Due to the guidelines from President Trump and the executive orders from Governor Walz as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic the in-person meetings of our club at Flaherty's Arden Bowl from March 17 and after have been cancelled until further notice. In its place we have begun e-meetings via the Zoom platform. The club had its first e-happy hour March 26 and its first weekly e-meeting March 31.
Our club has been living up to the Rotary Motto of Service Above Self during the pandemic. The money members paid for the March 17 and 24 breakfasts has been donated to The Sheridan Project and the Ralph Reeder Food Shelf to help those needy children and adults suffering from food insecurity from the pandemic. In addition individual members have sent contributions to those two charities in response to my e-mail.
Kent Peterson is working with other area charities and service clubs to develop a project or fundraiser to help those harmed in our area by the pandemic. Kent has been working with the Shoreview Community Foundation, the Arden Hills Foundation, the Shoreview Lions Club and elected officials to determine the need and a delivery vehicle. He has also contacted some other service clubs as well. Kent will keep us updated on his progress.
We were going to prepare another meal at the Ronald McDonald House later this summer. Due to the pandemic all such volunteer activities at Ronald McDonald have been cancelled and staff has been serving the meals. Colleen Lavin, our team leader for this service project, has suggested we donate the money budgeted to buy the food for the meal to Ronald McDonald House instead. Her suggestion will be voted upon at the April 6 board meeting. Members voiced their support for her suggestion as the March 31 e-meeting.
In recognition of his 49 years of service as an athletic official our own Mark Stange was scheduled to receive the Minnesota State High School League's distinguished service award at the high school basketball championship. Unfortunately, the championship tournament was cancelled due to the pandemic. Instead, Mark will receive the award next year. Mark is just another example of a Rotarian living up to our motto. Congratulations Mark! Happy dollars will be collected to recognize Mark's award.
After our first attempts at Zoom meetings I have a few suggestions based on recommendations from members with more Zoom experience that me. Please keep your microphone muted unless you are talking. Also please don't use both your phone and computer at the same time. These suggestions will eliminate feedback. I will also mute everyone except the leader during the pledge and 4-way test.
As everyone knows, the COVID-19 pandemic prevents us from meeting in person, as is our normal custom. So, we have become created and are holding virtual meetings via Zoom. So far, this new way for us to meet is working pretty well.
On April 7, we will hold a Club Assembly, led by President Bill. The focus of this meeting will be to revisit the results of the Club Visioning exercise we held last June 26. We will discuss the goals we developed during that process and ways forward.
The following week, April 14, we will hear from Dr. Laura Niederhofer from the University of Minnesota. Her topic will be on aging. 10,000 people turn 65 every day in America. By 2030, the number of individuals aged 65 and older will exceed those under 20. This is the greatest biomedical challenge we are facing today given that old age is the greatest risk factor for most chronic diseases. Bold and new approaches are needed.
Those at the University of Minnesota are taking the lead by developing therapeutics to treat aging in Dr. Laura Niederhofer's program. Dr. Niederhofer joined the University of Minnesota in 2018 to direct the new Institute on the Biology of Aging & Metabolism, one of the four Medical Discovery Teams at the University of Minnesota. She is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics.
Lew Anderson will address the club on April 21. He will tell us about Destiny Rescue. Destiny Rescue is an international faith-based nonprofit organization dedicated to rescuing and restoring children who have been enslaved in the sex-trade. Their mission is to end child sexual slavery worldwide. Destiny Rescue was founded in 2001 and has since grown into a global team with 220 staff in 10 countries. Since 2011, they have rescued over 5,000, including 1,400 in 2019.
Is there anything else to add to the conversation on Coronavirus?
I recently returned from Florida where I attend an evening Rotary meeting during the winter months. They were all set to have one of their fundraisers-Wine Bingo! I never got a chance to see that in action because everything shut down, bit by bit. We have a home in The Villages and they have 3 Rotary Clubs that meet there-morning, noon and evening. I came home with some ideas from those clubs but I’m wondering now when we will ever get back to “normal” whatever that is. The Florida club was struggling how to stay relevant in this unusual time. I looked at different Rotary web sites to see what they were doing here and abroad. Here are just a few unique ideas:
The Rotary Club in Sri Lanka installed thermometers in airport bathrooms and produced posters to raise awareness about the virus in schools.
A Rotary E-Club invited the public to its March online meeting to raise awareness.
A Virologist spoke about the virus-how it spreads and how to keep safe.
Closer to home, a club in Jefferson County, Washington, used crowdsourcing to create an online listing of area grocery stores, pharmacies and restaurants that do home delivery.
There will always be a place for Rotary to provide service to their community but I hope there will be a time in the near future when we can be together as a group once again.
