Posted on Apr 02, 2018

After several years as a Rotarian, Christine Anne Namayanja, the charter president of the Rotary Club of Muyenga Sunday Sunset can testify that there is a difference in the way women approach the idea of joining Rotary, a club of distinguished professionals called to service above self.

According to Namayanja, women take their time deciding on what is usually for men, a quick choice. This probably explains why women make up only just above 20 per cent of the world’s Rotarians.
Namayanja and her team do not merely reel off the numbers, they are actively engaged in trying to change this statistic. Not discounting the men who make up an important part of the club in Muyenga, a suburb of Kampala, it is remarkable that the club was chartered by a woman and has at its heart, a team of dedicated and highly talented women.

Last Saturday, this team was in action at one of the club’s community service projects at St Charles Lwanga Secondary School overlooking Lake Victoria in Ggangu, Busabala, Makindye Ssabagabo Municipality.
With the aim of running a blood donation drive, youth sensitization and tree planting exercise among others, the club constituted a diverse team of experts made up of lawyers such as Hadija Basajjabalaba, the club’s vice president and membership director, a dynamic recruiter for the club, youth specialists, a geologist, marketeers and entrepreneurs.

In their various categories, members strove to excel at their given service whether it was in mobilizing potential donors to give blood at the collection point manned by Mengo Rotary Blood Bank or working magic out of the modest school kitchen of St Charles Lwanga SS to ensure everyone received a fine meal. The youth and adolescent sensitization session was the star attraction, with more than 100 eager adolescent learners packed in the school hall and hanging onto the words of youth specialist Lillian Tutegyereize.

When the trees had been planted, blood donated and the youth sensitized and it was time to make an assessment of the day, the Club President focused on celebrating the team’s successes in a fun-filled closing session that felt more like a gathering of close relatives than a meeting of Rotarians. This ability to make members feel at home may be the secret to the fast growth of the young club, just over a year old, especially when it comes to recruiting women into the ranks of Rotary.