Generosity is defined as "the trait of being willing to give your time and money.". The one season that I see generosity the most is at Christmas. There's something extraordinary about generosity at Christmas, it's the season where everyone helps, shares, and gives.
Our Rotary Club shows generosity throughout the year as exemplified by our motto: “service above self” and donations to The Rotary Foundation (that we have heard a lot about in November) is a really good way to show generosity.
During December, our Rotary Club has two activities involving giving. On December 6 and 7 we are ringing the Salvation Army bells at Cub Foods in Arden Hills and hopefully the colder weather will bring out more donations to the Salvation Army through our service. Second, we can all help Solid Ground (the nonprofit in White Bear Lake that helps homeless families with temporary housing, training and assistance in setting up permanent housing). Dennis Erno is collecting unwrapped gifts from the list he distributed, gift certificates or checks to Solid Ground. He’s collecting those at our December 5 meeting and at the Holiday Party.
Besides service through Rotary, I know that all of our members are generous through other nonprofit organizations, their churches and individually to friends and family.
Final reminder: our Annual Holiday Party will be hosted by Peggy and Don Strom at their home at 639 Evergreen Circle from 6-9 on Tuesday, Dec. 12. If you have not already, please respond to Peggy to let her know if you and your spouse or friend can attend.
Because of the Holiday Party, there will not be a meeting on December 12 and we will not meet on Tuesday, Dec. 26. There will be a regular meeting on December 19 and we’ll start off 2018 with a meeting on January 2.
Rotary is able to help those in need around the world because of donations made to The Rotary Foundation. November is Rotary Foundation Month in the Rotary Year. If you haven't already done so, now would be a good time to make a donation. Our Foundation director, Bill Klumpp, has made it easy by passing out your Rotary number along with a partially completed donation form. You can also make a donation on line. Have a good month.
This lists shows people responsible to be the "Greeter" for the day, and also to begin the morning. If you are unable to be the Greeter on the assigned day please trade with someone and let me know about the change.
December 5 - Paul McCreight
December 12 - NO MEETING - Holiday Party at Peggy and Don Strom
We have a full signup to ring the bell for the Salvation Army at Cub Foods on two days this week. This is typically a very rewarding experience – helping an organization that not only helps so many others, but one who was first on the scene and most helpful when a Tornado touched down in Shoreview some years ago. It is good to see so many young people dig to put coins in the kettle, and also good publicity for our Rotary Club. Many thank us as for standing out in the cold as they contribute. Last year’s total Indicated that someone had dropped $1000 into our kettle – maybe again this year??
Our Rotary Club is searching for students for one of North Star Youth Exchanges newest programs, the Short Term Exchange Program (or STEP)
This exchange involves the matching of a USA student between the ages of 15-19 with a student from another country. Typically age, interests and gender are factors that are considered when making a match. The USA student travels to the host country at the beginning of the summer for a one month stay with their host brother or sister and their family. The host brother or sister then comes to stay with the USA family for a month some time later in the summer. The students have a two month exchange (one month abroad and one month hosting). Short term youth exchange programs are extremely popular in Europe with a long tradition.
The Board believes this is a great program which provides opportunities for students who can’t go away for a full year and still enjoy the benefits of youth exchange. Their families are exposed to the world of Rotary as each exchange experience furthers our goal of promoting world peace and understanding.
Today we welcomed representatives from Century College - Randy Johnson, Director of Donor Relations for their Foundation, and Scott Randall, an instructor in their Solar Power program. From Randy we learned a bit about Century's 50-year history. Formerly known as Lakewood State Junior College, Century opened its doors in September of 1967 to 500 students. Today Century serves over 21,000 students each year, offering a variety of degrees, diplomas, certificates and courses. A primary benefit of attending a Community College such as Century is cost savings. A student who opts to get a 2 year degree from Century, then transfer to a College or University to complete a 4 year degree can save up to $75,000 in tuition cost! Another benefit is the ability to be trained in an area that may not be offered by a traditional university. Scott Randall provided a great example of that. Century's Solar Power program cannot begin to crank out enough graduates to fill the demand in this extremely fast-growing industry. The job growth in this field is currently 90 times higher than the overall rate of job growth in Minnesota! Scott frightened us all with pictures of the latest in self-driving 18-wheelers. As hard as it still is to imagine, this is but one example of the future that is fast upon us. We are moving to renewable energy sources in all aspects of daily living and Century College is playing a part by identifying job needs and working to fill those unmet needs.
