Agenda for On Line Meeting 2025-26
6:30 PM PDT
- Welcome from President and call to order
- Roll call and Introductions
- Current Announcements and News
- Program
- Comments and Questions
3 February 2026
Scott Martin, MBBI Global Partnerships Manager
Scott Martin, a landscape architect-turned-peacebuilder, is a former chapter president of MBBI-LA and former co-leader of MBBI’s Rwanda project. Scott has been engaged with MBBI for about a decade as a founding member of MBBI. In 2017 became a Rotary Peace Fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Global Partnerships Manager at MBBI.
Youth Leaders are Today’s Leaders
Come hear about an innovative Global Grant and an ICC partnership with ASEAN wherein youth leaders from 11 different ASEAN countries came together in Malaysia learn about peacebuilding from each other. Mediators Beyond Borders Int’l, the Institute for Economics and Peace, and Sunway University collaborated to design the 6-month hybrid program where these youth leaders can come together maximize their impact throughout the region.
https://events.aseanrotarypeacebuilders.org
10 February 2026
Doug Jones, Former US Senator from Alabama, Prosecution of KKK members in bombing of 16th St Baptist Church
A celebrated prosecutor who brought long-overdue justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Doug has built his career on fighting impossible battles. In 2017, he shocked the political establishment by winning a special election to fill a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama—the first Democrat to do so in 25 years in the state. On Capitol Hill, he quickly built a reputation as a well-regarded and effective legislator, passing more than two dozen bipartisan bills into law in just three years.
Doug’s first job after graduating from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University was as staff counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary for Sen. Howell Heflin (D-AL). Following his stint in Washington, he served as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1980 to 1984. Doug left government service in 1984 and was in the private practice of law in Birmingham, Alabama, until President Bill Clinton nominated him to the position of U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. His nomination was confirmed by the Senate in November 1997, and he served as U.S. attorney until June 2001. It was while serving in that position that he successfully prosecuted 2 of the 4 men responsible for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church – finally bringing full justice and closure nearly 40 years after the attack that killed four young girls. Along with taking on the Ku Klux Klan, he indicted domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph and prosecuted other criminals who sought to use fear, hatred, and violence to inhibit the rights of others.
Doug is the author of Bending Toward Justice: The Birmingham Church Bombing that Changed the Course of Civil Rights which recounts a key moment in our long national struggle for equality and the successful prosecution of two Ku Klux Klan members 40 years later.
17 February 2026
Dr. Ira Helfand, International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War
Ira Helfand, MD is a member of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapon, ICAN, the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and Past President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which founded ICAN and is itself the recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. He is also co-Founder and Past President of Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW’s US affiliate, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Back from the Brink campaign. In 2023 he received the Gandhi King Ikeda Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College.
He has published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, the British Medical Journal and the World Medical Journal on the medial consequences of nuclear war and has lectured about nuclear war in Russia, China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and across Europe and North America. He spoke at the 2013 and 2014 International Conferences on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and chaired the session on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons at the UN Open Ended Working Group in 2016 that lead to the negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons the following year. Dr. Helfand was educated at Harvard College and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and recently retired as staff physician at Family Care Medical Center. He lives with his wife, Deborah Smith, a medical oncologist, in Leeds, MA, USA, and has two grown sons and two grandchildren.
24 February 2026
Club Assembly