Valarie and Mark Wafer - Impacting Rotary Together

Joe Solway interviews Rotary super couple Valarie and Mark Wafer. 

They talk about their lives together, their lived experiences with diversity, equity and inclusion and their commitment to Rotary.

It is a great listen!

Transcript

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Peter Tonge: 0:00

Music. 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: 0:26

and I am Mandy Kwasnica, past president and also a member of the Rotary Club of Winnipeg. Charles Wood, we are so happy you have joined us. Peter and I are so excited for this new podcast and thankful to our many listeners. Let's start talking Rotary.

joe solway: 1:08

Hi again. It's Joe Solway from the Rotary Club of Bowmanville sitting in for Peter Tonge as host, while Peter serves as governor for district 5550, and my guests today are Valerie and Mark wafer, the Rotarian couple that I and many others both in great esteem for their work, both inside and outside of Rotary. They are former Tim Hortons franchise owners. If you don't know what that is, let's call you coming up. Valerie is a past president, past Rotary International Vice President and Chair of our eyes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advisory Council. Mark is the former CEO of the Ability Center in Whitby, Ontario, and has been recognized for his work in improving opportunities for Canadians living with disabilities. They started their rotary careers at the Rotary Club of Whitby, and are now members of the Rotary Club of Burlington Lakeshore. And that's a real mouthful, because you guys have done so much with your careers. And welcome to Talking rotary thanks for joining us. Thank you, Joe. Hey, Joe. It's great to see you. Okay, so great to see you, too. You guys, as I say, have done so much, and I want to start at the beginning of your story. Good place to start. Valerie, you were born in Oakville, Ontario. Mark, you were born in England, and you moved to Canada at age 13. And I'm told you guys met as teenagers working in a pizza joint in Oakville, Ontario. Tell me that story. Um, who wants to start? Who? Who likes telling this story?

Mark Wafer: 2:39

Go ahead.

Valarie Wafer: 2:40

Go Oh, okay. All right. You know, it was my first job. It was a part time job for anyone who grew up in Oakville, Burlington or the GTA, you might remember, mother's pizza. It was the place to definitely hang out, and that's where we met. So I was working making everything, you know, from spaghetti to subs, then all that kind of good stuff. And Mark was a pizza delivery guy. So, you know, at the end of the shift, the pizza guys and girls, most of the most of the drivers were guys at that time actually would drive the rest of us home. And so lot of, lot of one on one time. And he waited until I was 16 to ask me out, so we've been together that long.

joe solway: 3:25

Very nice. That's wonderful. I want to start move ahead to your other work in the food industry. It's important. I wanted to talk about the fact that you met in the food industry, but you ended up back in that business with, I guess you could call it an empire, though I hate that word. With Tim Hortons. For those not familiar with Tim Hortons, it is the place for coffee and donuts and more now in Canada, and you bought your first Timmies, as we Canadians call it, in 1995 and eventually you owned 14 of them. That's an astounding number. You have since sold them all, but tell me about buying that first one in 1995 mark. How did that happen? The first one?

Mark Wafer: 4:11

Well, in the early 90s, Valerie and I were ready to get into a business of some kind. We talked about it for years. I was in the auto industry, and we were approved for a car dealership, but at that time, the car dealership would require many partners, and Valerie was working as a controller for Tim Horton's head office, and an opportunity came along to buy a Tim Hortons back in the early 90s, and so we didn't need partners to buy a Tim Hortons. Also, it was the Canadian dream. Everybody wanted to buy a Tim Hortons, but they didn't. Didn't always have the opportunity to do so we did. And so we jumped at it. And so I left the auto industry. Which I missed, and got back into the restaurant business, which, I be honest with you, I didn't really know a lot about from a firehose back in those days.

joe solway: 5:10

And you learned quickly enough, we were real quick, yeah, to end up with 14 of them. Valerie, how did you go from one to 14? Well, so

