Approximately 21 years ago in Pusan, South Korea, Woodrow “Wooj” Byun received an Ambassadorial Scholarship from the Rotary Club that set him on a journey of a lifetime; one that would take him halfway around the globe, and ultimately put him on a path that would, in his words, “make the circle full.”
“I received $23,800, and it allowed me to go law school at the University of Minnesota,” says Byun, as we sit in his Edina law office. “After I graduated from law school and started making money, I thought about how if they had invested that same amount into a blue chip company like Microsoft, they would probably be sitting on over $2 million; So, I asked myself, ‘Was I worth it?’ Their gift had changed my life and I knew that I had to prove myself, and that somehow I had to give back.”
Which is exactly what he is doing in his role as President of the Rotary Club of Edina; turns out, this life-altering gift and the mind-set of this scholarship recipient is par for the course for an organization that lives and thrives by the credo “Service Above Self.”
Rotary Club (which later became Rotary International) was founded in 1905 in Chicago, and has grown to incorporate more than 1.2 million volunteer professional and business leaders within 32,000 Rotary clubs throughout the world; their endowment program, The Rotary Foundation, is dedicated to humanitarian efforts worldwide and has championed causes such as the eradication of polio by raising and donating funds that helped to inoculate more than 2 billion children (with a 99% eradication rate), provided over 40,000 Ambassadorial Scholarships, improved water and sanitation infrastructures in undeveloped countries with its global initiative for safe water, just to name a few.
The Rotary Club of Edina has been in existence for 55 years, and works not only to perpetuate the objectives of its namesake and The Rotary Foundation, but also to reach out to those in need in our area. They are 160-strong, and consist of doctors, lawyers, real estate brokers, financial planners, nurses, roofers, accountants, insurance representatives, interior decorators, and, not surprisingly, they too believe whole-heartedly in the organization’s motto.
“Our club has always been within the top 5 in our region for giving, locally and internationally,” says Byun, “and we have consistently been number one for giving in Minnesota.”
With an annual fundraising event that garners up to $100 thousand annually for their own local endowment fund, the Edina Rotary Foundation, the club has helped, and continues to help, numerous organizations locally.
“We have supported many charitable projects like Camp Enterprise, Thanksgiving Basket Program, STRIVE, Jeremiah House, Feed My Starving Children, and many others,” says President-Elect, Scott MacDonald, who got involved with Rotary in 1996. “We are all in it because it’s something that we really believe in. Rotarians are all the same; we want to give back, we want to make a difference.”
One of the projects that show first hand how Rotarians can make a difference had to do with a sweet, vision-impaired little boy named Moses (profiled in our July 2010 feature entitled “The Moses Miracle”) who had a chance encounter with Sandy Schley, 2005–2006 president of Rotary Club of Edina and current regional Rotary Foundation Chair. Moses was living in the slums of Mathari Valley outside of Nairobi, Kenya, and Schley was working on implementing the Safewater Plus Program in the area when she saw him amid a pile of garbage and refuse.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about him,” says Schley. So, she reached out to help. Over the next few years, she, and her band of fellow Rotarians, took Moses under their wing and arranged everything from corrective eye surgery to private school to a better living situation with his uncle and, recently, college tuition.
“It is amazing what we can do when we all work together,” says Byun, who is always on the lookout for new Rotarians and, among his other duties, dedicated to helping other young students on their journeys. “As long as we have people committed to service above self, we’re good to go.”
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For more information on joining Rotary Club of Edina, contact Membership Director, Leslie Kreofsky at 952.452.4851.
