As I complete my final month as your president, I want to thank everyone for all their support throughout my term and especially for everyone’s efforts in the following:
I am the chair of our fundraising committee. The members are: Michael Anuta, Bill Kiehnbaum, Bill Klumpp, Paul McCreight and John Suzukida. We have met three times so far and will meet again on the 22nd. I plan to report to the Board on June 13 and to the membership shortly thereafter. We are going to begin to approach craft beer brewers in the next few months. If you have any connection with a craft beer brewer, please let someone on the committee know.
Our Grant application has been reviewed by our assigned mentor and deemed worthy of submission. The oral presentation of it will occur on June 20. We are optimistic about its likely success.
The District has received grant requests far exceeding the available funds this year, and our request doesn’t seem a candidate for any of the suggested alternatives, so we simply have our fingers crossed that our request will be considered among those worthy of funding this year.
It’s now June, so The Slice of Shoreview is coming fast. We all need to pitch in to cover for Ken’s reduced involvement – please consider volunteering for an extra shift.
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!
Circle the club meeting day of June 14. Our outbound Rotary Ambassador, Michaela Allen will be there to give a short presentation to our club. This will be your chance to wish her well as she gets ready to spend a year in Izmir Turkey.
Our host family search process has shown some results for our student from South Korea coming here in August 2016. We still need to locate a family to host our student for the period of March 4 to mid-June 2017.
The only minimum requirement is that the family needs to reside in the Mounds View High School attendance area. Please help in our efforts by reaching out to your friends for this unique culture sharing opportunity.
Basically, the club members have been instrumental in our recent scholarship/awards evening and several of us have worked together to secure two of our three host families for our exchange. Other than that, I haven't much to add.
Bridget McCauley Nelson from the West St. Paul/Menota Heights Rotary Club was our speaker today. She came for the purpose of providing an update on the project she has led to provide funding for The Heartline Maternity Hospital in Haiti. Our club has provided some funding for this in the past. She shared that here have been many lessons learned through the arduous process of obtaining an RI grant for the project. Most critical has been the need to have a reliable local partner to work through, which they did have. She stressed that the grant would not have been awarded without this and, in fact, the project would not have been successful without it, due to the bureaucracy and corruption found in a country as poor as Haiti. The primary objective of the project has been to create and deliver pre-natal classes for expectant mothers, covering everything from nutrition to breast-feeding instruction. All services are free and are staffed by trained mid-wives. The need is high in that Haiti currently experiences a rate of 1 in 80 mothers dying in childbirth, as compared to 1 in 8,000 in the U.S.
Today we welcomed guest Erich Young. Our speaker was Dave Newman from the Stillwater Sunrise Rotary Club. Dave provided a history and current activities of our Rotary District's "Fast For Hope" initiative. It began in 2007 and was a new concept in terms of how to conduct more successful outreach programs in developing countries. Many previous efforts had not proven to be sustainable, due to lack of local support and buy-in. After analyzing possible locations, Nicaragua was chosen as a country to focus efforts in. It then took several years to find the right community; one that would provide local leadership. Successful efforts there have included creation of a Bookmobile to further childhood literacy, the creation and distribution of neighborhood medical kits to assist in caring for citizen's health needs, and work to improve the main road leading to and from the village. There will be a cultural delegation going there in September and he encouraged our members to consider joining.
We were pleased to welcome Charles Lo to our meeting today. Charles is a mechanical engineer who worked for local company TSI for 35 years. Most recently he has worked with the University of Minnesota's mechanical engineering program. Charles was born in China but has become involved with charity opportunities in Cambodia, which was the subject of his remarks today. Cambodia suffered severe losses during the civil war between the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Republic that raged on from 1967 to 1975. Over 2 million people died, resulting in a huge loss of knowledge and talent and making it difficult to move forward in the wake of war. We learned that local couple Debbie and Thomas Welsh of Bloomington have founded an organization called Hope International based in Phnom Penh. Debbie is a nurse working to improve healthcare conditions and Thomas is a professor at Pannessestra University there, teaching business but also trying to get a mechanical engineering degree program started.
The Club welcomed Club Member Kent Peterson's wife, Diane, and visiting Rotarian Ron Hughes from Excelsior.
The guest speaker was Club Member Kent Peterson reviewing his mission trips to Tanzania in 2015, and to Honduras in 2016. His 2015 trip to Tanzania was a partnership between the St. Paul Synod of the ELCA and the Iringa Diocese, which is growing rapidly and now has 120 congregations. During their stay they were lodged at the Lutheran Center. He described some of the service projects including a regional hospital, agricultural development, and micro-financing through the Peter J King Family Foundation. He also took a safari while visiting Tanzania.
The trip to Honduras was a medical mission through International Health Service. Honduras is the second poorest country in Central America and 43% or children in rural areas die before they reach the age of 5. Most of the deaths are considered preventable. Kent served as the pharmacist and was with a group of 109 health professionals and helpers on the Miskito Coast in Honduras. The mission of International Health Service is to improve the quality of life for the impoverished people in Honduras.
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Our Grant application has been reviewed by our assigned mentor and deemed worthy of submission. The oral presentation of it will occur on June 20. We are optimistic about its likely success..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
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