Valarie Wafer: 5:19

here's the interesting thing, you know, I worked at Tim Horton's head office. I had a bit of a side scoop, and I it was an amazing company under the the ownership of Ron Joyce at the time, who really treated the franchisees as family, and understood that when franchisees were successful, the company was successful. And so when it came time to the opportunity to buy our first store the city of Scarborough came up. And, you know, Scarborough wasn't exactly a great place by reputation back in the early 90s, but we saw an opportunity back then. There was only two or three Hortons in all of Scarborough in 1995 and we knew we wanted to expand, and that was the business model that would make us successful. And so, you know, within the first store we we bought was an existing store from an owner who was leaving the chain. And I also knew that there was some development opportunities happening in the area again, because I worked at Tim Horton's head office. So for us that it made sense, it made sense to go to Scarborough. We knew there would would be growth, and there certainly was, and it happened pretty quickly.

joe solway: 6:22

And Scarborough, for people who aren't in the Toronto area, it's, it's just kind of east of downtown. It's now, you know, part of the big city of Toronto.

Mark Wafer: 6:35

Joe, it's interesting. You know, 30 years ago, when we started as Valerie mentioned, Scarborough didn't have a great reputation. Today, Scarborough is a wonderful place with wonderful people. Absolutely. It's just a great melting pot of nationality from around the world. And it's a great it's a great

joe solway: 6:57

place, and Tim needs. Timmy is really beloved in Canada. So when, when you tell people you own all these Timmies. What was the reaction? I mean, they must have, I don't know. What was the reaction you had? When, when people, when people, when you told people that you owned this many Timmies?

Valarie Wafer: 7:15

I think the reaction was very positive, as Mark said, it was kind of the Canadian dream. And everyone, everyone has a Tim Hortons story to tell. It's a recognizable brand. Now, of course, it's international. So even today, when you know, when I'm traveling the world and I say that I'm a Tim Horton franchisee or former everyone has a story. Or their children go to school in Toronto, and they visit and they're, you know, recognize the brand so amazing, amazing career.

joe solway: 7:45

And, you know, you sold coffee and donuts, but you also did something that was, I'm not sure what the word is, laudable. Maybe you didn't see it at the time as that, but you broke some ground. And I want to talk about the fact that you guys, over the years, I've read the total more than 250 people with disabilities that you hired over those years. Can you talk about how that, how that began, and then how it grew? I don't know who wants to mark. Can you talk about that?

Mark Wafer: 8:18

Yeah, well, it actually started in the first week of career franchisees. I was born deaf. I have very little residual hearing, and so I grew up in a society that was really not meant for me, wasn't built for me, and so I had a lot of barriers placed in front of me. And so when I started the when we started the business, I was acutely aware of the barriers that people with disabilities faced in order to get into the workforce, to get transportation, housing, education, and, of course, employment. The first week in business, we were so busy, which is a blessing, if one of us that's what you want when you're in business, to be busier than you expected, and we had to hire somebody to look after the dining room in our first restaurant. And the young man who came through the door, a young man by the name of Clint Spurlin, had damn syndrome. And I didn't have a lot of experience being around people with intellectual disabilities at the time, but what I did understand is that the barriers I had faced, at the young man being deaf, he was facing 10 times those barriers. And if he simply knocked on board, you gotta remember, he said the early 90s, if you just knocked on gold, he wasn't gonna find one. So I decided to take a chance on Clint. I got some help to train him took a little bit longer, and that's okay. We had to train him how to take a bus. It wasn't just simply how to do the job, but there was periphery training as well. Take a bus, which busses to take, how to work on time and so on. Became came on. Would, and within a couple of weeks, I recognized that Clint was my best employee. He came to work early. I couldn't get him to take a break, and he certainly wouldn't go home at the end of his shift. It just dropped. Meant so much to him, and we had so much success with Clint as we started to grow and add stores and add restaurants to to a group, I continue to hire people intellectual disability, people who had syndrome, people who had, perhaps on the autism spectrum, in similar jobs to what Clint was doing, which was clearing the dishes, looking after dinner, when operating the dishwasher and after we had hired six or seven people with with disability, I started to see a pattern. These individuals weren't looking at the clock to see what time was the next smoke break, right? They were wearing a uniform perfectly. They didn't require any supervision at all, because you teach them how to do a job, because the one way to do it, that's the way they taught them how to do it. They never took time off. They were never sick. And so I started to see a pattern that the people worked with us who had disabilities seem to be better employees than those who weren't. That's not to say that we were holding them to a higher standard. We certainly weren't. It was simply a fact. So around 9619 97 Valley and I decided to open our goals to people with disabilities on the conditions that they could do the job or they could be trained to do the job. And I'm not talking about just entry level positions. We decided to open up goals to every position, to productivity, production to logistics, to management, and even our top person who was the director of operation is someone with a learning disability. And over 25 years, we ended up in hiring over 250 people with disabilities, and our initial thought was correct, and that is when we build capacity with people with disabilities and real jobs for real pay and a real workforce, you have low absenteeism, you have greater safety rating, you have higher innovation and have much, much lower turnover. And so it was a real benefit to our business. Of course, it was great that these people find drugs, but the motivating factor behind it was very good for business, and that goes it's sort of the message that we we talked about today when we talk to businesses about the golden standard of business excellence. If you're not having people with disabilities and we're not producing products for people with disabilities, you're losing out. So that's how it started, and it just snowballed from there.

