A huge Rotary thank you to all of you for making this past Rotary year a success for our club. District 5960 recognized the great work you have all done by naming our club the medium size Club of the Year and awarding the club the District Governor's Citation. Our work internationally was recognized when the district named our club the first place winner for medium size clubs in the International Service category. Our club received third place awards for medium size clubs in the categories of Community Service, Club Service, Youth Service and Vocational Service.There are 19 medium size clubs in the district. Having placed in every area of the awards competition, we should be proud of our club and the accomplishments it took to be so recognized.
The sewing school in India for which Bob Freed was able to get is District Grant was able to graduate its first class before the pandemic shut it down. Hopefully, Rotary International will provide a Global Grant to help fund the WASH Project in Nigeria in response to Mike Spellman's application. Stephanie Cosgrove and her community service team helped us live the motto of Service Above Self by setting up 10 service projects and three projects to which we donated money. As human trafficking champion Stephanie attended meetings and training. She has applied for a district grant to help fund the Not a Number human trafficking prevention program. As one of those service projects Kent Peterson started the Suburban Ramsey Emergency Coalition with 11 other service clubs and two community foundations. Over $50,000 has been raised by the coalition which is starting to distribute grants to community organizations. The coalition will hold a virtual fund raiser in August being organized by Ken Hola and Mark Stange.
Miriam Zachary and Al Ramos worked with Mounds View High School to award our STRIVE/STRIPES scholarship as part of the youth and vocational avenues of service. Al also freshened up the club's web page. Club Service Director Kay Baker assisted by Treasurer Jerry Peterson found us a new venue for our weekly meetings at Flaherty's Arden Bowl. We also have managed to have some fun social gatherings and Zoom happy hours after the virus hit. Jerry also made sure we managed our funds prudently and got the bills paid. Ken Hola lead teams to raise money for the club and the Healthy Youth Foundation at the Slice of Shoreview bingo pavilion and at the Taste of the Hops.
Paul Bartyzal as club secretary administered the club, communicated with Rotary International and kept us informed through monthly newsletters and weekly reminders along with some humor to start our meetings. Executive Secretary Jingle Mahan kept the minutes of board meetings and published the agenda for those meetings to keep us on track.
Much of what Rotary does around the world is financed through The Rotary Foundation. Peggy Strom as our foundation officer inspired us to generously give to TRF through her own example and asking each of us do give as we were able. Our club donated about $18,000 to TRF this past year! I believe that is a record for our club and one of the highest per capita rates in the district at over $526 per member.
Glenn Bowers and his team of volunteers continued our club's tradition of having really good programs at our weekly meetings. Zoom did make it easier for speakers to present an informative and interesting program without having to fight rush hour traffic. We are all better informed as a result of those programs.
I was very happy to welcome new members Maryna Daw, Dave Newman and Tony Turgeon this past year. We have to come up with some way to attract new members even as we continue to meet via Zoom. Your ideas on that subject are needed.
In closing my last president's corner I would like to thank Past President Bill Kiehnbaum for laying the foundation during his term for all that we were able to accomplish during my term as president. I was fortunate to have inherited a great leadership team and a great group of members to do all the good works described in this column. Glenn Bowers will do a great job as our next president with your help. Thanks for the privilege of serving as your club president.
The Rotary Friday Feature last week was another excellent zoom program touching on current events and the issue of race. Anthony Galloway, Executive Director of ART-US, provided insight to the history and development of racism in the U S and how messaging in our media perpetrate it. Artistic images such as the Statue of Liberty or media portrayal of Rosa Parks shaped our beliefs today about race. In 1886, the statue was a symbol of democratic government as well as a celebration of the Union’s victory in the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery. If you look closely, you can see the statue’s shackles and chains around her feet. It then shows them broken. To many black people the statue did not represent a symbol of a free society after the war. In many cities there were covenants limiting black people to where they could live. The American rail system might have connected people and places, but it was also a dangerous place to work for African Americans. In the early 1900’s, black railway workers were often killed by their white counterparts, in a wave of assassinations. How did this start? Many racial patterns have been attributed to Carl Linnaeus who established a classification system by race. He proposed Western Europeans the “superior” race. Other writers felt that race mixing would lead to collapse of culture. We have obviously come a long way from that thinking but there is much to do to change thinking. Anthony Galloway offers education to schools and the business community. Their mission is to develop young leaders through arts, culture and science of the African Diaspora.
If you would like to listen to Galloway’s presentation, go to the District 5960 web site and click on Friday Features July 31 u tube video.
Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic started, our Club helped to start the Suburban Ramsey Emergency Coalition. https://www.suburbanramseycoalition.org/. The Coalition is composed of all 13 local affiliates of the four major international service club organizations; 7 Lions, 3 Rotary, 2 Kiwanis, and 1 Optimists in the Roseville and Mounds View School Districts. We also include Community Foundations from the Roseville Area and Shoreview.
We have currently raised more than $54,000. Thank you to our Club that has donated $2,000 and to many members of our Club who have donated generously. To donate, go to:
https://www.givemn.org/story/Suburbanramseycovid19responsefund The Coalition was awarded a District 5960 COVID-19 Emergency Grant for $3,100 of which our Club was a supporting sponsor. The goal is to raise $150,000 by 12/31/20. Using these funds, the Coalition has awarded the following grants to date:
· $5,000 toCommunity Support Center for housing assistance to families in the communities of New Brighton, Mounds View, North Oaks, Shoreview, and Arden Hills affected by COVID-19 crisis to help prevent them from being evicted from their homes.
