March was incredibly productive for our club. We successfully approved changes to our by-laws. We had an enlightening discussion on the Guatemala Literacy Project (GLP), a large Rotary global grant project that has had a profound impact on literacy improvement thanks to the collective efforts of 800 Rotary clubs and 90 districts over the twenty-seven years. (www.guatemalliteracy.org). Emily Swisher, the GLP presenter sends this note,” Feeling grateful to Arden Hills-Shoreview club for such a warm welcome, important questions, and thoughtful discussion. It was an honor to present our project”. Her email describes how you can sponsor a student. I will share this email separately.
Excitingly, our club is poised to proposed TWO significant grant projects: 1) a global grant (~$60K) championed by Rotarian Don Martin for Liberia for providing necessary medical equipment and training for nurses to improve Ear and Hearing care, and 2) a district international grant ($28K) led by Rotarian Dave Newman for farmers in a Nicaragua community, that will directly connect small agriculture farmers with market, eliminate the middleman and thus realize the added value to their product, while potentially exporting a significant portion of their crops. The club will support both these projects by contributing the $3000 each, the remainder to be raised from other clubs and Rotary match grants.
What is commendable about these two proposals is that their potential to foster systemic and sustainable change with the respective communities. Reviewing the proposals, I couldn’t help but recall the teachings during my executive MBA of Prof Marshall Ganz of Harvard University. He emphasized that social change is catalyzed by purposeful individuals or organizations who respond to challenges, cultivate new relationships, and harness economic and cultural influence to drive action.
In the upcoming meeting, I will allocate time for Don and Dave to present their international projects. Thanks to Glenn Bower to encourage his committee members to think differently and propose these impactful projects.
As we continue to invite speakers to our club who shed light on pressing community needs like hunger, homelessness, literacy, and mental health, it is imperative that we delve deeper into the root causes of these issues. Our committees should serve as platforms for identifying these key issues, strategic planning, fostering collaboration, engaging community, and maximizing the potential of grants to enact lasting change.
We will be looking forward to a busy April planning and executing the Taste of Shoreview event, a fundraiser that will support the Slice of Shoreview event during summer. Please help Ken Hola by volunteering to help him conduct this event.
A heartfelt thank you to each of you for your unwavering efforts.
Attended: Elinor Jackson, Bill Klumpp, Miriam Zachary
Absent: Mike Spellman, Kevin Keenan, Anoop Mathur, Charlie Oltman, Matt Rossetter
The Membership Committee met at the Shoreview Library on January 17.
We tabled discussion of the results the survey that the committee conducted in September and October due to low attendance. It was felt that most members are planning to continue membership. If there is anyone who is dissatisfied, uncomfortable, or considering leaving our club, please contact someone on the committee so that we can address any problems.
We also discussed the Membership Olympics, which is a district-wide program to boost membership while having fun. There are 7 challenges, of which we have completed 3, including the club survey. The next challenge is to conduct a membership drive, which we intend to do in May/June. We would like to invite non-Rotarians and have several months to target prospective candidates. Please begin to consider at least 2 people you know to interest them in attending.
We would also like to start a “Community Partners” group. These are people who may not immediately want to join Rotary, but would like to be called upon when we do our service projects. When a service project is scheduled, a notice would go out to this list inviting them to join us.
The next meeting is on February 21 at 4:00 at the Shoreview Library.
Our Club’s February service project focused on the Kids In Need Foundation in Roseville.On February 13 six of our members and three of their guests helped the Foundation fulfill its mission by assembling school supplies for children in need and by stocking a school supply center for under-resourced teachers.
Over a two hour span our group packed 288 individual student school pouches with pens, pencils, boxes of crayons, glue sticks, erasers, and paper scissors.In addition the group packed 63,000 pencils into class room size packets for the teacher supply center.
The Foundation strives to empower under-resource strapped teachers and students by providing them with the school supplies they need to succeed in the classroom.This, in turn, helps creates an equitable learning environment in more impoverished communities.
The Kids in Need Foundation is the only national nonprofit focusing on the nation’s most under-sourced schools: those where 70 percent or more of the enrolled students are eligible for free or reduced-cost meals.
Today was our monthly lunch meeting at Shore96. Don Martin was our presenter. He provided an update on the "Light of The World" Academy in Liberia, Africa with which he has been involved. This school was founded by Reverend Sylvester Johnson, who visited one of our meetings last year. This is a novel teaching concept which uses "Smart Box" computer technology to aid in reaching students in a remote region of Liberia. The Smart Box is a self-contained computer lab which runs on battery power and does not require an internet connection. It has proven to be very effective. Students in West Africa are required to pass a uniform standardized test and test scores for those utilizing the Smart Box have gone from a 25% passing rate prior to Smart Box to 88% currently. As background information, we learned that Liberia was first settled in 1822 by freed slaves. It became a republic in 1847. It has about the same population as the state of MN and there are many former Liberians now living in MN. Their government structure is similar to the U.S. However, there were 2 civil wars between 1989 and 2003, resulting in a total of 250,000 deaths. So - as polarized as our current U.S. political situation is, it was good to be reminded that things could indeed be much more fraught with challenge here!
Today's speaker was our own Mike Spellman. Mike is a member of The District 5960 Make Peace Visible Initiative which encourages clubs to maximize Rotary as an agent of peace, to intentionally connect club activities with Peacebuilding, and share peace stories within their communities. The members of this team have completed training through the Rotary Positive Peace Academy on the 8 Pillars of peace. These 8 pillars of peace include things like access to health care and education. Mike reviewed work that has been done to evaluate and denote a "peace score" for countries around the world. based on these pillars. The evaluation also looks at everything from outright war to gang activity and other forms of conflict. On the low end of that scoring system are a number of countries in Africa plus Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of the countries on the high end of the peace scoring system are Canada, Portugal and Scandinavian countries. Unfortunately the United States is closer to the low end than the high end.
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