Mumbai Suburb Rotary District Governor Elect Dr. Chandrashekhar Kolvekar Visits Houston
HOUSTON: Houston city saw a reunion of two active Rotarians 9000+ miles away from their hometown in Houston on December 30.
Dr. Chandrashekhar Kolvekar, an Anesthesiologist by profession and District Governor Elect of Rotary International Dist. 3142 (comprising of 68 clubs around Mumbai) have been active in Rotary and Community Service circles for past 30 + years…. Dr. Kolvekar is on the way to San Diego For Rotary International Assembly in January for training to all elected District Governors and stopped in Houston for few days.
An active community social worker, Dr. Kolvekar presided over a suburb Rotary club near Mumbai About 27 years ago and initiated some milestone projects including Jaipur Foot Project, Bicycles for Rural girl students and Literacy projects. Dr. Chandrashekhar was also involved in Conducting Artificial Limb camps for amputees and calipers for the polio affected, corrective surgeries, giving services for the earthquake victims at Bhuj in Gujarat, e-learning kits for village schools. In his own words, “I belong to an organization of inspired individuals who translate their passions into relevant social causes to change lives in communities – Rotary! Rotary offered me a platform to ‘Do good in the world’. Bringing tribal as well as other rural children on par with international education methods, skills development centers for youth of India, Diabetes control, dedicated toilets for girl students & hand wash for all school students, Water for all, Subsidized Cancer & Pediatric Heart Surgeries for the less privileged are some of the areas I plan to focus on as I take over as Rotary Governor of Rotary International District 3142 in India..”.
Dr. Chandu had a reunion in Houston with an active Past Rotaractor of his home club and an active Rotarian Sanjay Bhatia who lives in Katy now and is supporting the home club in Some unique ways. He has been saving money by using shared ride to commute to work every day (thus avoiding driving and helping environment) and use the saved dollars to sponsor poor children education. He calls this initiative “Educating Children by Saving Environment”. Besides sponsoring kids in US thru NGO’s, he and Rotary Club of Ulhasnagar arranged Teachers and few essential things to a children orphan home in Ulhasnagar town near Mumbai. Sanjay is also supporting a unique project “RApp – Make My App” initiated by home club in Thane District – wherein they provide youth a platform to share their Software Application Development ideas in a competition and guide the winners to copyrighting, patenting and starting their own IT company. Sanjay has developed his own ERP App software products which have been copyrighted in US and therefore is on panel of judges of competition and monitoring it thru video conferencing.
The two are actively exploring some local Rotary clubs in Houston/Katy to do some future international projects together and leverage the effort to the betterment of communities in both the suburbs. Hope the reunion and creative projects will benefit the society as a whole.
Dr. Chandrashekhar Kolvekar, Governor 2016-17, India can be contacted on ckolvekar@rediffmail.com. Sanjay can be contacted at email bhts6@yahoo.com