeg Charleswood.
Mandy Kwasnica:And I am Mandy Kwasnica Past President and also a member of the Rotary Club of Winnipeg, Charleswood. We are so happy you joined us here and I are so excited for this new podcast and thankful to our many listeners. Let's start Talking Rotary.
Peter Tonge:Hi, everyone, welcome to another episode of TaIking Rotary. I'm Peter Tonge, and I'm here with Ken Masson. He's the co founder of the Rotary Club of World Disability Advocacy. And we're gonna talk a whole lot more about that. Ken, how are you?
Ken Masson:I'm doing good. How are you?
Peter Tonge:I'm doing really well.
Ken Masson:Now. I'm a lot warmer than you are. I can tell you that. Okay, so
Peter Tonge:Where are you in the world right now?
Ken Masson:I am in Columbia, South America. And I moved down here about in June, six, seven months ago.
Peter Tonge:So you live there, all the all year round or part of the year?
Ken Masson:Pretty much I go back, I have family back in, in Boston area, which is where I'm from originally, but I'm here pretty much most of the time. I don't speak very good Spanish yet. So I don't talk too much to people. But that's okay.
Peter Tonge:Okay, so maybe an unfair question. But why Colombia? If you don't speak Spanish very well. Now,
Ken Masson:I love it. Because everybody asks that question. Well, first of all, my my wife is from Colombia, okay. And she has already property down here. So, which is all paid for, so there's no expenses there. And second of all, to lumpia. For a for a gringo, like me is, is much is about a third the cost of living in the United States. So as a retired person, it's a good place to live, because, and maybe in the United States, I was middle income, but down here, I'm living like the king. So
Peter Tonge:nice. So you're comfortable. And you have a built in translator and all that.
Ken Masson:Yeah, you're right. My wife is my tra nslator. So that works out fine.
Peter Tonge:it seems brilliant to to me and the Spanish will come.
Ken Masson:Yeah. Oh, well, no, yeah.
Peter Tonge:Now, Ken, what I want to do before we specifically talk about the Rotary Club, is talk a little bit about your background and how you ended up on this path, because focusing on disabilities is not something that everybody does.
Ken Masson:Yeah, and, and I personally don't have a disability, which makes it even more interesting. So you know, it's kind of the way life kind of takes you I was, I was in marketing, and my bank was bought out. So my job was eliminated. And, as it turned out, I ended up in working for a nonprofit world, which was all new to me, but I liked it. And then a newer friend who was running a company that worked with developmental disabilities, and I have experience and getting people jobs and he says, I have an opening here, we're not going to pay you very much. But if you're interested, and I said, Okay, let's, let's give it a try, because I had never actually up until that point, work with anybody with a developmental disability. So to me, it was an adventure. And I ended up working there for 10 years. So it was the last 10 years of my career. I ended up working there and learned a lot about the abilities of people with disabilities. I gained a lot of knowledge from that and a lot of passion for for the for the subject.
Peter Tonge:Well, it clearly became a passion because now in retirement, you're continuing continuing on that path.
Ken Masson:Yeah, I know. I was. I was just telling my wife because I work longer hours on this job than I did on job when I was getting paid. And, and you know, if you really love what you're doing, it doesn't matter. You know, you don't sit there and watch the clip. I click into sometimes in some jobs, I love what I'm doing. So I'm, I'm dedicated to given the hours it takes to do it.
Peter Tonge:Right. And and I assumed before you started this Rotary club, you were involved in a more traditional Rotary Club.
