The month of August brought us our annual Taste of Hops & Vines fundraising event and boy did it not disappoint! Each and every one of you should be incredibly proud of your efforts. Even with a lighter slate of vendors and lower than expected ticket sales, your efforts saw us to our most successful monetary event to date. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
We heard from the Sheriff's department and the owner of Dependable Solutions on the topic of fraud and scams this past month. There was lots of great information and ways to best protect ourselves from bad actors trying to access our information and take what they can. Reflecting on the information presented, I can't help but think how great it is organizations like Rotary exist. It's so, so easy to get caught up in all the 'bad' we hear on a daily basis, but it sure is nice to belong to a group of people doing good.
If you know of someone who you think would bring good information to the club, be a dynamic and thought-provoking speaker or have an interesting topic to share, there is room on the speaker list. Please just let me know if you do fill a speaking slot.
In March, our Club’s service project focused on helping the Every Meal organization fulfill its mission of alleviating food insecurity for children. Sixteen members of our Club were joined by 12 students from the Mounds View High School volunteer club in this effort.
The task before us was to help lessen food insecurity for school children by packing bags of food for students to take home for the weekend, a time when they don’t have access to school meals.
Over the course of two hours, our group, together with volunteers from other organizations, packed 4,722 bags of food which provided 18,099 weekend meals for school children.
More than 300,000 children in Minnesota live in food insecurity. Every Meal partners with businesses, faith communities and service organizations to fill the food bags for school children, ensuring their families have a healthy source of food over the weekend. To learn more about Every Meal visit https://www.everymeal.org/.
This service project again illustrates how our Club’s members are fulfilling Rotary’s mission of “Service Above Self”.
On May 7, our district grants committee held a Shark Tank Event. Clubs that have not had a grant in the past 3 years were invited to submit grant proposals to the “Sharks” in hopes of receiving funding for their proposal. Don Martin participated as a Shark for our club, which provided an amount of $200 to the event. The grant applications were circulated ahead of the event and reviewed by the Sharks. At the Zoom event, each club presented their proposal and answered questions from the Sharks. The Sharks then gathered in a ‘break-out room’ and discussed the proposals.
The big winner with $2,950 was the Greater Rochester Club who plans to work with a club in Uganda, Africa, to build 13 learning centers across 6 sites within 3 refugee camps for educating 330 primary school students. All of the funds from our club were committed to this project. All this sounds astounding, but even more astounding is the total budget for the project is just over $16,000. There is a lot of parents in a refugee camp willing to contribute their labor so that their children can have an education and a lot of dirt to be converted into mud bricks to construct the buildings!
Next was Barron County Sunrise with $2,250 to assemble and distribute “Joy Jars” for children undergoing cancer treatments. The budget for their project is $16,000.
The final entry was Waseca Rotary Club with $1,750 to develop a Rotary Wellness Walk/park on a ½ acre plot that is part of the FarmAmerica MN Agricultural Interpretive Center near Waseca. The budget for their project is $35,000.
Below is a chart that shows the Shark Clubs and the funds they provided; the participating clubs and how the money was distributed.
The district grant team did a great job of organizing and executing the event. The event even had ‘celebrity appeal’ with Ed Boeve, the current District Governor and our own Glenn Bowers, the incoming District Governor, in attendance. Frank Mabley from our club also participated as an observer. I learned that if we are going to participate in the future, we should have the ability to commit at least $1,000 to the participating clubs. As you can see from the table above, other clubs provided $750, $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000 each, compared to our $200.
I think the event was successful in reaching the goal of encouraging clubs that have not applied for a grant in the past 3 years to “jump in” and give it a try. In addition, when a bunch of Rotarians get together, there is helpful information shared, and a good time is had by all.
Fellow Rotarians Anoop Mathur and John Suzukida became active with the Small Sums organization after we heard a presentation from the group at one of our regular meetings a number of years ago. Today, the groups Executive Director Leika Pierre-Louis joined our meeting to provide an update about the organization. The mission of this organization is to outfit individuals experiencing homelessness or housing instability with the required work items needed to start a new job. This mission is simple, very practical and powerful. Examples of the items frequently needed are appropriate work wear such as boots/shoes, mandatory tools for trade professions, bus passes, gas cards and test/license fees. They served over 1,200 people last year. We are invited to support their annual fundraiser on Thursday May 22nd which is a breakfast at 8:00 a.m. at the Town & Country Club in St. Paul.
We also heard today from Dan Dietz and George Cruze, volunteers who actively maintain the public gardens at Floral Park in Arden Hills. Our club has agreed to join them in this effort. They will be providing an orientation session for interested club members. There are many individual areas/projects that we can choose from in deciding where to focus our work.
Today's speaker was Shane Johnson, Program Manager for the Ralph Reeder Food Shelf, located in New Brighton. Shane is relatively new to his position, having worked in other non-profit organizations, including a food bank in the Boston area. Shane pointed out that our local Ralph Reeder organization is quite unique in that it falls under the Mounds View School District, specifically within the Districts Community Education Program. It is part of our District mission to ensure that students have what they need to learn (i.e. not lacking necessary nutrition). The Ralph Reeder organization has other programs in addition to running a food shelf for school district residents facing food insecurity. They provide school supplies when needed, vouchers for household and clothing items and a toy shop for children at Christmas. In our community, the need for this food program has more than doubled in the last 5 years and has increased 34% in the last 3 years. It is made possible by over 100 regular volunteers. Shane is one of only two paid employees. Nearly all of the funding comes from individual and corporate donations of cash and food items. The school district does not provide funding but does provide critical infrastructure support (such as with IT and HR needs).
.jpg?_=639116399432223659)
