John Pennypacker introduced Gem Munro who has devoted his life to improving educational opportunities for disadvantaged people in Canada and around the world. Pursuit of this carried him into troubled indigenous communities across Canada before carrying him overseas.

 

He is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Amarok Society, a registered Canadian charity that provides education to the extremely poor in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

As well, Gem is an author whose recent book is a bestselling collection of stories about some of the extraordinary people he’s come to know in the slums of Bangladesh. All profits from the sale of this book go to Amarok Society.

 

For their work, Gem and his wife, Dr. Tanyss Munro, were recipients of Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medals.

 

In the spring of 2019, at Jim Erickson's District Conference, Gem Munro was one of the conference speakers.  John remembered having the opportunity to meet him treat him to breakfast.  When John told Gem he was going to take him to a car wash to have breakfast, Gem's skepticism was apparent.  He took him to the Tom Thumb Car Wash in Scottsdale, and was thoroughly enjoyed.

 

Gem said when they first became interested in working in Bangladesh, they found it was difficult to find much available information.  Their slums housed the poorest of the poor, the worst of the worst.  Their school system was the worst in the world.  The children in their slums were too poor to even attend school.  For Gem and his wife, Tanyss, it was too much to resist.  They knew they would have no impact if they tried to approach the need with traditional methods.

 

They determined they would go into the slums and teach the mothers to be neighborhood teachers.  It was innovative and thought to be impossible.  They would be dealing with the poorest Muslim women.  They would work to make them literate in their native language.  In fact, they also learned English, math, social studies, science, health, hygeine, and nutrition.  They learned how to reconcile differences through teaching methods to communicate and form community.  The mothers also learned about birth control.  In learning, life would start to make sense, enabling the women to make decisions that gave them a sense of self-control.

 

They had a strict condition - that each woman would be responsible for teaching five more women everything she had learned.  Most teach many more.  Our human minds are designed to learn.  Learning helps to combat depression and despair.  The process is transformative.

 

Their relationship with Rotary came about when Michael Maloney read their book of true stories.  Michael Maloney is with the Belleville Ontario Rotary and was their literacy chair.  He set about to make a connection with a Rotary Club in Bangladesh, which became chaotic as it turned out there were 53 clubs there.  Rotary reached out to them.  Illiteracy is not a third world problem.  It is a world problem.   

 

The economies of their method make sense.  Love costs less than fear and hostitlity.  Ignorance distorts the mind and severs from it the ability to have a healthy human spirit.