Rotary Ad: 12:45

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joe solway: 13:14

so, full disclosure, I first met you when I was in my former life, when I was a producer at the CBC, and I read this story about this guy, Mark wafer, who owned these Tim Hortons and was hiring people with disabilities, and had this guy, Clint, working for him, and I invited the two of you into the CBC studios, and you did an interview. And the one thing, the one thing that sticks out for me, and that I still remember is the pride that Clint had in doing that job when maybe nobody thought he could. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Mark Wafer: 13:50

That's exactly what, like I said, we don't hold people with disabilities to a higher standard, but they hold themselves to a high standard, and people with intellectual disabilities. In particular, it takes them years to find a job. If they can get a job, the unemployment rate for people with intellectual disabilities is well over 70% and so when you find a job and get a job, it means everything to them. The interesting thing Joe is, is one of the things that Clint did early on in his career was he came to me with his paycheck, and he showed me the line that said the taxes that had been taken up. And I thought, here we go. He's complaining about paying taxes. No, he wasn't complaining. He was telling me how proud he was to be a taxpayer in Canada, to be contributing to society, just how much it meant to him, right? The rest of us all complained that we paid too much taxes, but the fact of the matter is, he had spent so many years sitting at home, waiting for opportunities and taking benefits from from the government because he couldn't work. When he found work, it changed his life. Completely it gave them an opportunity. And that's one of the things I always say about people with disabilities. When they get drug, they can live their full life. They contribute to themselves. It contribute to their family, contributes to the economy at large. And

joe solway: 15:15

we too often see the disability before the person. We see the disability before we see the ability. The fact that, you know,

Mark Wafer: 15:25

there's, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with seeing the disability. What's important is we don't, we can't define the form of judgment of their ability. Yeah,

joe solway: 15:35

yeah. Um, so I want to jump ahead. Well, actually, was during you were Tim Hortons, owners, Valerie, you joined rotary back in 2005 this is talking Rotary. So I do want to talk Rotary. You joined rotary back in 2005 that's what. That's what the the internet says.

