TRI-CITY AREA — For some, the practice of yoga is a passport to the soul. Others turn to the discipline for balance and strength—with each practice as individual as the practitioner. So when a Rotary Global Passport club member meets pratitioners seeking their soul on the yoga mat, some amazing things occur.
Rotary club efforts aim to serve their communities, and likewise, yoga is also about giving back—to family, friends, and humankind. Whether it’s through mindful action, generosity of spirit or making donations of time, goods, and/or money, area yogis recently stepped up yet again to embody the giving spirit.
Rotary Global Passport member and retired veterinarian Dr. Jim Sillers has long been a yoga student, both in Dina Miramonti’s ‘Dina’s Yoga’ classes in Capac and the Peaceful Moon Yoga practice in Imlay City. The Rotary Global Passport program offers members an opportunity to get involved in community service as their schedule and budget allows. Meetings take place online, and specific clubs include people from a wide geographical range.
Sillers’ club—district 6330—stretches from Flint to Port Huron and up into Canada—where a fellow club member proposed a community service project for the people of Sierra Leone. The member has ties to the country, which has gone through numerous disasters over the past several years.
The most recent—in November of 2021—devastated the capital of Freetown when a fuel tanker collided with a lorry at a busy intersection, killing 144 people and injuring many more in a fiery explosion.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and without hospitals equipped with burn units, the accident was especially devastating. The Passport member in Canada wanted to help.
“During a Zoom meeting the member presented the program and provided detail,” Sillers says. “We decided to try to collect some items to send to the people of Sierra Leone.”
Armed with a list of needs that included clothing, shoes, household and personal care items, Sillers brought the request to fellow yoga students, who embraced it wholeheartedly.
Before the two week drive was over, yogis came to classes with arms full of items that were on the list.
“It was surprising to collect so much stuff in such a short time,” Sillers says. “The donations completely filled up my van. There was not one inch of space left.”
Last week, Sillers took the donations across the Blue Water Bridge on up to London, Ontario where they were sorted and sealed into boxes. From there, the boxes will be shipped off to Sierra Leone, where the much needed supplies will be distributed.
“It is so great that Jim brings the idea of philanthropy to the mat, something that’s really important to me,” Miramonti says. “It was wonderful to see so many students participate.”
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