Global Humanitarian Leadership: Pat Merryweather-Arges on Healthcare, Rotary, and Ethical Service

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/06/18

Part 1 of 3

Pat Merryweather-Arges, Executive Director of Project Patient Care and longtime Rotarian, shares insights from her decades of humanitarian work across over 30 countries. From leading healthcare improvement programs in the U.S. to supporting global initiatives in Kenya, Honduras, and Pakistan, she emphasizes patient-centred care, clean water, and education. Her stories include delivering emergency COVID aid to Honduras, aiding abandoned infants in Kenya, and supporting interfaith housing projects in flood-stricken Pakistan. A former Rotary International Vice President, she champions collaboration across religious, geographic, and political divides. She highlights Rotary’s global mission, especially polio eradication, and praises Pope Leo XIV’s focus on justice and humility. Despite rising global authoritarianism and threats to NGOS, Merryweather-Arges remains hopeful about ethical leadership and grassroots compassion. She reveals what truly unites Rotarians through laughter, stories, and hard truths: fellowship, integrity, and the drive to serve others with dignity and purpose.

Pat Merryweather-Arges, Executive Director of Project Patient Care and longtime Rotarian, shares insights from her decades of humanitarian work across over 30 countries. From leading healthcare improvement programs in the U.S. to supporting global initiatives in Kenya, Honduras, and Pakistan, she emphasizes patient-centred care, clean water, and education. Her stories include delivering emergency COVID aid to Honduras, aiding abandoned infants in Kenya, and supporting interfaith housing projects in flood-stricken Pakistan. A former Rotary International Vice President, she champions collaboration across religious, geographic, and political divides. She highlights Rotary’s global mission, especially polio eradication, and praises Pope Leo XIV’s focus on justice and humility. Despite rising global authoritarianism and threats to NGOS, Merryweather-Arges remains hopeful about ethical leadership and grassroots compassion. She reveals what truly unites Rotarians through laughter, stories, and hard truths: fellowship, integrity, and the drive to serve others with dignity and purpose.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Pat Merryweather-Arges. She is a seasoned healthcare leader and humanitarian with over three decades of experience in healthcare quality improvement, nonprofit leadership, and global service. She is the Executive Director of Project Patient Care (PPC). This nonprofit organization enhances healthcare quality, safety, and equity through collaborative initiatives involving patients, families, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. Her work supports national healthcare transformation and promotes authentic patient engagement across all care settings.

Before her current role, Pat held several prominent positions, including Executive Director of Medicare’s Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) programs in Illinois, Iowa, and Colorado, and Senior Vice President at the Illinois Hospital Association. In these capacities, she led statewide and regional initiatives to improve the quality and safety of care.

Pat has made extensive contributions to the Rotary community. She was a Rotary International Director (2022–2024) and Vice President (2023–2024). She is currently the Chair of the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Rotary Action Group (2024–2025) and serves on the Mental Health Rotary Action Group Board (2024–2026). She also serves on the board of the International Rotary Fellowship of Healthcare Professionals and has held various leadership roles within Rotary District 6450, including District Governor.

Her Rotary service includes leadership in global humanitarian projects, focusing on healthcare, clean water, sanitation, women’s empowerment, and peacebuilding in Kenya, India, Jordan, Haiti, and others. She is the recipient of the Rotary Foundation Meritorious Service Award and the Rotary International Service Above Self Award. She also married George Arges, a fellow Rotarian. They have four sons, three daughters-in-law, and now eight grandchildren. Are any of them honorary Rotarians?

Merryweather-Arges: Some are Paul Harris Fellows, yes.

Jacobsen: Can they officially become Rotarians yet?

Merryweather-Arges: Not until they are older. However, there are Rotary programs for youth.

Jacobsen: Is there a fun name for kids of Rotarians? Like “Rotors”?

Merryweather-Arges: [Laughing] Not quite—but there is Interact, which is for high school students, and Rotaract for young adults aged 18 and older. Both are focused on leadership development and service. It is like being part of a student-led community service organization.

Jacobsen: Great. So, of all the countries you have worked in, which one, either at the time or even now, has faced the most significant humanitarian challenges? How has Rotary International helped?

Merryweather-Arges: There have been many, depending on the moment in history. Some countries experience a deep crisis, and you return later and see signs of recovery. Honduras stands out to me. I was there during great hardship. Rotary’s work focused on education and school development. Supporting access to quality education has been key to helping communities overcome systemic challenges and build hope for the future.

When children do not have access to education or schools are not adequately equipped to meet educational standards, it creates deep, generational challenges. In Honduras, a Rotarian named Chuck Newman conducted a comprehensive study of schools nationwide. He found that most were severely lacking—lacking in facilities, lacking in trained educators, and lacking in basic resources.

We have tried working in Honduras, but it remains a challenging country. The government is genuinely trying to improve conditions, but it is difficult for them to address every region equally. On top of that, high crime rates and gang activity create serious obstacles, especially in some urban areas. So, we often have to work around those challenges to be effective.

During COVID, we received an urgent email from a physician in San Pedro Sula pleading for any assistance. He worked at a hospital where almost every patient who came in with COVID was dying. He asked for respiratory equipment and medications to help save lives.

We could turn that request around quickly—within a week, we sent the equipment and medication he needed. He later wrote a scientific paper describing its impact on his hospital and the patients. Our Rotary club had sponsored the funding. He joined us on Zoom during a club meeting and cried. He sobbed, saying, “You do not know what this meant to our community.”

Moments like that stay with you.

