Boulder Rotarian Darryl Brown wins prestigious Rotary International award

Darryl Brown of the Boulder Rotary Club has received the prestigious Service Above Self Award from Rotary International for his work in Kenya. Only 150 Rotarians worldwide are granted the awards each year by the Rotary International Board of Directors.

Rotary District Governor Mike Oldham visited Boulder Rotary on Friday, May 28, to present Brown with the award before his fellow club members.

Brown, who is Director of Cardiopulmonary/Neurodiagnostics at Boulder Community Hospital, got involved with the project when his daughter, a past president of Boulder's Interact club, a Rotary activity for high school students, asked for a trip to Kenya for her high school graduation gift. The family decided to turn it into a vacation.

When they arrived at Rabour to inspect a water project, Brown was shocked by the poverty at the school there, which lacked classrooms, books and food for its students. The Browns had brought two new soccer balls as gifts, but learned the new balls could not withstand thorns on the field as well as the makeshift ball the children were using, made of plastic bags and rubber bands.

The town's orphans, who couldn't attend school because of their daily need to scavenge for food, were of more concern. This touched Brown's heart and his instinct for Service Above Self, and the Rabour School Feeding Project was born. A Boulder Rotary fundraiser in 2007 netted $14,000, which Brown delivered personally to Kisumu Rotarians. He was then forced to flee the country because of escalating political violence in Kenya.

The Project purchased 500 chicks, nine goats and a local porridge flour-producing company – all combining to feed the orphans and keep them in school.

The project won Boulder Rotary the 2008-2009 Scott Metcalf Award as District 5450's best club project, and Brown was named Boulder Rotarian of the Year in July, but the story doesn't end there.

When Brown returned to Boulder he helped start the Boulder-Kisumu Sister City Project. After a year of study, Boulder City Council approved the proposal in April to add Kisumu to its list of Sister Cities. Delegations from Boulder and Kenya have visited one another’s cities. A return visit from the Kenyans is expected this year, when a Sister City tile honoring Kisumu will be dedicated at the Sister City Plaza at Broadway and Canyon Boulevard in Boulder.

Brown is now involved with a project in Kisumu, funded by a $7.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Boulder is one of seven cities in the United States, along with their African Sister City counterparts, awarded grants through the African Urban Poverty Alleviation Program to be used for addressing sanitation, health and water issues in African urban areas.

Kisumu, Kenya's third-largest city with a population of 300,000, lies 13 miles south of the equator. While tourists travel to Kenya to see the wildlife, Brown says "the real beauty is in the children, their smiles and the hope they hold for the future."

For more information on Rotary, see  www.boulderrotary.org or www.rotary.org.

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