Ken Masson:I was I was in a small Rotary Club in in Massachusetts, not very active, a Rotary Club, an older Rotary Club. What actually happened in the in the rotary situation was that the district set up a D committee. And I wanted to make sure that on that dei committee disabilities was representative because to me, you can't have an EI without without people with disabilities. So I became a member on that committee and became a spokesperson for the disability side of, of DEA. And then one day, they said, let's break into subcommittees and I said, okay, cool. Let's set up a disability committee. We started the disability committee with four people, but within one month, we had over 100 people, and today there's about 400 people in the group. So yeah, it you know, I am a true believer in a cause. I love Rotary, I've been in rotary for a long, long time, I joined rotary because I thought it was a cool thing to be a part of. And, but nowadays, it's not the same people connect to a cause before they connect to rotary. So what we have found that because of the cause, we have 400, people, within seven months on to, you know, internet associated with a club, we have actual members that are about 2030, actually, and, but the association is 400 members, because the fact people love a cause, and they, they get passionate about a cause. So what happens is they join the cars, we get involved in the claws, cars, then they find out about Rotary. And now okay, Rotary is kind of a cool thing they find out through that avenue, as opposed to, you know, the traditional way that many people go so
Peter Tonge:yeah, I agree. It's one thing that I'm discussing with Rotarians literally all over the world personally to cover the podcast. And just because people I know that some of the most successful rotary clubs now in my view, are the ones that are going out and community building, and then finding Rotary Club members in that way, not going out and finding Rotary Club members and doing whatever it's doing with the community. And and then people go, Well, this is cool. Can we keep coming to Rotary? Right,
Ken Masson:right? Absolutely. So we're, so the committee started to end and the committee's role is to help rotary become more welcoming, welcoming to people with disabilities. That's the role. And the ways we can do that is through and working on accessibility, working on making sure that people with disabilities and our inclusion, better inclusion in what rotary is doing, working on awareness, so that change some of the some of the attitudes that people have about disabilities to make sure they understand that people with disabilities make really great Rotarians and I can I can attest to that. So
Peter Tonge:I'm going to take that as a compliment.
Ken Masson:You know, and we were talking about this when the one of our members was talking about this, and we all learn from each other. And rotary Rotary has some been so good to people with disabilities in many different ways, getting people wheelchairs, you know, making accessibility, parks and things like that. But they've always kind of taken the premise that people with disabilities are needy people, we need to help them we need and when that's good, and in many cases, they are that situation. But what they neglect to see is that people with disabilities have a ton of abilities and make outstanding Rotarians. So what we did was when we about last June, we decided that we really want to become something official. We were committee and still our committee in the district. But so we decided to form the club, which was the Rotary Club, we're of disability advocacy. We've won that club in record time. We were chatted in three weeks, which I don't think has ever happened in rotary history. But once again, they you go with that cause people wanted to be part of the cause. So they said yeah, well, we'll do it. Now here's the other addition to it. You is the fact that particularly when you're working with people, now the other countries, poorer countries than then then then some countries and they can't afford the dues. People can say you take a country like un, I'll just throw out one as an example. But there are many Kenya, Kenya is 90% Poor, basically. So the people in Kenya, a lot of them cannot afford to be in Rotary. They just can't afford it. So I was blessed to have a district that was open to paying all the dues for all our charter members. So yeah, so it and you know, that was a lesson for rotary, because now I have some people in Kenya, we have five members from our club in Kenya. And they are so dedicated to rotary so dedicated to being a rotary rotary Rotarian, so so dedicated to what took proud to be a Rotarian. And they never would have happened before in their life, if it wasn't for the fact that they had to pay dues.
Peter Tonge:It seems like a small obstacle, but it's a very good example of how we have to think about things differently, right?
Ken Masson:Yeah, that's true. And the issue with rotary and dues is certainly a subject that is near and dear to my heart. But we rotary charges dues based on US dollars. And whether you're in Uganda, or whether you're in Spain, or whether you're in Brazil, or whether you're in the United States, or in Winnipeg, you're going to get charged based on US dollars down here. $1 is equal to 4000 pesos. So $1 is a big deal. So us, that's something that I hopefully rotary will work on it as time goes on. Try to adjust that. So they adjusted to the to the cost of living in each of the different countries.
Peter Tonge:I think that's a good idea. So let's talk a little bit about things that the club is working on right now. Right now. And then we'll talk a little bit about maybe where you're gonna go next.