Valarie Wafer: 15:58

It must be true.

joe solway: 16:01

That's it. What drew you to rotary? That's a question everybody you know gets asked, and you get an elevator speech. What drew you to rotary? And,

Valarie Wafer: 16:10

you know, it's funny, because I don't know that my answer is much different than a lot of other people. I grew up in a family where we did give back. My dad was belong to the lions. So, you know, worked. His favorite job was working at the farmers market in the parking lot of Burlington Mall. And he just loved to go around to the different stalls and speak and make sure everyone had what they needed. And that was his place. That was the way he volunteered. Later he volunteered at the hospital in the physiotherapy department. My dad was an avid baseball player. Played baseball till he was in his 80s. So very physical, and so working in the physio department at the hospital was was a great thing for him to do. Mom was a Girl Guide, leader, and so certainly we grew up in that environment. Mark and I have always volunteered with our children. We have two daughters. When they were young, Mark was their soccer coach. I was their Girl Guide leader. I was their hockey coach in the swimming pool, you know, with them when they were taking swimming lessons, all that kind of stuff, and after being in business for 10 years. So we moved from Oakville, Burlington to Scarborough to run our businesses, and it was brand new. We never lived in that part of the city before, but we were so busy running this business 24/7 and after 10 years, I realized I didn't know my community, and I really wanted to give back in a more meaningful way. The kids have grown up a little bit. They were in high school, and so I felt like, hang on a minute. It's time for me to give back in a more meaningful way, but, you know, I reached out to a lot of organizations, and I handled the whole administrative end of our business. And that's what a lot of you know these charities and NGOs wanted me to do, and that's I do this every day. I need something different. And a girlfriend of mine was talking about what she was doing in Rotary. And I said, and you're gonna laugh at this, what is Rotary? I had no idea.

joe solway: 18:06

Even that's why we have these videos that say, what is Rotary, exactly.

Valarie Wafer: 18:09

So even though dad was a lion, you know, Rotary never came up it we didn't know about the other service organizations or membership organizations. And so they told me about rotary they told me about the international aspect, what we do, the community. And I started going to the Rotary Club of Whitby the next week, and I never stopped. And it's this missing piece, honestly, in my in my adult life, it was the right time, and it came along and got involved at a huge level. Right from the beginning, the Rotary Club of Whitby is a very dynamic club, as you probably know, Joe, it was district 7070. It was, you know, where I grew up, in rotary I became district governor, Assistant governor. I'd, you know, amazing group of people with a lot of community and international work. So, you know, within a year and a half, I found myself in Africa at an orphanage, for you know, orphans where they had lost their parents to AIDS. And you know, if you had told me when I found Rotary, that that's where I would have ended up, or where my life would go, I never would have imagined it in a million years. So, you know, Mark and I love, loved our journey in Rotary. And it's, it's, it's changed us. It's, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm saying the words that every Rotarian says, it's been an incredible journey. And thank goodness, thank goodness, we found rotary honestly. And

joe solway: 19:37

you never know what I mean. I look at my own self when I joined Rotary, if somebody told me I would be doing the things that I'm doing now, you know, just because opportunities, you sort of say, hey, this would be a good opportunity. And with Rotary you can, you can kind of do that, you know, because there's

Valarie Wafer: 19:54

support and you know you and you continue to develop as a person. So again, we've been business 10 years. You. Yes, we were business owners. Yes, we have a large staff, but you know, I never had the opportunity to do public speaking or conduct meetings, you know? I mean, it was my business, but you know, it's just a very different way of growing my leadership skills, my management skill, managing people who are not collecting a paycheck at the end of two weeks is very different. How to motivate a volunteer and you grow. I have certainly grown, grown as a leader, and I have rotary to thank for that nice

joe solway: 20:33

mark. You're Rotarian. How did that happen?

