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.
Bill Klump and Kyle Sorenson are showing some of the inventory from our tour at Solid Ground. Our Rotary has always participated in the Christmas stocking program at the center. Each child gets a stocking filled with candy, games and books each holiday season. Solid Ground provides supportive housing for families experiencing homelessness or those at imminent risk to be without shelter. This program combines affordable housing with services that help individuals and the whole family, achieve housing and economic stability, advance their education, improve their health and create community connections. It's an award-winning nonprofit whose proven, holistic approach helps families build the strong foundations they need to emerge from homelessness into a brighter future.
Oliver Gamson writes "This will be my final update of the year. I am flying home on July 11th and am now spending my final full week at a music camp in the mountains.
June was definitely full of many goodbyes, and a lot of reflecting on the past 11 months of my life. The exchange students have begun to fly home, including some very close friends of mine, and I have also said goodbye to my friends at school. Despite all the melancholic feelings, there were also some exciting events throughout the month. The exchange students took a part in the Rotary District Conferences, where we made a skit and gave a speech, thanking the two Austrian Rotary districts for hosting us. That same weekend was also the final get-together for us inbounds, where we celebrated our year together — our successes, what we have learned, the friendships we built, and the challenges we all overcame. It was, needless to say, very emotional to say goodbye, but I think we all realized how lucky we were to be part of this beautiful experience.
Just last week I was also able to visit Leonard, who just came back from Minnesota from his exchange. It was very fun to spend some time with him and talk about stories from Minnesota. His home in Austria is very beautiful!
I get back from my music camp on July 5th, and I’ll spend the next 6 days continuing to explore Vienna and spending some time with my family and friends. I want to thank you all once More for making this year possible for me. It is hard to describe the amount of beauty I’ve had the chance to experience here, and I know this exchange year will continue to inspire me well into the future."
Austrian inbounds 2024-2025.
Leonard and I eating ice cream on the lake near his house.
The 2025 International Rotary Convention in Calgary, Alberta Canada was outstanding. This was the first time I ever attended an international convention but it won't be the last. Glenn Bowers, Mike Spellman, Elinor Jackson and I made the trip to one of the most beautiful locations I had ever seen. I have always heard about Banff, Lake Louise, and the Canadian Rockies but it was beyond what I had imagined. Elinor and I are doing our best impersonation of Lewis and Clark on top of the Columbian Icefield in Jasper, Alberta. We will give an update on the convention in a future meeting.
Our Austrian exchange student Leonard Scheiber spoke to us today and recapped his last several months as a student at Mounds View High School, culminating in the school's graduation ceremony for 450 fellow seniors. He stayed very busy all year both at school and with his host familes. He was involved with running events all year, including a recent half marathon. He did us proud and we will miss him upon his return to Austria this summer.
Paul Mendoza was our scheduled speaker. Paul, a former paramedic of more than 20 years, is the founder of Advanced First Aid. The mission of this company is to teach businesses and organizations to save lives using Automatic Electronic Defibrillator (AED) technology. Every year in the U.S. hundreds of thousands die from sudden cardiac arrest. If AED equipment is nearby and someone takes the initiative to use it, many of these lives can be saved. Paul brought with him one of their newest products, a tall cabinet which contains the AED and can be permanently kept at outdoor locations, such as sports stadiums and parks.
Today's speaker was Tim Reardon, who is leading "Minnesota's Rally To Read" initiative, which is aimed at addressing the fact that 500,000 Minnesota children from kindergarten through high school do not read proficiently. We are 2nd to last of all 50 states, which is a pretty shocking statistic. Much research has shown that 80% of a child's brain development occurs by age 3 so that this is a problem that needs to be dealt with in the very early years of life. "Rally To Read" is a grassroots community coalition to mobilize support and establish innovative community based strategies to transform Minnesota to the state with the highest reading proficiency with the fewest racial inequities in record breaking time. The community of Monticello, MN has become the prototype for this effort. In order to reach children in the first years of life, this effort is aimed at better equipping parents to provide a learning environment at home. Rotary is becoming involved with the initiative and Anoop is part of our District's efforts toward increasing literacy across the board. Anoop also spoke at today's meeting. He introduced our speaker as well as reported about a recent visit to one of the Rotary clubs in Kyoto Japan while on vacation.
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