RAPTIM Humanitarian Travel

Attendance: 14

        (including 2 guests: Eliza Fan, visiting Rotarian from the Rotary Club of Bayview Sunshine Hong Kong, and her husband, Felix)

 

Chair: Incoming President Basil

Anthem: Barry Smith

Grace: Peter Masson

 

Announcements:

 

- Basil reminded us that the Scarborough Rotary Clubs are hosting the Citizenship swearing in ceremony at the Scarborough Civic Centre on July 1^st. We need more members to attend. Please arrive between 11:00 and 11:30 am. Mike Cooksey will be speaking on behalf of Rotary.

 

- Basil also reminded us to select which groups we want to join for the upcoming Rotary year. An email in this regard will be coming out shortly.

 

Marbelous Draw was won, and lost, by Gordon Brown.

 

Sgt-at-Arms Al Meredith levied some fines and asked for Happy Bucks:

 

- Members were fined who did not know the name of the incoming Rotary International President. Maddy thought she knew, but was wrong, and was forced to pay along with those who didn’t have a clue.

- Members were also fined who had not brought in any TV Auction items complete with filing the paperwork.

- Gord Brown donated a happy buck, because even though they played atrociously, England made it into the next round of the Eurocup.

- Dave Seemungal tossed in a happy buck for Dana’s school awards.

- Basil donated $10 for Toronto FC winning its last two games.

- Eliza gave a contribution from Hong Kong but in Canadian Dollars.

 

 

Program:

Chairman Basil introduced our very own Madhavi (Maddy) Chandrasekaran for her re-classification talk. Past President Maddy has been in the hotel and travel industry for many years. When she joined our club she was with British Airways and remained with them for 13 years. After leaving British Airways and going back to school to obtain further qualifications, she ended up in the banking industry, but her reputation in the travel industry resulted in her finally being wooed back into that industry by RAPTIM Humanitarian Travel where she was appointed their Regional Sales Manager.

RAPTIM is a Latin acronym: “Romana Associatio Pro Transvehendis Itinerantibus Missionariis”. When translated into English it means “Roman Association for the Transportation of Traveling Missionaries”.

 

RAPTIM was the first and is still the largest humanitarian travel agency in the world. Its story goes back to 1947, to a time when large parts of Europe were recovering from the devastation of World War II. In Holland, Roman Catholic orders and congregations were worried, because their missionaries in Africa had not been relieved of duty for years, and new missionaries were anxious to head out into the world. Therefore, the United Missionaries organized the first humanitarian flight in history – a charter flight to Uganda. Since travel was not the main focus of United Missionaries, they began a foundation in 1949 which they named RAPTIM.

 

RAPTIM has a 65 year history in the travel industry and during its long history it has developed partnerships and negotiated special humanitarian rates with most of the world’s major airlines. They can therefore provide reduced fares for NGO’s and other charitable, volunteer or faith-based organizations who require reduced travel costs in order to conduct their humanitarian work. RAPTIM was started by a faith-based organization, but has since re-branded itself so that it is a non-denominational humanitarian organization that is not associated with any faith group.

 

RAPTIM has offices throughout the globe and has a global network of partners. They are highly experienced in every aspect of humanitarian travel, and have dealt with every type of crisis situation. Such situations would include kidnap management and other life-threatening events. RAPTIM takes its duty of care very seriously. They track and safeguard their travellers, interceding when necessary to ensure that they are allowed to safely perform their humanitarian work in the hot spots of the world.

 

RAPTIM is not a not for profit organization, but they work on very slim margins, and they only hire those who have a background in, and dedication to, humanitarian causes. They only partner with like-minded organizations, and in this way have developed an excellent reputation in the industry which allows them to negotiate exceptional rates with their airline partners. At present, RAPTIM works with World Vision, Canadian Diabetes Association, Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Cross, WWF, Amnesty International and Global Medic, to name just a few.

 

Maddy was proud to announce that RAPTIM recently won the global contract for Rotary International, representing $9 Million worth of travel business. Maddy is proud of her work with RAPTIM and also proud to be a Rotarian, and feels that she is now experiencing a great confluence of her career and her life’s goals.

 

Rocco thanked Maddy for a very interesting and informative update to her classification talk.

A link to Maddy’s intro and presentation is attached:

Meeting was terminated