CMIRC Regular Hybrid (In-Person & ZOOM) Meeting

Our main speakers for the evening will be PP Santi Chatterjee and Dr. Sombat Tapanya. The topic will be  "Cultivating a Peace Culture in School: Rotary Clubs Involved and Implementation". The meeting is also accessible on ZOOM, please contact secretary@cmirotary.org for login details.

BIOS:

Santi Chatterjee joined Rotary Club of Bangkok in 1999, the first Rotary club in Thailand, an English speaking, International club. Currently she has 23 years in Rotary Service with the classification ‘Management Consultant’ to which today is added the word ‘retired’.

Santi served her club in various positions, finally becoming President of Rotary Club of Bangkok in 2013-14. This was the year TRF started Global Grants and she initiated a Global Grant that year teaching primary school teachers in Ayutthaya province the CLE way of teaching English. Because of her exposure to District activities in her Presidential year, she was invited to serve on the District 3350 Secretarial Team in 2014-15, and again 2015-16. As her principal area of interest in Rotary was Youth Service, she became District 3350 Rotaract Committee Chair in 2014-2017.

PP Santi served as Assistant Governor (AG) for 5 terms beginning in 2015-2020 and again in 2021-2022 looking after English-speaking clubs in D 3350 such as Rotary Club of Bangkok, RC Bangkok South and RC Bangkapi and for some years RC Bangkok Dach.

Dr. Sombat Tapanya is a clinical psychologist at the Peace Culture Foundation, a non-profit organization in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He has been retired from his teaching position at the Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University where he taught between 1985-2011. His research interests and clinical work are mostly on violence prevention and treatment of trauma resulting from abuse and violence.

From 2010 to the present, he has been co-principal investigator for Thailand in the Parenting Across Cultures project funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (http://parentingacrosscultures.org/).

During 2018-2019, Dr. Tapanya was also co-principal investigator of the Parenting for Lifelong Health project, supported by UNICEF Thailand and University of Oxford. The project was a randomized controlled trial with 120 low-income families in rural north-eastern Thailand. The program has been found to be effective in reducing maltreatment of children by parents and behavioral problems in children, and improving parents’ mental health. The program has been adopted by the Thai Public Health Ministry and is in the process of scaling up currently.

Dr. Tapanya obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Chiang Mai University, Master of Science degrees in Special Education and Counselor Education from the Southern Connecticut State University, and obtained his PhD in Psychology from the University of New Brunswick, Canada.

During the past two decades he has been working as consultant with the Thai Ministry of Education to reduce violence in school through efforts to eliminate bullying and physical and humiliating punishment by teachers, and with the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security in parents training to prevent child abuse and neglect. He has served as member of the National Child Protection Committee during 2016-2018.

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Entry to the in-person meeting requires proof of full Covid-19 vaccination, full facial masking and proper social distancing. Hand sanitizer is provided at the meeting sign-in desk.

Non-members wishing to attend the meeting, please contact secretary@cmirotary.org.

For more information about the club or Rotary International, visit cmirotary.org.

Note: Visitors are asked to contribute 100 Baht to cover the cost of the meeting room and beverages.