Ken Masson:Okay, sounds good. Well, I mean, at this point, our charter members just tell you a little bit about the club are from, from eight different countries, we have honorary members from about four or five different countries at this point. Our Chatham men were probably one of the most diverse clubs in Rotary, simply because we represent people from all different countries. Are China members also a young, they're the average age of the of the group is 34 years old. And, and the other thing about the group is that out of the 18 of the 20, original chatter members, 18 of them are now have never been in rotary before. So it's been a good a good way to venture on that. So it's an interesting journey. So what we did was we set up set up 14 different subcommittees around the world, we can do more than that. But we we know we, it gets out of control a little bit. So we've been trying to keep it to a 14 year in different countries. And we have people in each of those subcommittees and many of them are not Rotarians, it's about 5050. And their role is almost like a community court type of a situation where they're out to look at the community, see what the needs, report back to us what those needs are, and to help us better understand how can we help meet those needs in that particular country? Right? So we're a little different when we take on projects, we're not a club that's going to necessarily say, Okay, let's take on a project let's let's take, donate some money to it, which is cool. We don't really have much money right at the moment, because we're brand new. And but, um, but we are Our strength is our networking. Like I said, 400 there are 400 people around and 25 different countries that are associated with us. And so what we do is that when there is a need in a particular area that rotary can help with, we're the coordinator, we're going to find the resources to try to help match whatever that need is, whether it be money, whether it be people to help out, whether it be promotion, whether what they're doing we're doing that that's what our role is right now, okay. We're we're were we're still kind of defining how that works. Because as a new concept and rotary so we're kind of still working on that but I particular and some other members of groups have been working themselves on different projects to help out people.
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Ken Masson:I had, for example, a burn victim in the NICU and Nigeria, her legs were burned to the point where she couldn't walk. I mean, there are million these stories are breaks your heart, everyone breaks. And you wish you could help each one of them. So you try your best. And in her case, her family was too poor to pay for her her medical care. So she went six months burnt without any care at all. We did some work, we did some calls we've defined we went around to different people, the way these things happen, you know, you eventually find some sort of a solution. We found a company and organization nonprofit in in California that was willing to pay for her her care or operation, all the needs that she had to take to stay in the hospital for six months. The transportation needs that she had it was pretty amazing. It's just one of those things is a blessing to be in rotary and be able to kind of work and that's how we work. So we're coordinating with trying to find things we had this girl that had this problem she was she 614 years old. And we found the solution to the problem and we worked with Rotary people there and our people, our people on the ground there to try to help her out and there are million kind of spin stories like that. And the beauty of all this is they're happening every day I'm me it's I'm not saying the sad stories, but there are we're connecting with people finding solutions a gentleman Rotarian a rotary tech person, and in Kenya, lost his leg to cancer. He needs a prosthetic leg prosthetic legs of all the prosthetics is probably the most expensive. Like, we haven't found that solution to him yet, but we're working, working working to find him that prosthetic leg that he needs. So you know it once again, it's I can tell you many more stories like that, that they're coming out and we're so we're connecting, okay, you need a prosthetic leg. Okay, maybe we know somebody in India, that gets prosthetic legs for people. So let's reach out to that person in India. And let's get that person India in touch with him and see if we can solve it. So there are things in the work right now to get him that lay. I hopefully we'll get it but maybe somebody out there listening or Well, well, I like that we can get to him.
Peter Tonge:Well, I'm thinking of the of the folks in Jaipur India who build the Jaipur foot.
Ken Masson:Oh, yeah, you're actually right about that. Yeah.
Peter Tonge:My two cents worth.
Ken Masson:Okay. I love it. And by the way, I mean, India is amazing to me there. I don't know how much you know about the rotaries in India but they are amazing, amazing, amazing Rotarians, they are so dedicated to rotary so dedicated to community always working on things. There are a model for us all to follow.
Peter Tonge:I certainly know a little bit about the vaccination programs, in fact, oh, yeah, episode on on one of the vaccination programs, it was fascinating. The number of people that they mobilized on a vaccination day,
Ken Masson:that's pretty pretty incredible. People like them are motivate you to move forward. So
Peter Tonge:Now I know that your Rotary club is new and so kind of finding its way with is that how you see the future as well is to continue to build to build the network and continue to sort of find individual cases or are there different goals in mind.
Ken Masson:Well, there there are a number of projects out there like I said, we're still trying to put together our, our, the way we want to run them for a project and I'm kind of guy who wants to go 90 miles an hour and and so I'm like okay, let's do it. Do it. I don't know how it's gonna work, but let's do it. But God, thank God I have a board of directors. It's a slow down can you know let's, let's figure this out. Let's take a step by step procedure on this before you go too fast and make sure we're gonna do it correctly. So we're kind of in that stage now I have probably 15 to 20 different projects out there that we could take on at this moment. And I think we actually have a board meeting this month. And I'm hoping that that pointer procedures will be put in place and we can we can start accepting proposals. One that
Peter Tonge:sounds good, every, every one of these things, needs a champion, but the champion also needs the people around to keep us focused.
Ken Masson:Yeah, I know that, you know, and I can add, I am accepting that.