$5,000 toKeystone Community Services for both emergency food and crisis housing
assistance. Food purchases will be used current Food-mobile distributions and two new Food-
mobile distribution sites in the Roseville area.
$5,000 toNeighborhood House for emergency housing assistance to families in the Roseville
area and Mounds View school district communities including Arden Hills and Shoreview.
$5,000 toQuincy House for food during the summer for vulnerable teens from Irondale High
School and their families who are struggling due to very difficult economic situations.
$10,000 to Sheridan Story to purchase additional food to provide food bags for children to be
distributed in cooperation with the City of Roseville at the Roseville Fire Station..
· $10,000 to Ralph Reeder Food Shelf to provide weekly student food boxes throughout the summer to low income children living in the Mounds View school district.
$5,000 to Community Partners with Youth (CPY) to deliver food boxes and supplement them
with fresh fruit, vegetable and bread products provided by Second Harvest Heartland, Farmer’s Markets and other partners. In addition to food boxes, staff of CPY provides games and summer services at 7 low income to the communities in New Brighton, Mounds View and Arden Hills.
The Coalition also sponsored a volunteer project to sew 200 isolation gowns to provide infection
control for staff and patients of Ramsey County Care Center in Maplewood. The cloth, washable gowns are needed due to inadequate availability of either re-useable or cloth isolation gowns. Thank you to the following Club members, spouses and friends who were part of the nearly 40 volunteers from 6 different cities in our area: Cindy Spellman, Fran Hola, Jean Kiehnbaum, Lori Suzukida, Betty Bartyzal, Miriam Zachary, Sue Krabbenhoft, Susan Vadnais, Ellinor Jackson and Diane Peterson who coordinated the project.
Currently, the big Coalition project is Stepping Up for Our Community, a 3-mile virtual run/walk on August 3- 9, 2020. Ken Hola is event chair and Mark Stange is part of the event committee. Current sponsors are: Midland Terrace/Lakeview Terrace Apartments (Tycon Companies), Kraus Anderson and Roseville Visitors Association. More sponsors are being sought. To register, go to:
Today's speaker was our own Maryna Daw. She was joined by colleagues Jennifer Giovinazzo, Viet Le, and Jaime Wambach from Pinnacle Real Estate in order to provide an update on current residential real estate trends in the Twin Cities. Maryna shared that she became interested in real estate while growing up in Ukraine, where most people live in apartments, causing her to feel awe when watching American TV and seeing the free-standing homes more familiar to those of us growing up here. The team shared that, while it might seem surprising, the local real estate market has continued to be strong throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. In May, average days-on-the-market declined from 46 to 41 and average selling prices are strong. This is in part because the inventory of homes has fallen, making it a true sellers market. Most homes, especially those on the lower end of the spectrum, are receiving multiple offers. One impact of the pandemic is that home offices have become a prime amenity that buyers are looking for, as so many have changed to working from home. I experienced the truth of what Maryna and team were saying when we listed our home for sale on March 19th of this year. Having already agreed to purchase a new home, we had to move forward, despite great trepidation. I was amazed that we had requests for showings immediately, just as the country was beginning to deal with the reality of Covid-19 and the stock market was plunging. I thought then and continue to feel that the strength of residential real estate sales is a comforting sign that many folks feel confident in their jobs and that we will, indeed, get through this!
Today's featured speaker was Patty Hall, member of the White Bear Lake Club and founder of H2O For Life. Recently, our club, led by Mike Spellman, has partnered with Patty to write and submit a Global Grant for a WASH program in Nigeria, which, as with all global grants, has been a monumental process. Patty's presentation today, however, covered a different topic. In February, she led a group of White Bear Lake Rotarians on a trip to Kenya to visit water projects followed by a 7 day climb to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Her comments today centered around that climb - how she trained, geared up, and survived this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even though Kilimanjaro is not considered a "technical climb" (i.e. regular people like us can do it without a lot of technical equipment), it is clearly not for the faint of heart or ill-prepared! At 19,000 feet it is the highest peak in Africa, making climbers susceptible to the altitude sickness that goes along with that. Precautions were taken and luckily only one of Patty's group was hit with it and had to be carried a fair distance down the mountain by porters. The weather on the mountain can vary greatly and their group was not blessed in this regard. It rained nearly every day, making a difficult trip even more challenging, comfort-wise. The group's guide stressed the mantra "Pole-Pole", which means "Step-Step" in Swahili, referring to the wisdom of taking it slow and steady in order to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the challenge. The team posed jubilantly for a great picture at the summit on a rare day of sun, having accomplished something difficult and raising $35,000 for H2O for Life in the process!
Today's speaker was Meg Duhr, Outreach Specialist from The Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center (MAISRC) at the University of Minnesota. The Center's mission is to develop research-based solutions that can reduce the impacts of aquatic invasive species in Minnesota by preventing spread, controlling populations, and managing ecosystems; and to advance knowledge to inspire action by others. This is an interdisciplinary research center led by research fellows but aided by representatives in other areas as needed, such as veterinary medicine or marketing. Invasive speciesare those that, when moving into a new locale tend to spread rapidly, overwhelm resident species, and cause ecological or economic harm or harm to human health. MAISRC focuses its research efforts on species that have been prioritized based on their proximity to Minnesota, pathway of spread, and impact. The list of top concerns currently includes Zebra Mussels, Asian Carp, Starry Stonewart, and Eurasian Milfoil. MAISRC was founded in 2012 with a grant from the state, but receives funding for ongoing operations from many sources such as various watershed districts and lakeshore associations around the state as well as from other government organizations and private enterprises. The organization also depends on an army of volunteers to help survey and control local lakes. They provide training to these "citizen scientists", of which there are currently over 300.
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