Rita-Stella Nwojiji

Rita-Stella Nwojiji was a young widow in Ebonyi State, Nigeria, raising three children under six on a teacher's salary when a colleague invited her to a Rotary fellowship. That same week, she joined a club project serving meals to inmates at Abakaliki Correctional Centre, and something in her shifted.

By 2011, she was club president, leading projects that built toilets and clean water access for a school for the blind and renovated homes for orphaned babies. The work caught the attention of Ebonyi State's First Lady, who helped her get a job at the National Obstetric Fistula Centre, and she later led a Rotary Group Study Exchange team to Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin.

Her own words say it best: when you serve humanity sincerely and diligently, humanity has a remarkable way of rewarding you.

Source: Rotary International's blog, blog.rotary.org, https://blog.rotary.org/2026/08/11/rotary-invitation-becomes-my-lifes-turning-point/