The Vocational Training Team from Australia

 Rebecca Tolstoy AM     Margaret MacDonald          Mark Crake             Sarah-Jane Sharp          Spiro Gougoulis             Stg Darrel Hagan

Six Western Australians are in District 5300 for 3 weeks, as part of a Vocational Training Team, between District 5300 and District 9455. Each team member is associated with Path of Hope, a collaboration between Rotary and the Salvation Army, whose mission is to break the inter-generational cycle of family and domestic violence. This program is the brain-child of Monrovia Rotarian Herb Heslip, who endowed the cost of this exchange. Its beneficiaries are restricted to District 5300 and the Rotary districts of Australia.

Path of Hope is an approach that mobilizes the organizational capacity of Rotarians to support agencies and services that provide safety and empowerment to women and their children escaping family and domestic violence. The impact upon the well being of the person experiencing the violence can be profound, and life-threatening. Children in these families are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress and developmental disorders. These disorders can deliver a lifetime of emotional and economic cost to the individual and the community. The capacity to be violent to a loved one is a learned behavior and there is also a risk that those who grew up with it will continue the behavior in their own families. This is the cycle that needs to be broken.

While in Las Vegas the team will visit Clark County School District, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and the Las Vegas Metro Police Department with stops at both the Green Valley and Las Vegas Rotary Clubs.