Past District Governor Carl Kruse awarded a Torchbearer  for Peace Certificate as she held a 1984 Olympic Torch.

 

Jelena started out by giving a brief history of Serbia, with the religion being mainly Eastern Serbian Orthodox, Protestants and Roman Catholics.  Serbia is made up of Serbians, Hungarians and people from Bosnia.  In 1217, the Serbian kingdom was recognized by the Romans; however, with the expansion of the Ottomans, Serbia was annexed for almost 500 years.

 

At the beginning of the 19^th century, it became the Kingdom of Serbia under the Ottoman Empire and in 1978, it became independent.  After the First World War until 1990, the country was an independent nation made up of Slavic people, and after World War II, the combined states became Yugoslavia.

 

Serbia today is a parliamentary republic and is currently trying to become a member of the EU.  A member of the upper middle class makes about US$450 per month; other people live on $12 per day.

 

Jelena spoke about her life journey, being born in 1981, one year after Tito died.  Tito's death was the beginning of the end for Yugoslavia.  She had a pretty happy childhood until the 1990s when all of the troubles began.  There was civil unrest in Serbia with nothing to buy in the way of food.  During the 1990s, there were many demonstrations, with people protesting freely and creatively.

In 1999, Serbia was bombed. Growing up as a teenager under these conditions made Jelena want to become a lawyer.  She started working in the labor and employment area, even though there were no private businesses.  She wanted to bring democracy and voice the concerns of those wanting to create private businesses.

 

She finished law school and specialized in European Union law.  She wanted to use that knowledge for the betterment of her country and worked in the European Commission.  Just before coming to the United States, she worked on a social dialogue enhancement project as a legal expert in Bosnia.

 

Jelena is studying social inequalities and doing research on the recent European migrant crisis.  She wants to fight violent extremism and work to bring peace and justice in areas of conflict.

 

Jelena thanked the RB Sunrise Rotary Club for supporting her in her year at USD and hoped to meet more of us in the Club.

Pres. Craig Brown with Elena Alba and her 2 daughters

Elena Lujan-Alba visited the RB Sunrise Rotary Club breakfast meeting on Tuesday, December 20, 2016.  She has been a teacher for over 25 years and is dedicated to serving the needs of diverse students in our communities.  Elena has a masters degree and specializes in reading, mathematics, and teacher education.  She has taught students from kindergarten to university level with the purpose of increasing their ability to understand and embrace our global society. 

 

In 2000, she first learned about Rotary as a member of the Group Study Exchange team in Central America.  In 2015-2016, Elena, her husband Ivan, and their two daughters, Isabel and Lily, traveled around the world for 10 months and participated in Rotary projects in several different countries.  She is currently a teacher at Crawford High School in City Heights in San Diego that has over 30 languages spoken in the school.

 

Elena started her “Alba Family World Tour 2015-2016” program by talking about how this trip got started over 10 years ago as she and her husband decided to save enough money to take a year off and travel the world.  They wanted to show their daughters the world instead of having them just read about it.  Elena and Ivan are members of Rotary and their two daughters are Rotokids, full pledged members of their Rotary Club.

 

They wanted to meet people to make friends and do Rotary projects around the world.  The Alba family started their journey by spending a couple of months traveling around Europe.  Then they traveled to Israel and Turkey and then onto Africa, India, the Philippines, China, Cambodia, and then South America, and ended up in San Diego this last June.

 

They showed their children some great sights of the world and ate some amazing food.  The hardest part of the trip was parenting.  They made vital connections for Rotary and their Rotary connections were invaluable on the trip. The children were educated by their mother while on their journey.  Elena talked about doing projects for people from other countries and learned that instead of giving people things, you need to empower them to help themselves, not for them to wait for money to come to them.