Another region in which I have worked extensively is Kenya. Since I became a Rotarian, we have partnered with the same community for years—Upendo Village in the Naivasha area. We started by providing HIV rapid testing kits and then moved on to water wells, fluoridation systems, and other essential infrastructure.

When I visited one of the nearby hospitals where most women went to give birth, I was shocked. They were delivering on cement slabs, not hospital beds. After delivery, the staff would hose down the slab and prepare it for the next person. Women would sleep head-to-toe, two to a bed, with their newborns beside them. It was heartbreaking.

What stayed with me was a visit to the burn unit, which was also where abandoned infants born to mothers with HIV/AIDS were left. The hope was that someone—anyone—might take them in. I saw a stillborn baby lying on a shelf in the sun. It was surreal and tragic. Many of the surviving babies were lying in cribs soaked in urine, some crying without tears—they were so dehydrated that they could no longer cry properly.

I went to the nursing unit in a nearby building to raise concerns. We were working with Sister Florence Mwewa, a remarkable community leader, and I told her, “I cannot believe what I have just seen.”

I asked, “Why are not the babies in the nursing unit?” The nurses said, “Oh, we would love to have the babies—most of them are HIV-positive or were abandoned.” So I told them, “We will find a way.”

I spoke with Sister Florence, and she had to push for municipal changes in the law to allow babies who were abandoned or born with HIV to be cared for in the nursing unit. Moreover, you see something like that—it seems so fundamentally human, yet it requires changing laws to make it happen.

Sister Florence is what I call a hero. She went up against the municipal government, which is no small feat in parts of Kenya. In some regions, women cannot legally own land. When a husband dies, the land and house do not go to the widow—they go to the husband’s brother, who can then decide whether to let the widow stay or force her out.

In getting to know these challenges, you understand the depth of communities’ issues. However, you always come across local heroes, like the doctor in Honduras who was so determined to save lives or Sister Florence, who has just been extraordinary.

When we installed a water well in Upendo Village, she ensured it was open to the community. People use it for gardening and other basic needs. Later, we helped develop a community business center—a shared space where small businesses could rent and grow.

Then Sister Florence had another idea. She said, “I want to start a bottled water distribution business.” So she started a small-scale water bottling plant.

I said, “There are already so many companies in the market.”

She replied, “I will undercut them. I will charge less and earn their business.”

And she did. She is a strict nun.

Jacobsen: You know what they call nuns with attitude who get things done? They do not call them sisters; they call them sassters.

Merryweather-Arges: [Laughing] Then yes, she is a sasster!

I was in Pakistan almost two years ago, during an agitated time. The former Prime Minister had just been jailed, and there were protests all across the country. In September 2022, Sindh Province flooded a third of the country. It was devastating. Everything was wiped out.

As we drove through Sindh, I saw people still living on cardboard boxes along the highway, as far as the eye could see. It was heartbreaking. In response, Rotarians there launched an initiative called Smart Villages. Fez, an architect, started it. He designed structures for communities to rebuild in safer, more sustainable ways.

Each Smart Village includes about 100 housing units. When I say “housing units,” I mean small cement and mud huts—modest but solid. Families paint and decorate them, making them their own. Each village also includes a community center and a water station.

In that area, mud ovens and many features were designed for everyday living. What surprised me was that the first Smart Village was explicitly built for migrants from India. These families were Hindu, and the local Muslim Rotarians also constructed a Hindu temple where they could worship.

They said, “These are our friends.” That level of interfaith compassion—Muslim Rotarians building housing and a temple for Hindu migrants—was profoundly moving. Witnessing such devastation and finding these lights of hope in the most unexpected and remote places leaves a lasting impression.

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Jacobsen: That reminds me—did you ever hear about what Noam Chomsky shared after his first wife passed away? Some community deep in the forest planted a forest in her memory. They had never met her. Those kinds of acts—small, quiet, deeply human—stay with you.

Merryweather-Arges: Yes, exactly. It is very moving.

Jacobsen: You mentioned travelling with armed guards while in Pakistan. Was that a common experience, or was it unique to that trip?

Merryweather-Arges: The only other place that happened was in parts of Mexico, where we were escorted by armed police in trucks and jeeps. However, no—Rotarians usually meet you at the airport, waiting for you when you get off the plane, and they escort you safely. I’ve rarely had issues.

Well, I should add that in Nigeria, there was one time when things were agitated. We were working with Bishop Shanahan Hospital, a Catholic hospital, and nearby, in a local village, the Fulani herders came through and killed dozens of people. Tragically, they also removed the victims’ hearts. The bodies were brought to the hospital for identification by family members.

We were travelling through the region at the time. Security checkpoints were along the road—every few blocks, not even every mile. They would radio ahead at each one or call the next checkpoint to say, “We have the group now—expect them in X minutes.”It was a tightly coordinated effort. But it was not Rotarians watching over us that time—it was the local police.

Jacobsen: Was that in northern or southern Nigeria? Generally, the north is predominantly Muslim, and the south is primarily Christian.

Merryweather-Arges: It was in Nsukka, near Enugu. So not exactly north or south—it’s more south-central. That area is quite mixed. But where we were, it’s very blended.

Jacobsen: Was this around the height of the Boko Haram media coverage?

Merryweather-Arges: Yes. We had visited Opus Dei Hospital, a Catholic facility in Enugu, an incredible place and one of the best hospitals in Nigeria. About fifteen minutes after we left, Boko Haram came in and kidnapped the head of the hospital, who was a physician. This was around Easter, and everyone was praying for him. One of their own had been injured, and they wanted medical help. That was the reason for the abduction. So he was taken to keep the injured person alive. After about seven days, he was released. But yes, it was a dire situation.

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