Oriental Rotary Club

Gail Horne

Guardian Ad Litem Program

Gail is the District (Carteret, Craven and Pamlico Counties) Administrator for the Guardian Ad Litem program.  Her academic background includes a Master of Science degree in Child Development and Family Relations, Substance Abuse, and Rehabilitation Counseling.  She has been involved in both the legal and mental health fields.  Gail has three grown children.  Her hobbies are reading and furniture refinishing.

Guardians ad Litem and attorney advocates are appointed by Juvenile/District Court to represent the interest of children who are allegedly being abused or neglected. Guardians ad Litem and the attorneys represent the children until court involvement is complete and they are released by the Judge.  Guardians ad Litem report objectively to the court at each juvenile hearing to summarize and prioritize each child’s need. The Guardians ad Litem and the attorneys work together to ensure quality representation for children throughout the justice system. Additionally, Guardians ad Litem work with other community agencies to locate and develop resources for children.

Governor Beverly Perdue recognized  volunteers who gave more than 800,000 hours of service to the children of North Carolina in 2008.  She proclaimed April 2009 as Guardian Ad Litem Child Advocate Month.

The RI website always offers interesting tidbits of information.  This article provides some ideas to contemplate…Jean-François Rischard, a former Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar who studied at Harvard Business School in 1974-75 and recently retired as World Bank vice president for Europe, was a speaker during the Rotary Alumni Celebration on 20 June in Birmingham, England. Rischard called for a paradigm shift away from the nation-state approach of solving problems (based on territorial concerns and national election cycles) to a more global approach with a view toward the future. “Problems like [swine] flu, global warming, and maritime pollution don’t care about national boundaries, and they require long-term solutions,” Rischard said.   

… while the current economic crisis was avoidable and reversible, there are four far more dangerous crises coming that are predictable, harder to avoid, and totally irreversible: a massive aging and pension problem facing rich countries by 2015, a scarcity of petroleum from traditional sources by 2025, a collapse of several major ecosystems by 2035, and climate change worsening intensely by 2045. 

Rischard suggested that Rotary … influence top policymakers to produce the needed changes.  “You have acquired your credentials through your polio program… “And you have 1.2 million members in more than 200 countries, plus 105,000 alumni.”

He encouraged alumni and Rotarians to keep their global perspective on humanitarian issues, especially by supporting literacy and education projects.  “If you finance schools that are moving toward a new mind-set of global identity that stands above an individual’s local and religious identities, it would be a really good buy,” he said. 

Home on the (Golf) Range. 

The WSJ’s columnist John Paul Newport wrote some incisive observations in his Golf Journal (11-12 July.) 

Anyone who doubts that golf is a big tent should go to a public driving range.  That is where I do most of my practicing since, as a newspaper reporter, I can’t afford a private club in the expensive New York City area without some kind of government grant.

Then, Mr. Newport proceeds to describe various range types.  Here is his take on the Weightlifter type…Usually they buy super-jumbo buckets, wear tank tops to show offer their tattoos and seem convinced (presumably despite years of experience to the contrary) that raw strength is more effective than technique.  Typically Mr. Macho starts with a few easy swings and gets good results, then amps up the effort and produces a series of tops and skulls.  This is followed by an extended paroxysm of rage.  A cartoonist at this point would depict him using a blur of lines and a thought balloon filled with typographical symbols.  His mood will be immeasurably more sour if in the next stall a no-count little squirt is hammering 250 yard drives, or if he brought his girlfriend to watch.