Mark Wafer: 20:37

Valerie told me I had to, that's it. No, no, not at all. So it's interesting, interesting stories. Though Valerie was a Rotarian. In a number of years, I actually didn't have much intention of doing so, but in 2008 a gentleman from rotary approached me and asked me if I would be interested in doing a program that got people with intellectual disabilities into the workforce. And I'm thinking right up my alley, because that's exactly what I do in in Tim Hortons. And I didn't I didn't just do this without Tim Hortons. I talked about it. I talked about it with the corporation. I talked about it without a franchisee, and at one point in time, 460 Tim Hortons in Ontario had hired at least one person with an intellectual disability, and so I had already spent time talking about it, but this was sort of making it formal. So I drove rotary in 2008 and this had a gentleman and I we actually went out and did presentations that are Rotary Clubs. And can you believe in five years, we visited 400 Rotary Clubs into Michigan, into New York, right across the country, and we started a program called rotary at work. And the rotary at Work Program is still operating today in district 5050, and district 5040 in Vancouver, British Columbia, it's still there today, all these years later, and so and that actually launched my so called professional speaking career, because that's what I talked about. I talked about the the benefit, the economic benefits of being an inclusive employer, and that's what we did with the rotary work program. So that's how I started with Rotary. That's how I got in. And it made sense for me to join the same club at Valerie that time plus. And Valerie won't tell you this, Valerie with President that year. She's president of her club, and she wanted to increase the number of people who were coming into the club, so she tapped me on the shoulder and said, You're joining.

joe solway: 22:45

So what's it like? You know? I'll just in my own case, you know. And you hear this a lot, you know, my wife says, No, that's your thing, you know. And it's you don't. You don't see that many couples in Rotary? What? What I mean, without telling me a lot of secrets, what's it like to be a rotary couple? And you know, you what? Just describe what that's right to be a couple in Rotary?

Valarie Wafer: 23:12

Well, you know, it's funny when Mark joined, as you mentioned, I was president of my club, and of course, you know, we're going to a lot of events in our local community, and he would always be with me. But as I started to get other opportunities, either as district governor, and he certainly came on almost all my visits, we were still operating our business at the time, so when he could, but then there was a lot of international trips that started coming our way, you know, whether it was going to India for a National Immunization day or, you know, going to conventions, conventions. We've gone to as many conventions as we could and and so just being able to experience that together. And as Mark said, he kind of found his his spot in Rotary, where he felt he was making a difference. And I think that that's that's key. You've got to find a way that you are finding value in an organization, that you're giving a fair amount of time to, right? Not getting paid to do this, you're volunteering. So it's got to mean something to you, and you've got to be getting something out of it. You know, we hear that expression all the time, what's in it? For me, what's that value that you're getting? And for us, we've grown as a couple in this experience as well. I mean, we've been married 40 years, next year, this year, 39 years. As I mentioned at the beginning, we've been together since I was 16 years old. So we're so lucky that we continue to grow together as a couple. And Rotary has given us those experiences as well, where we see things that we never thought in our lifetime, we would have the opportunity to go to places, to meet the most incredible people and to see the work that they're doing around the world, and to have relationships with our partners around the world, and to have conversations with them and know that we're making a difference in the world, and to do that. As a couple, I don't I know that a lot of couples say that's your that's your gig, you know, that's your thing, but, and I respect that, I really do. But for us, it really, really works that we get to experience this together.

Mandy Kwasnica: 25:15

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joe solway: 25:48

wonderful. You know, when people ask me about Rotary, you know the one thing, and for me, it kind of boils down to one thing, yes, there's service, but you can get that in a lot of places as well. There is service, but I like to use the word opportunity. Can you expand on the word opportunity? Can when I say opportunity and Rotary, what does that mean to you?

