By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK, N.C. — With an undergraduate degree from UNC-Chapel Hill already in hand, Caroline Hoover will soon be off to England where she aims to earn an “MPhil” (Master’s in Philosophy) at Cambridge University, thanks in part to a Global Scholarship awarded to her on Sept. 16 by The Rotary Club of Blowing Rock.
A graduate of both Blowing Rock School and Watauga High School, Hoover has deferred her acceptance into Harvard Law School in order to pursue the MPhil at Cambridge but her long-term goal is earning a law degree, then get involved in rural healthcare.
After law school at Harvard, I want to get involved with improving access to healthcare in rural communities.
At the Sept. 16 meeting of The Rotary Club of Blowing Rock, club president Paul Horton and Rotary District 7670 Governor Connie Molland were on hand to present a check for $34,100 to Hoover on behalf of the Rotary International Foundation.
The Rotary International Foundation offers scholarship funding through the organization’s Global Grants initiative. The grants support graduate-level coursework or research for one to four years. The grants can be used at any approved university located in a country where there is a host Rotary club or district. The graduate-level coursework is in one of Rotary’s six areas of focus: peace and conflict prevention or resolution, disease prevention and treatment, water and sanitation, maternal and child health, basic education and literacy, and economic and community development.
Hoover’s ambitions align almost perfectly with one or more of Rotary’s six areas of focus.
“After law school, I want to get involved in rural healthcare. Healthcare is one thing in a city like Raleigh or Charlotte where it almost seems like one out of every 10 people you meet is a doctor — I’m exaggerating, of course! — but access to quality healthcare can be quite different, even very limited in rural areas,” she explained to Blowing Rock News after the Rotary meeting hosted by Meadowbrook Inn. “My interest in access to healthcare in rural communities is fueled by my own family’s experiences.”
Featured Speaker:
While Rotary’s scholarship award to Hoover was a certain highlight of the meeting, the featured speaker was Connie Molland, the Rotary District 7670 District Governor. She traced the path of Rotary Foundation from its origins in 1917 and the first contribution of $26.56, to the many millions of dollars the organization now distributes each year in scholarships and grants.
Describing Rotary as a leadership development organization at its core, Molland referred to the 1.4 million Rotarians (including approximately 200,000 high school age Roteract members) worldwide belonging to more than 45,000 local clubs working together to promote peace; fight disease; provide clean water, sanitation and hygiene; save mothers and children; support education; grow local economies and protect the environment.
“We develop leaders,” she said, then adding as she gave a nod to Hoover sitting next to her, “I wish I had known about Rotary when I was your age. I was always a leader of some sort, but I wish I would have had the structure and guidance of Rotary. It is really wonderful to see how Rotary develops people into their roles.”
I was sitting at a table with people from all over the world…
She reflected on the carefully crafted vision statement for Rotary International brought by its current president, Stephanie Urchick, for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, “Together, we see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change — across the globe, in our communities and in ourselves.”
Molland described a challenge issued by Urchick that each of the current year’s district governors take on as one of their missions, “to help heal a divided world.” Realizing that was not a small goal, she recalled immediately wondering how she might be able to even make a dent in that objective, as laudable as it is.
“It was a little nerve-wracking,” admitted Molland. “I didn’t know how that was going to happen. Then, that same evening at the Rotary International Assembly (held this past January) in Florida…I was sitting at a table with people from around the world, there was a woman with a lovely Australian accent sitting there at my table and she started talking about her ‘Peace Pole.’ I had never heard of one and the woman showed me pictures of one she had in her own garden, and she had planted one in a community garden.”
That conversation planted a seed in Molland’s mind and when she got back to North Carolina she started doing research on peace poles and found a wealth of information and it further fueled her imagination. Standing beside her own Peace Pole with signatures (in the lower area below the messaging) from all of the clubs she has visited and several individuals, Molland talked about how other clubs can plant Peace Poles in their own communities.
The Blowing Rock club president, Horton, withdrew from a box the club’s own Peace Pole which it is hoping to plant near the entrance to Blowing Rock School.
Molland noted that Urchick is the second female president of Rotary International and the first female to serve in that capacity from a local U.S. club, The Rotary Club of McMurray, Pennsylvania (approximately 25 miles south of Pittsburgh).
Molland brought special attention to the Rotary International motto developed by Urchick for the current club year, “The Magic of Rotary,” telling the story of Urchick working in a remote village for Rotary, demonstrating how a water filter worked, with cloudy, water going in one end and coming out the other end clean and pure. One of the young boys was excited about the end result and said to her something along the lines of, “Show us some more magic.”
That’s when Urchick realized that Rotary at work in the world really is magical at times, said Molland.
