Alan Bazzaz retired from the tech industry in 2007. Nearly two decades later, the 76-year-old Lake Oswego resident is busier than ever, channeling his Rotary connections into projects that have delivered neonatal ventilators to a Turkish hospital and raised more than $60,000 in earthquake relief.
Bazzaz, a past president of the Lake Oswego Rotary Club, shared his international work at a Monday meeting at the Lakewood Center for the Arts, as reported by the Lake Oswego Review on Tuesday, Aug. 25.
His connection to Alanya, a coastal city in Turkey's Antalya province, started in 2022 when he visited a friend. He fell in love with the town, bought a home there with his wife and sought out the local Rotary chapter.
"The Rotary Club of Alayna (has) about 25-30 members, but they're very active. They do so much work in the community … So we have started doing work with them," Bazzaz told the Lake Oswego Review.
That partnership turned urgent after the 2023 earthquake devastated medical facilities across the region. Alanya State Hospital, located about 500 kilometers from the impact zone, absorbed a surge of patients.
The number of babies requiring oxygen there jumped from 94 in 2023 to 166 in 2024. Without mechanical ventilators, 60 premature infants in the first 10 months of 2024 alone had to be transferred to another hospital two hours away by car.
The Lake Oswego club served as the Alanya Rotary Club's international partner on "Breath of Life," an $80,000 global grant project that provided three mechanical neonatal ventilators and staff training to the hospital's Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit.
A pediatrician in the Alanya club identified the equipment shortages and helped launch the effort.
The club also helped raise more than $60,000 for immediate earthquake relief, including four containers of portable bathroom stalls for refugee camps.
A second project takes shape
The Lake Oswego club is now partnering on "Early Light," a $146,000 project to purchase two pieces of diagnostic equipment for premature newborns with underdeveloped retinal blood vessels.
The equipment is expected to help 43 babies each year. Lake Oswego Rotary has contributed $8,000 so far, with 14 other clubs in Rotary District 5100 adding $30,000, according to a Forest Grove Rotary newsletter published Aug. 9.
From Baghdad to Eugene to Lake Oswego
Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Bazzaz moved to Oregon in 1978 to study computer science at the University of Oregon.
When the Iraq-Iran war began in the 1980s, Saddam Hussein's regime uprooted his family, and he could not return home.
He co-founded a company in Eugene that used computer technology to reduce waste in the timber industry, spending 25 years there before moving to Lake Oswego.
His Rotary work extends beyond Turkey. In Guatemala, Bazzaz has visited a rural school for Indigenous women where Rotarians sponsor a year's tuition for $100. One moment stuck with him. He recalled seeing a former scholarship recipient who had earned her teaching license and returned to teach at the same school.
"My wife says you seem to be more busy than when you were working," Bazzaz said. "But I am busy and I love it."
Bazzaz also serves on the Rotary District 5100 Peacebuilder Committee.
How to get involved
The Lake Oswego Rotary Club meets every Monday at noon at the Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S. State St. Grant funding applications opened after the club's June 20 Lobster Feed fundraiser and are available on a first-come basis until funds are depleted.
Contact grant administrator Peter York for details.