Valarie Wafer: 26:12

Mark you want to take that one first,

Mark Wafer: 26:15

the opportunities. It's huge. It's huge numbers of opportunities within Rotary, and one of the to go back to your previous question about what it's like to be a couple in rotary I think one of the things that comes to mind is innovation. Innovation of having two voices, two different voices together in a rotary club as a couple does create a new level of innovation. And one of the stories I've always loved is the one that came from past president Robin from Sri Lanka, who often talked about this rotary club in Thailand that had seven members, seven men, and every seventh year they never brought in anybody new members. They couldn't find anybody to join a club, and every seventh year you have to be president, because they didn't bring anybody new in. And in one day, one of the members said, why don't we invite our wife? Yeah, within one year, within one year, they had 38 members. Because when the couples came in, the level of innovation doesn't mean that they were smarter by any means. No, it's just different innovation, different problem solving, thinking, and it became a vibrant thing, and so a vibrant club. So Robbie always talks about that at that particular story, and I like that one. But opportunities in rotary of bandwidth and opportunities often come from yourself. What can I gain from being a Rotarian? What's in this for me? And you have to ask that question of yourself, what's in it for me? Is it leadership? Is it community spirit? Is it volunteering in certain sectors? What is it that? What is it in what is it in society that I want to do? Right for valuing me with always leadership. That's what we've always done in life. We've always been sort of, you know, leaders in whatever sector we happen to be in. It happened in Tim Hortons. When I was in Tim Horton, I was elected to the Tim Hortons franchisee board of directors, right? Because that was me. I was a sort of a leader in that area. So the opportunities bandwidth, opportunities and opportunities in your own community, and opportunities internationally, and

joe solway: 28:37

opportunities to serve, because that's the second part of these. This equation opportunities plus service. I asked you each, and we're we're kind of running short. We only have about 12 minutes left, which is not a lot of time in podcast work. I asked you each for a highlight and mark you had talked about being on a National Immunization day in India. Can you describe that?

Mark Wafer: 29:01

Go back to 2010 India was still an endemic country at that time. And we went on an NID to Delhi. I played to a town called corona path, which is about 90 kilometers from Delhi. And one of the things that happened to me, that just profound thing that happened with me was the day after the NID is known as MUP update, and this is the day when you go back out and you go back to the same community, and you check to see if any children have been missed. And so I was assigned with a pediatrician, and I'm wearing my yellow rotary jacket vest, and we went back to COVID and went to a fairly affluent community. And after the first day, there was marching on the outside of the house truck to mark how many children were inoculated, how many children were suspected to be living in the house and so on. When we got to this one house, Joe, I. There was a lady standing in a courtyard, and a pediatrician says to her, are there any children who have not been inoculated? And she said, No. And he looked at the truck marking, and he looked at her, and voiced responded, and he says to me, Mark, she's lying somebody in the house has not been inoculated. He says, I want you to go into the house and find out if there's a child in there it hasn't been inoculated. I said, Doctor, I can't do that in Canada, we call that break and enter. I can't just walk into somebody's house. It says, well, she will not let me in, but you're wearing a rotary yellow shirt, she's gonna let you in the house. And sure enough, I opened the gate, and she let me stood back, and she let me walk into the house, and I found an 18 month old girl who was not inoculated, and I gave her the drops, and then walked back out, so that child definitely not going to get polio, And the power of that rotary vest, she would not let her own country pediatrician into her, but she let her Rotarian in that had a profound effect on me.

joe solway: 31:10

Yeah, I can imagine, Valerie, you have done National Immunization day, but you also told me about a mental health mission in Australia. Can you talk about that? Sure.

Valarie Wafer: 31:26

So this was actually an opportunity when I was an assistant governor in district 7070 and we were part of the future vision pilot when we were changing the grant model, and we put together under past district governor Ted Morrison, actually a vocational training team to go to Australia, to Sydney, Australia in 2010 for six to seven weeks on youth suicide and depression. And the amazing team that we put together was very multi disciplinary, from a child psychiatrist to social workers to a police officer who, on the ground in Bowmanville, you know, dealt with this every single day. And we were in drop in centers, schools, hospitals, every day of the week. And interestingly enough, and the work was incredible, and it actually, you know, started the conversation of mental health in many, many clubs. But interestingly enough, during COVID, we had a zoom reunion of our team. And so, you know, we're talking 1012, years later, and the profound effect it had on every single person on that team and their career and the difference that they made, not only when they came back to their careers in Canada, but the interaction that they continue to have in collaboration with the people from Sydney, Australia, really continued that sustainability aspect that is so important to everything that we do in Rotary. You know, if you've heard me speak, I speak openly that I lost my mom to suicide when I was 24 years old. This is the topic that is so critical to all of us. And President, past president, Gordon McAnally, of course, made this an overarching theme to his year. And it's not a subject that, you know is a one and done or a theme for a year. It's a conversation that we need to continue to have every single day. And I think that projects like this, that vocational training team, and conversations that we have in our rotary clubs, our rotary Action Group for mental health, these things are critical to to the conversation that is needed to support ourselves, our members, our family and our society. So really proud of that work in way back in in 2010 certainly not groundbreaking, but certainly impactful to so many lives. And it really, you know, I really keep in touch with that team, and I'm really proud of the work that they continue to do.