Peter Tonge:Maybe a little bit begrudgingly.
Ken Masson:Yeah, I am. And you know, probably several months from now, when everything's put into place, and it's all working very well. I'll say, Yeah, you're right. You're absolutely right. So, you know, when when we started up the committee, we took off like, like 90 miles an hour. And actually rotary what within the first month, three things happened, that were very important. One rotary asked us to do a webinar rotary wide webinar about disabilities in Rotary. And, and we did that. The second was, the people from the Learning Center, got in touch with us. And they said, We want to make our Learning Center more disability friendly. And we want to work with you to do that. So they have been doing that they have been working on a number of things to to make that more accessible for people, and also have now have videos on there about different disability issues. One of the people we work with is Mike wafer, Mark wafer is the husband of Valerie wafer, who is the vice president of Rotary. And so we're blessed from that standpoint, that he keeps us connected with the right people in rotary to make change. But the third thing that happened, which is probably the one of the coolest things, was that the DEI committee in Rotary International did not have a disability person on their committee. And within a few months after we were formed, they, they selected one of the people who work with them, Jerry, Jeremy Opperman, who was from South Africa and who was blind, and his tremendous a disability advocate. So to have him on that the committee is a major accomplishment, because because he I'm sure he's he's telling them all they need to know.
Peter Tonge:Good. I'm really glad to hear that one of the things that I was really pleased the boat is when Rotary International first came out with it. The ei statement, disability wasn't dealt with explicitly, it sort of talked about people of all abilities or Yes, or something like that. Yeah. And I wasn't I wasn't happy about that. Because I'm one of the people from the disability community that says, di sability is not a bad word. Use it. You're not going to surprise any of us. We know we have disabilities. Yeah, yeah. So but then short, very shortly afterwards, they revised it and now they explicitly talk about disability. So I'm very pleased about that.
Ken Masson:Yeah, you're absolutely right. And you know, there's been progress being made. Just within the less than a year that we've been formed. We've seen a lot of things happening, a lot of talk going on. thanks to people like Mark, who's out there preaching the Word to people in Rotary. So and I'm willing to do that also, I think access, being accessibility, and being inclusive, and bringing people in the rotary but not only that, getting involved of people with disabilities, disabilities is 15% of the world, people with disabilities at 15% of the world 15% Well, that makes people with disabilities the largest minority group in the world. Absolutely. So you know, you hear a lot of rotary saying where am I gonna get my members when am I gonna get members but there's 15% of the population. As a matter of fact, Mark, just just talk about your country Canada. Mark just put out a thing that says there is a labor shortage in Canada. Companies are finding a hard time finding employers. Well guess what? The disability community is high level of unemployment among them Disability committee. So there is a mind change that we need to do among employers to understand that this about people with disabilities are good employees and should be, not be ignored for, for for various reasons they ignore them.
Peter Tonge:Absolutely. And the other piece that I would add to that, for my own experience is, once a person with a disability comes into a company, perhaps of accommodations are made or whatever, once they're there, they're very loyal employees, and they will be there forever.
Ken Masson:They absolutely yeah. And you make times often times, people with disabilities are stronger mentally than people without disabilities. And that is because to the fact that you have a disability, you have to overcome a lot of challenges, a lot of discrimination. And you have to stay strong and believe in yourself. So people with disabilities have a good mental state, oftentimes more than people with non disability, so make they make it that makes them even better employees.
Peter Tonge:And we, we developed skills like becoming very good planners, and very good organizers, because that's how you survive and your face, right?
Ken Masson:Oh, yeah, absolutely. And one of the reasons that people, please don't want to hire people with this, but all the accessibility, it's going to make our plan accessible, our company accessible for you, it's gonna cost us a lot of money. Well, it's not true. No sensibilities cost very little much, much money. At the maximum, it's maybe 500 bucks, but that's for certain situations. In most cases, it's just a little bit of adjustments. So hopefully, and that's the same thing with Rotary, you know, take a look at your where you're physically meeting. Is it accessible to people with disabilities? Is it accessible for somebody in a wheelchair, but don't even think about the person in the wheelchair, think about the blind person. When you have a meeting, and you give a presentation, and you and you, and you have slides, you know, explain the slides, give the verbal explanation of the slides. And what about the you know, the deaf person, when you're having a virtue, when you're having a virtual meeting on Zoom, it doesn't take much to turn on that closed caption. And that's oftentimes, you know, closed caption is 80% accurate, but it's certainly better than nothing. And there is a cartoon that one of our members posted about this guy in a hotel, and the guy in the hotel says you should, a customer says you should make your hotel more accessible. And the guy said, and the hotel owner says why we don't have any people with disabilities, this hotel, or the ego, you know, maybe because you don't turn on your closed caption, maybe because you're in a location that's not accessible. You don't have people with disabilities coming to your club.