Collaboration with other Service Clubs in COVID-19 Relief
There is an effort among the service clubs in the Mounds View and Roseville School Districts to collaborate with each other and community foundations to facilitate COVID -19 relief. The group is working with the Suburban Ramsey Family Collaborative to determine unmet needs and estimated costs of these needs. By working with suburban Ramsey County commissioners and local government, we can also advocate for government response. An excellent reference to resources to basic needs of families for COVID-19 relief can be found at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-yPMg47xbeKbvm3f0QrUzW93wbjLo3_wAzpuPOj53U0/edit?ts=5e869dab.
Seventeen students began the curriculum at the Pushpa Sewing School in Amaravati, India when the Sewing School was opened in May 2019. Amaravati is a small indigenous village in a rural area in the Guntur District in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The school was established with the help of a District 5960 Grant obtained by the Arden Hills Shoreview Rotary Club and support by many other Twin Cities Rotary Clubs. Ten of the original 17 students have now completed the curriculum and were give graduation certificates in a recent ceremony in Amaravati. Another cohort group has now joined the continuing students and the sewing instruction was continuing until a shelter in place order was recently issued in India. A picture of the graduating class seated with their arms raised as they wait for their certificates is shown below.
Two of the graduating students are picture below, one, who was chosen to speak to the gathering at the graduation ceremony and another who is receiving her certificate from Gummadi Franklin, the Founder Pushpa. Also with the students and Dr. Franklin is the Teacher (Suzanne) and a teaching assistant.
Pushpa has been working in India for fourteen years. Gummadi Franklin, who was raised in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh, retired from 3M after thirty years of employment there. He and his wife Shirley, who live in Arden Hills, have been paying it forward for many years. Pushpa's mission is to help marginalized community members of rural Guntur District villages transition from migrant, subsistent lifestyles, dependent on seasonal labor and temporary shelter, to sustainable livelihoods in healthy communities. Its main goal is to work together with underprivileged (tribal) members of rural Guntur District villages to find ways to enable socio-economic change in small ways, one person, one family, one student, at a time, through projects in which the recipients themselves participate. The organization strives to boost the self-confidence of individuals while at the same time teaching collective responsibility for the community, through teaching vocational skills that develop earning capabilities.
One of the elders in Amaravati is pictured below after he was given the honor of cutting the green ribbon in a ceremony for the opening of the school last May.
The picture below shows some of the students using the treadle sewing machines in the third floor sewing lab at the sewing school in Amaravati.
The leaders of PUSHPA, both here in Arden Hills and in Andhra Pradesh, India are especially grateful for the support for the new sewing school from the Arden Hills Shoreview Rotary Club and Rotary District 5960 and have expressed their gratitude privately and acknowledged the Club’s sponsorship of the school by erecting the sign shown in the picture below.
A lot of hard work went into establishing the school and there are many people to thank for their hard work and significant contributions. The Sewing School has now graduated its first class and it is especially gratifying to see that the labor and hard work is now being rewarded and that young people’s lives in Amaravati are being touched by those efforts. We are now awaiting further word as to further progress of the current students during the shelter in place directives in India. Pushpa will be there to restart the teaching when and if the shelter in place restrictions are lifted.
We and Pushpa are thankful to the following Rotary Clubs for their generous support of our project: Belle Plaine; Brooklyn Center; Forrest Lake; Fridley Columbia Heights; New Brighton Mounds View; Prior Lake; Roseville; St. Croix Falls; St. Paul No. 10; Siren Webster; West St. Paul Mendota Heights; and White Bear Lake.
Last week marked a critical turning point in the life cycle of the Nigeria WASH in Schools grant application. I have made a point of the fact that this grant is the last of a long series of similar grants, some of which have already been approved and completed. So, the application and submission process should have been easy. Or at least it appeared that way.
Apparently, at just about the time Patty Hall and I began collaborating on getting the grant submitted, RI concluded that while all Global Grants have always needed to be designed with Sustainability in mind, the standard for what constitutes “sustainable” needed to be adjusted upward.
I understand this. All along, as I have gone from club to club asking for financial support for our grant, people have been asking questions, such as, “How do you know that the equipment you install and the training you deliver will result in continued proper maintenance and use of the equipment?” Or, “What makes you think that you will be able to change long-standing customs and behaviors that have not placed value on sanitation and hygiene?” Then, there’s, “How do you know the local PTAs at the schools will really be able to afford to supply hand soap and cleaning equipment for the long term?”
To all these questions, I have thus far answered that five years of training and support is a lot, and we have to have some faith that after all that training and mentorship by local Nigerian Rotarians, their efforts to introduce new attitudes and practices will be rewarded with durable commitment to change. But even as I’ve said these things, I’ve understood that there is some likelihood that the new ways just wouldn’t stick. Our efforts at sustainability are better in most cases than those of well-meaning predecessors who have installed wells, toilets, storage tanks, etc., before us. But many of their projects have ultimately failed, and that’s why we’re involved now.
