May is a great month for our club to give back to the community and the world.
On May 3 our club will be hand-packing meals for Feed My Starving Children. These meals are formulated for malnourished children in countries around the world.
On May 13 Rotarians will be Cooks for Kids volunteers at Ronald McDonald house. Our mission will be preparing and serving dinner to families of hospitalized children.
Also in May members will have their monthly mentoring session with students of Highview Middle School.
I would like to thank my fellow Rotarians for the great work we our doing and let’s keep looking for more ways we can make a contribution to our community and the world.
The District Conference is this month. Our district, 5960, is having a joint conference with the Minneapolis District on May 12 and May 13 at Mystic Lake. If you have never been to a District Conference, I highly recommend it. There are great break out sessions and very good speakers.
On May 13, Colleen Lavin is organizing an outing at the Ronald McDonald house in Minneapolis. This is a great cause and please help if you can.
Our club volunteered at Feed my Starving Children and broke our previous record pf how many bags of food we packed
On June 21 our new District Governor will be installed at the White Bear Center for the Arts (6:30 to 8:30). This event is inspirational and fun.
We’re once again working with Incarnation Lutheran Church on a Feed My Starving Children session. This takes the place of our meeting with a very enjoyable service activity. We’ll also be submitting a District Service Grant this month for pre-school literacy items for the new Ramsey County Library being built in Shoreview.
On Tuesday, May 3, our Rotary Club will participate in the community Mobile Pack for Feed My Starving Children at Incarnation Lutheran Church, 4880 Hodgson Road, SV, instead of our normal club meeting. Our shift is from 9:15 to 11:15 AM and you should show up at least 10 or 15 minutes early to sign-in and get your stylish hair net, needed for food preparation.
Feed My Starving Children food goes in large part to Haiti, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Zimbabwe and smaller portions to other countries. The distribution is done by reliable partner organizations in each country. They run a very well respected program. Details on the event can be found on the brochure that you can find at: http://incarnationmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Feed-My-Starving-Children-2016V2.pdf
We ask that you donate at least $50 per packer to cover the cost of food being packed. Checks can be made to “Feed My Starving Children” with the memo line Incarnation Event and brought to a meeting. As of April 5, we still need another 5 or 6 volunteers to have 20…that’s more than we’ve had the last couple years.
Please respond to me by email if you will help out. I'll have the sign-up list at meetings through April too. It's fun and it has a huge benefit!
Our speaker today was Steve Hegele, a Shoreview-based consultant working with businesses and other groups to improve communication, gain commitment and solve problems. Following his experience leading the Twin Cities Dale Carnegie institute, Steve launched his own business in 2004. As with many new businesses, the first years were very challenging. By the end of 2006 he was prepared to give up, but everything changed in 2007, when word-of-mouth referrals began accumulating and requests for his services really took off. Steve gets asked in when people and teams find themselves at a point where "something needs to change" and they are not sure what it is or how to do it. Frequently there are stubborn relationship or operational issues that are holding people and progress back. Steve believes that, both personally and professionally, the quality and success of our lives depends on our ability to attract, build and manager high caliber relationships that generate desired results. He discussed how much more challenging all this has become given the realities of the over-wired, multi-generational and multi-cultural world we live in. He also shared the personal tragedy he faced in 2009 when, just as his business was taking off, his wife died of cancer, leaving him with four kids to raise as a single father. This experience required him to truly embrace and live the principles he was teaching to others.
Today we welcomed speaker Derek Sharrer, General Manager of the St. Paul Saints Baseball Club. Sharrer hails from Indiana and graduated from Indiana University, intent on a career in baseball management. He reached out to Mike Veeck upon graduation, which led to an internship, including bunking with a team's mascot dog. Veeck and actor Bill Murray created the St. Paul Saints 23 years ago as part of a new independent baseball league, not directly linked to Major League Baseball. Sharrer has been part of that organization from its start. When most of us think of The Saints, we think of fun. Every game has a high fun content, with everything from pig races to an 8,000 person pillow fight sponsored by Minnesota's own MyPillow, Inc. We were reminded however, that the Saints are also serious about their baseball. Since its inception, 120 Saints players have gotten offers to join MLB teams. This phenomenon leads to 50% annual turnover in their roster, which is a management challenge but speaks to a key underlying purpose of the team's existence. Last year, the team moved to their new home -- CHS field in Lowertown, St. Paul. This new stadium seats 7,210. Sharrer was proud to note that the new stadium did not mean higher ticket prices. Tickets continue to be priced between $5 and $25, making a trip to see the Saints play very affordable for families. It was noted that this year's roster of players will include Shoreview's own MVHS graduate Mark Hamburger.
It was announced that the club was still looking for volunteers on Friday, May 13th to serve dinner at the Ronald McDonald house and that there would not be a meeting the following week since the club was doing a service project for Feed My Starving Children.
The guest speaker was Patty Hall who is a co-founder of H2O for Life, an organization whose mission is to educate, engage and inspire youth to learn, take action, and become global citizens. H2) for Life provides students with a unique and valuable learning experience through service-learning opportunities focused on the global water crisis.
She explained that she took a trip to Africa with her mom and was inspired when she came back to help countries deal with the clean water issues. Students from 185 schools have raised over $3 million for clean water worldwide. She indicated that more than 600 million children don't have access to clean water and more than one-half of schools don't have bathroom facilities.
She said her initial fund raising campaign was done at Highview Middle School and they are still involved with the program. She discussed the partnerships that H2O for Life has with Proctor and Gamble and with WASRAG (Water and Sanitation Rotary Action Group) to raise money for clean water.
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We’re once again working with Incarnation Lutheran Church on a Feed My Starving Children session. This takes the place of our meeting with a very enjoyable service activity. We’ll also be submitting a District Service Grant this month for pre-school literacy items for the new Ramsey County Library being built in Shoreview..jpg)
ng Children food goes in large part to Haiti, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Zimbabwe and smaller portions to other countries. The distribution is done by reliable partner organizations in each country. They run a very well respected program. Details on the event can be found on the brochure that you can find at: http://incarnationmn.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Feed-My-Starving-Children-2016V2.pdf