Peter Tonge:So absolutely. And it's, it's nice to see that your group and hopefully, Rotary as sort of as a wider view is starting to realize the great opportunity that there is because as you say, there's 15% of the population or more that we can that we can walk on inter rotary and, and you know, have some have some great members. Yeah, I have to say I really pleased Valerie wafer, actually, he's going to be a pilot podcast guests in the next little while. Yay for an interview. So yay, excited to talk to Valerie. Oh, I'm excited for the opportunity to talk to you before talking to Valerie because it gives me yet some more context to sort of surround our conversation with.
Ken Masson:yeah, now she's she's a big advocate.
Peter Tonge:But in order to that, and I will pass the same messaging to her that I did you that I was pleased and sort of the the change in language, though Yeah, very important to me. Yeah,
Ken Masson:Absolutely. You know, what we're trying to do too, right now is sign language interpreters. That's a necessity I think particularly for Rotary International level of their, of their their meetings on Rotary International level we, if not also the district level, because closed captions 80% accurate, but sign language is 100% accurate, so it's important to have them
Rotary Ad:During the worldwide Shelterbox community to receive exclusive email updates about where silver box is currently working in the world. You'll be joining a community of passionate individuals who are impatient to see a world where no one is left without shelter after disaster. Head over to www dot revise canada.org/sign up. And I guess the the other the other piece to this too is, is, you know, typical rotary members are not, are not younger folks, we have a lot of older folks. So there's lots of Rotarians that you know, might see themselves as having a disability. But as we get older, we're all having limitations and the more accessible, we make our meetings and we make our organization, the longer these folks are going to be able to feel comfortable and make really good contribution.
Ken Masson:Yes, that's perfect. That's perfect. That's exactly what we say, you know, and not only going to help the people with disabilities by becoming more accessible, you helping your members that are already members right now, because we are aging, we all are age.
Peter Tonge:Think there's a there there, there's a there's a saying within the disability community that says, you know, teach yourself about disability, because someday you're going to have one?
Ken Masson:Ah, yes, very good. Like it. Yeah. And, you know, we have we have a members or some members who have one particular gentleman in Indianapolis, who lost both of his legs in an accident, correct. He never thought about this ability was the hotel manager, he never thought about it. And now he's an advocate, you know, sometimes those things change your life, obviously.
Peter Tonge:So can you if somebody is listening to this podcast, and they want to become more involved with the best way for them to do that?
Ken Masson:They can do it by by writing to us, rotarydag@gmail.com or they can always write to me to kennethmasson@gmail.com. Also, in either case, you know, we just had an article in Rotary Magazine and I've been getting a lot of emails from a lot of people all over the world. So it's got me busy.
Peter Tonge:That's how I discovered you. And we'll put this in our in our podcast record that you can hear Ken story and about this rotary club in the February 2022 issue of rotary magazine. Yeah, that's where I found you.
Ken Masson:I'm good. Okay, well, we got a lot of things happening right now we've got different community things that we're working on. We have a whole group that's working on Paris sports around the world which is is fascinating in itself. At the all the different kinds of sports that are out there. The from from football, blind football to play people playing football that are on crutches. People that are playing volleyball, there, there's even a Paris sports, if you call it for for darts for dices a dad group. Yeah. So um, the whole Paris sports world out there is bigger than I think most people realize because they it doesn't get the attention. Oftentimes, the power Olympics gets attention. But even Paralympics, I don't know, if you I'm sure you try to watch it. It is it's not as easy as watching the Olympics, because then it's on some sort of a strange channel, and it doesn't get the same press. So and, you know, so but in Paris boards, it doesn't get any much press at all. And but they do it because they love it. You know, and
Peter Tonge:As an administrator, I can also tell you, it doesn't get much funding either.
