Our meeting was called to order at 12:11 on Tuesday and opened with the Pledge and the Four-way Test. In lieu of a thought for the day, I briefly described a Rotary International Project in the Philippines where a Rotary Club from there partnered with a Club from Madera, California to build a reef in the shape of a Rotary wheel, 4 meters tall by 21 meters wide. It is the largest artificial reef in the Philippines and today is covered with coral and attracts an abundance of fish. This project helped restore the local fishing industry, which had been devastated by large-scale commercial fishing vessels that had used dynamite, cyanide and fine mesh nets in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This was just an example of Rotarian creativity and the power of partnerships.
Our greeters today were Lindsey Simbeye and Raymond Martinez. Lindsey introduced our guests which included two visiting Rotarians and a number of guests, thank you Lindsey and Raymond. Ashley announced the availability of sponsorships for the Barn Dance, scheduled for September 22nd and passed around a sign-up sheet. Kerry’s daughter Claire thanked the Rotarians for donations to Lift-up and announced that a total of $32 was collected today.
Scott Marr presented a Jack Black Fellow award to Kristal Eckley for her contributions to our local Foundation, thank you Kristal.
We were fortunate to have three girl scouts attend our meeting, along with parents/leaders. They wanted to report on how the funds were spent, at Troop Trek, and to formally thank us. They presented us with a poster, a poem that they had written, a song and a carton holding several boxes of G.S. cookies, later auctioned off at Good News for the benefit of our scholarship funds.
We welcomed three new members into our club on Tuesday: Hazel Hoff, sponsors are Lori Livingston and Tiffany Leeson, Alex Kleman, sponsors are Debbie Aragon and Kris Hammond and Meg Holpuch, sponsors are Brett Allison and Marci Valacenti.
Julie Taulman and Karen Schneider presented our program. They first introduced our summer exchange students, then presented a brief history and a look behind the scenes at the Student Exchange Program. The Rotary student exchange program in known to be one of the safest and well organized exchange programs available. They described the training that is required to become the Youth Exchange Officer, introduced the counselors and the committee. They relayed expectations of the students, parents and host families and presented an outline of the costs involved, answering many of the questions we have wondered about. Hours of work goes into this program and we, as Rotary members can help by always being mindful of ways we can include our exchange students in our everyday activities, homes, special excursions or just a family dinner. Tara Weaver passed around a sign-up sheet to commit to some type of activity with the incoming exchange students this year. Thank you Julie, Karen and all of your committee for your dedication to this program. We look forward to welcoming two new exchange students in September.
Bethany Karulak was kind enough to do Good News, Paula’s raspberries brought a whopping $50 and several boxes of Girl Scout cookies were purchased at a price of $20 in addition to all of the contributions for sharing of Good News. The meeting was adjourned at 1:35pm (oops!).
Have a good week,
Carol Johnson