Rotary Club of Bocas del Toro, Panama

A virtual visit with champions in diversity

by Diana Schoberg

Sometimes called the “Galapagos of the Caribbean,” Bocas del Toro is one of the most biologically diverse places on Earth. Situated off the north coast of Panama and comprising several main islands, dozens of cays, and hundreds of islets, the Bocas archipelago is home to Isla Bastimentos National Marine Park, a 32,000-acre nature reserve that protects mangroves, monkeys, sloths, crocodiles, sea turtles, and more than 50 coral species. It’s also adjacent to La Amistad International Park, a vast forested region that spreads northward into neighboring Costa Rica and boasts 10,000 kinds of flowering plants, 600 types of birds, 250 types of reptiles and amphibians, 115 varieties of freshwater fish, and 215 species of mammals, including pumas, ocelots, and jaguars.

The human population of Bocas is equally diverse; it includes the Indigenous Ngäbe, large Afro-Caribbean and Hispanic communities, and a sizeable Chinese-Panamanian population, some of whom are descendants of Chinese who immigrated to Panama to help build the Panama Railroad and the Panama Canal.

Emily Talentino encountered this multifaceted diversity for the first time when she took a vacation to Bocas del Toro in 2012. Within the next few years, she took five more. Shortly after becoming the executive director of a YMCA and a member of the Rotary Club of Attleboro, Massachusetts, she began volunteering for a small nonprofit supporting Indigenous communities in Bocas. Inspired, she "took a big leap" in 2014 and moved to Panama, bringing with her a $5,000 donation from her club to support the nonprofit.

Since there wasn't a club in Bocas del Toro, that was the end of Talentino's Rotary experience. Or so she thought. A few years after her move, she met Kurt Betzel, a former Rotarian from Texas who lives part-time in Bocas. Once they discovered their Rotary connection, the wheels started turning. They held the first meeting of the Rotary Club of Bocas del Toro in February 2019, and the club was chartered in May 2019 with 28 members.

While it started with a base of expats, the club has made efforts to expand its membership into the community. During a September 2021 online meeting, conversation flowed easily between English and Spanish. Club members recited The Four-Way Test in both languages, and the meeting's speakers switched effortlessly between the two. "I always joke that our official language is Spanglish," Talentino says. "We bounce back and forth. The goal is definitely to bridge that gap and build relationships between the local community, expats, and all the different demographics that live in Bocas."

One of the club's native Panamanians, Kelly Hernandez has worked with Floating Doctors, which brings volunteer medical care to the region's remote islands. She met a visiting Rotary member who was working on a project with the organization and joined him at the Bocas club's meetings. Floating Doctors holds a corporate membership with the club, and Hernandez became one of its Rotary members. "Rotary is a big network," says the 23-year-old, who is passionate about educating local women about menstrual and reproductive health. "We get to meet interesting people who might open a door to new opportunities."

Though some of the club's activities had addressed the region's biodiversity, the pandemic demanded a shift toward more immediate concerns. In partnership with Rotary clubs in the United States, Floating Doctors, and other organizations, the Bocas club arranged for the shipment from Minnesota of 43,500 pounds of fortified rice, which helped feed many people in the local community at a time of great need. "When I first joined Rotary, it was pre-COVID," says Rebecca Kuchar, who had heard about Rotary while living near the organization's headquarters in Evanston, Illinois. "I was excited about focusing on the environment. That was the thing I was grabbing onto. Since then we've had to rejigger our thinking because our biggest challenges now are humanitarian aid: keeping people alive and safe."

Most meetings are still held remotely, and the club is looking for a home base with good Wi-Fi so this option can continue. "Even without COVID, our members live across six to seven islands," Talentino says. "Sometimes water and wave conditions prevent them from getting back to town. We think the online option will be helpful." And because work with her nonprofit has scaled back due to the pandemic, Talentino currently lives in California part-time — so the remote meetings give her a way to stay involved from afar.

Still, club members are eager to return to some of their pre-pandemic projects. As a tourist town, Bocas deals with its share of pollution, and with its draw being ecotourism, the environment is among the top concerns of club members. Through an initiative shared by clubs in District 4240 (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama), the Bocas club participates in monthly tree plantings, particularly of almendro trees. That massive rainforest tree has been drastically harvested for railroad building, to the detriment of the many animal species that rely on its fruits during the dry season. With an assist from Steve Bender — the president of the Rotary Club of Newport Beach, California, who has been living in Panama throughout much of the pandemic — the Bocas and Newport Beach clubs are also working with the Rotaract Club of Newport Beach-Global Service on a coral reef project.

Its heterogeneous membership paired with a predilection for ecological projects that protect and improve the region's biodiversity make the club the perfect complement to the richly varied Bocas del Toro. "I always thought [Rotary] was a club for old people," Hernandez says. "It's incredible to look at our club and look at all the backgrounds and ages. There's a lot of diversity, and that's really nice."

• This story originally appeared in the May 2022 issue of Rotary magazine.