Ken Masson:Yeah, well, that's the other issue because it doesn't get attention. It doesn't get funding, and they struggle, they struggle, but they do it and then keep doing it keep coming back because they love what they're doing. So, you know, we've got a group that's going to be focusing on the metal, medical parts of disability that the that the accessibility issues and with doctors and medical facilities and things like that, we're going to be doing a whole webinar on that. We're doing also a group that's working on the Rotary has a RYLA which is geared towards I don't know if they haven't candidate to puncture the gearing towards teaching young people to be leaders. So we're going to put up a whole series on for Disability Advocacy leadership. We're going to teach people how to be advocates and then how to be leadership and how to make change in their community through various ways of doing it, and maybe government change. Or it may be as simple as talking to a not simple but talking to a restaurant and saying, hey, you know, you got to make this this place accessible. You know, advocacy takes courage. Yeah, it takes courage. Because
Peter Tonge:it, it takes, it takes some, some practice and some skills do because they've often said, the young advocates, I know, it's easier to pick up the phone and make a phone call. But it's better if you can write a letter or an email, because then you've documented what you're talking about. And you can proceed from there.
Ken Masson:You're absolutely right about that, too. So I mean, that's, oh, we want to teach people how to be advocates. We want to, we feel that if we can encourage people to be advocates, and increase the number of advocates across the country, across the world, that that's how we're going to do change also, is by having these advocates out there, trying to make the change themselves too. So we want to teach people how to be advocates. And by doing that, we're hopefully we're going to have an impact on changing the world for people with disabilities. So there's a lot of work to be done, Peter, there's a lot of work to be done.
Peter Tonge:There is it's great for me to discover some new allies to do it with Oh, yeah. That's, that's, that's the best, best bird and I, I guess you and I have talked about it, but I should say it explicitly on the podcast, because I don't think I've ever had is over a person that has a physical disability, and I, I live my life in a wheelchair, but a wheelchair is my best tool. Right? Well, either by listeners aren't going to know that. But that's very important for this particular context of this conversation. Right?
Ken Masson:Yeah, I think it's important no matter what I mean, I think it's something that disability is something that I personally feel it should be always disclosed. I mean, I, because it's something that you shouldn't feel like you have to hide, right? It should be something that you feel is one of your strengths, actually. Yeah, unfortunately, in some countries, and I'm not going to get into which ones but there are countries where it's the down on very serious thing. And the families are actually embarrassed by the fact that they have a person with disabilities in some countries. I was told the story that the person had a disability and the mother had to run away with her child, because the father was going to kill him. Before too, yeah. So I mean, it's, it's, you know, a lot of work to do. But, you know, the good thing is, we're seeing change happen, we have seen change.
Peter Tonge:Of we and I think that's a great thing. And it's, it's, it's so I'm so glad to see rotary making its way down this path.
Ken Masson:Yeah, I am, too. We are the only club like ours in the in the in Rotary. And we've actually though, there, there's a rotary in Kenya, the President Elect had nothing had no knowledge or very little knowledge of people with disabilities. We've changed her now. And she says, You know, I have never known that. There was this world out there. And now I am dedicating my term as President to helping people with disability so we can do that. You know, once again, we're working, it's working in the right directions.
Peter Tonge:IT'S pretty, pretty super to me. Now we only have sort of one standard question for all of our pipe guys gas. Okay. And it's this. You could have done this work in many different ways. You've been involved in rotary for quite a while. Why Rotary? What keeps you coming back and what keeps you connected to rotary?
Ken Masson:And you know, it's in and it's such a beautiful networking organization. It's such a beautiful record in rotary people are and you want to be around those kind of people you want to be part of what they're doing. They're dedicating so much of their time to try to help and serve the community service above self. To me, that's what I live for service above self and so it fits right into my philosophy, and they're just beautiful people to be around. They are really
Peter Tonge:great. I then that's what we hear pretty consistently. Glad to hear from you. Well, I think I'm going to end that on that note cuz that's a nice positive note. Sure got lots of good things about about the cloud native vote your your background, I really appreciate you spending some time with me and sharing this.
Ken Masson:Oh, thank you. I appreciate you be having an interest in it and help share the awareness to people.
Peter Tonge:i So, so lovely to have you Ken. I appreciate it very much.
Mandy Kwasnica:Thank you so much for joining us on another great episode of talking Rotary. We would love to hear from you. Please send us your comments and story ideas and you can share with us easily by sending us an email at feedback at talking rotary.org Let's keep talking Rotary.