joe solway: 34:04

You're both active in helping to make rotary a more diverse, inclusive organization. Always a challenge, and especially now more than ever. How do we do that on an individual and on a club level? It's something that's kind of elusive, and how do we do that?

Valarie Wafer: 34:31

Well, you know, Joe, I'll take this one. I'm so proud of the leadership of Rotary International. You. You kind of hinted, and it's pretty obvious that we're in a very polarized world right now. We have been having this conversation. Well, let's go back to the beginning of time. I mean, diversity has been one of our core values forever in rotary and so, you know, we're diverse by nature. We're in over 200 countries and territories. But during. Members feel like they belong? Do they feel like they have an opportunity for leadership and that we are an inclusive organization? And you know that that comes down to who we are, how we show up and how we're accepted. And this conversation really began when I had the opportunity on the Rotary International Board of Directors, and in 2020 of course, the world had just experienced civil unrest and the murder of George Floyd, and we listened to our members, and our members said, you know this, this, what are, what's Rotary's voice in this, we stand for human rights. We stand for peace. What? What are we going to what are we going to say, and how are we going to stand up? And so we did begin our work officially in this diversity, equity, inclusion space, and we started the DEI path force of Rotary International. And I've had the opportunity to chair this committee. From its inception, we have now formalized into a dei Advisory Council. And what we do is we advise the Rotary International Board and trustee on on policy, on on where, you know, where we need to support our members, and what I'm finding and what we're finding, not just anecdotally, but by data research, by serving our members and hearing from our members that our members are proud of the work that we're doing. They feel like they now have a voice. We've opened up opportunities for leadership. We've expanded that perception that the more voices we have and the more different perspectives we have in our clubs and around the board tables make us stronger and and I think our members are certainly recognizing this. Do we have challenges? We absolutely have challenges. And if you're you know, on social media or watching the news in the last, you know, couple of months, and certainly going forward, we're going to continue to have our challenges, but we've reached out to our members, and we've said to our members, we're listening to you. We hear you, and we can't back down.

joe solway: 37:14

Few minutes left,

Valarie Wafer: 37:16

yeah, we need, we need to continue this work. Okay,

joe solway: 37:19

two minutes left. I want a minute from each of you about what rotary means to you.

Valarie Wafer: 37:26

Mark, go ahead, give me a minute.

joe solway: 37:27

Mark, what rotary

Mark Wafer: 37:29

means to me? Yeah, Rotary is everything, and it's interesting. Left that question, Joe, because Valerie and I had a conversation just a few weeks ago. What would I like be like without Rotary? And I can't imagine what I can't imagine what it would be like, the friends that we've made, the acquaintances we've made across the world, the places that we've been to where we've seen the projects and the the way that people are making the world such a much better place, everywhere, everywhere around the world, and to be part of that has been phenomenal.

Valarie Wafer: 38:13

Rather, we can do more, and that's what rotary is. We each want to make a difference individually, but together, we can do so much more, and that's what rotary is. So as much as it gives to us, I believe we have an opportunity in this polarized world to bring peace and to bring human rights to the world, and we can do that so much better together.

joe solway: 38:35

I have to thank you both for your service. It's always wonderful to see you in person or on Zoom, and I look forward to, uh, to seeing you soon. I guess I'll see you in Calgary. Absolutely Okay. See you. Thank you so much and take care.

Mark Wafer: 38:51

Thank you, Joe, bye, bye. You.

Mandy Kwasnica: 39:19

Music. 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. You