Today we heard from Laura Keithahn, Operations Executive at St. John's Hospital in Maplewood. Laura has a clinical background in Radiology. She later went on to earn on MBA and became involved in hospital management with the Health East hospital system in the Twin Cities. St. John's opened in 1911 in a downtown St. Paul location, moving in 1985 to Maplewood. It was the first hospital in the Twin Cities to offer private rooms for all patients. It currently serves over 100 patients per day in its emergency room operations. It also handles 7,000 surgeries and 3,000 births per year. Laura went on to discuss the recent merger between the Health East and Fairview Healthcare systems. The newly combined organization has 32,000 employees, 11 hospitals, 56 primary care clinics, 55 specialty clinics and 54 senior living facilities. She is enthusiastic about this merger, saying that it will enable the organization to manage through the challenging trends in today's healthcare market, which include a downward trend in reimbursement, higher percentage of medicare/medicaid patients, finding ways to pay for advances in medical technology, as well as the need to upgrade and update IT technology platforms.
Club members welcomed visiting Rotarian Ron Hughes from the Excelsior Club and the guest speaker, Linda Wetzel. Club President Kent Peterson announced that the annual Rotary Holiday Party would be held on Tuesday, December 12th at Peggy Strom's home. It was also announced that the club would be exploring potential locations for future Rotary meetings because the cost of holding the meetings at the Best Western was increasing dramatically.
The guest speaker Linda Wetzel has been a resident of Arden Hills for 38 years. She is a volunteer for Life Source, a non-profit organization serving the upper midwest, that is a network promoting organ and tissue donation. Life Source works with community partners and hospitals to support donor families, manager the donation process, and educate communities to create a culture of donation. She noted that there are eight organs that can be donated from the human body. They work closely with the Department of Motor Vehicles to have people indicate on their Driver's Licenses that they are willing to be a donor. She noted that there are more than 120,000 people waiting for a donation, including 3500 in their service area.
Linda then told her own inspiring personal story of receiving a liver donation at a time when she did not think she was going to survive. In 2007, she received a liver from a living donor who she did not know that had seen her story in a church bulletin.
Paul Hofslien and Jack Haugen served as speakers today. Both are long-time members and past presidents of the Prior Lake Rotary Club. Jack is the Foundation chair for the Prior Lake club, Paul is now serving in that capacity at the district level and this was the subject of their presentation. Paul provided a brief history and overview of the Foundation, stressing the role it plays as the engine for all of Rotary's good works in the world, including local and global grants, projects, Group Study Exchange, Rotary's Peace Scholarship program and the global Polio Plus effort. In the past several years, the giving level within our district has not kept pace with the requests that clubs have been making to receive funding for projects. The total of contributions last year was approximately $350K and the district's goal is to increase that to $500K. Jack spoke to the hope that members will make the RI Foundation their "Charity of Choice", citing the exceptional job the organization has done managing the foundation efficiently. Less than 1% of contributions go to administrative costs, which has resulted in it being named one of the Top 5 Best Charitable organizations in the U.S. by CNBC last year. Our club received an award this past year for being second overall in giving within the 60+ clubs in our district. All members contribute $50/year as part of the quarterly dues paid, but we also had several additional significant member gifts which resulted in the high giving level for the year. We hope other members will consider additional gifts to the foundation this year so that we might help the district reach its goal and provide the funds needed to complete Polio eradication and other good works around the world.