| Italian civil engineer and
former owner of an architect planning firm Carlo Ravizza was the
1999-2000 world president of Rotary International, the network of 29,000
community-based service clubs with more than 1.2 million members in 161
countries. He was the second Italian to lead the international community
volunteer organization, the first being
Gian Paolo Lang 1956.
"I am deeply honored to serve Rotary," says Ravizza,
who has worked extensively for Rotary in developing nations. "It's an
honor to serve in every area of the world, but particularly where people
are poor and in need of resources Rotary can provide."
Ravizza has been actively involved in Rotary's efforts
to immunize all the world's children against polio by the year 2000. He
led missions to Pakistan to monitor a massive immunization drive and to
northern Kenya's most remote areas to chronicle nomadic populations
being immunized against polio. Ravizza was one of the first Rotary
leaders involved in Rotary's developed-to-developing-nation assistance
called World Community Service.
"Getting a chance to see firsthand the effects of
poverty, and the need for help and assistance worldwide have humbled
me," says Ravizza. "Yet, I am an engineer and I look for solutions. Part
of my Rotary experience has been finding solutions to problems that
affect people the world over." |
Ravizza has held numerous
international positions including Rotary vice-president, director and
trustee of The Rotary Foundation. With each position he has contributed
leadership skills and, at times, his professional talents. Confronted
with unexpected space restrictions for the 34,000 delegates attending
Rotary's 1995 Convention in Nice, Ravizza, chairman of the event,
hand-designed the convention's central exhibit and outdoor meeting space
and transformed a public parking lot into an elegant piazza where 1,700
people dined daily.
Ravizza has been a member of the Board of Italian
Engineers Association, a member of the Swiss Engineers and Architects
Association and has been twice honored by Germany for his outstanding
work in planning public facilities and industrial plants. Ravizza has
been also recognized by The Rotary Foundation for his support of
international humanitarian and educational programs and has represented
Rotary at many global meetings of other organizations and United
Nations-related agencies. "As a non-governmental organization we must
increasingly work with public institutions in the next millennium to
contribute private-sector solutions to global problems," he says.
Rotary International Press Release |