Patty and I wondered aloud why the grant immediately preceding ours had not received final approval at the RI level. Getting in touch with Nancy Gilbert, who has been shepherding that grant through the approval process from her location in Canada, we learned that RI had asked her those same kinds of questions, and was requiring that she supply much more detailed information about the training and how the PTAs would fund their commitments. But most importantly, they were asking for training and sustainability plans individually tailored to each school, and with time horizons of not five years, but ten.
So, the rules have changed, and a higher standard has been established. The Canadian-sponsored grant has been modified, submitted, and approved. Our Rotarians in Nigeria and their Implementing Partner (the non-profit, PIND) have worked hard at complying with the new rules and have developed four of the five individualized training and sustainability plans needed for inclusion in our grant request. Meanwhile the money from local clubs has been raised, and we are poised to resubmit a grant that we are confident will be approved.
To top it off, on April 16th and 28th, Anoop and I will attend Grants Management and Global Grants workshops, and in so doing, will qualify our club as a Global Grant sponsor in 2020. So, it is a very exciting time for this grant and, I hope, for our club.
At the request of the Mounds View school district last year, our club decided to split the $2500 Strive Scholarship into two $1250 scholarships.We also decided to work with the STRIPES program at MVHS to identify students who met the criteria for the Strive Scholarship.Please note that “Strive” is not an acronym.
STRIPES is a school district program and stands for Students Together Respecting the Importance of Education in School.Part of their creed states, “I will strive for excellence in everything I do.”The website says, “The mission of the STRIPES program is to inspire youth to use education as a pathway to be accomplishing their dream.”
Joel Brown is the man who works with STRIPES kids at MVHS.He has identified one student whom he believes meets our criteria for the Strive scholarship.Al Ramos talked with Joel about this student at length.The student took the initiative to fill out the FAFSA and apply to UMD on his own (and was accepted), with the intent to pursue a major in Computer Science.Al presented more of the particulars at our Board meeting, and we decided to award this student the full $2500 Strive Scholarship.
It is unclear whether there will be an awards ceremony this year.
What is also exciting is Joel Brown’s willingness to let us attend the first STRIPES meeting in the fall so we can lay out the criteria for the Strive scholarship and it can be used as a motivator as it was always intended to be.I want to thank Al Ramos and his persistence for accomplishing this.With the help of the STRIPES program, we may once again have a Strive program at MVHS.
Stephanie Cosgrove provided today's program, which was on the subject of "Action Learning". She has used this tool extensively in the Leadership Development Programs she conducts within the Wells Fargo organization. It provides a framework for small groups of people to engage in discussion to resolve issues or find solutions to problems. She used the time within our meeting to set up a discussion and asked the group to come up with a problem statement. The one chosen was: "We need to increase membership in our club" The rules are that members of the group can only make statements that are in response to questions posed about the problem within the group. After a period of discussion time, members write down what they now think the true problem is and there must be 100% consensus on what the problem really is before getting to a solution. This process requires a coach. It produces diversity of thought and turns people into better listeners and better questioners. Stephanie noted that Wells Fargo has used the process to successfully address a number of different issues within the organization.
Today's meeting was a virtual one, with each of us using "Zoom" to connect from our homes. Anoop Matur's wife Preeti agreed to help us with this experiment by being our speaker, discussing her recently published book: "From Seven Rivers to Ten Thousand Lakes - Indian Americans in Minnesota". Preeti came to the U.S. from India in 1978 and has lived in Shoreview since 1981. In addition to her roles as wife, mother and grandmother, Preeti has had a career as a technical writing and training consultant in the Twin Cities. She noted that the number of Indian immigrants to the U.S. has increased sharply since her arrival and there are now over 40,000 in the Twin Cities alone. This is a highly educated group - a majority of which are doctors, scientists, engineers and IT professionals. Nearly all speak English fluently. They have assimilated well but also remain in touch with important aspects of their culture and with family members back home. Because of the large Indian population, there are many connections to their culture in the Twin Cities - Indian grocery stores, restaurants, theater and religious institutions. Preeti and Anoop are great examples of the way in which many Indian Americans have contributed to our society - not only through their professional expertise but through philanthropy and volunteerism.
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Last week marked a critical turning point in the life cycle of the Nigeria WASH in Schools grant application. I have made a point of the fact that this grant is the last of a long series of similar grants, some of which have already been approved and completed. So, the application and submission process should have been easy. Or at least it appeared that way. .jpg?_=637217976476165507)
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