Flaherty's Arden Bowl is optimistically looking at perhaps being able to open on May 18. Peggy Engel, our catering host, inquired how our club is doing and we have responded to her about our Zoom meetings and happy hours. If it is possible for Flaherty's to host a Rotary weekly meeting on May 19, let me know if you are willing to meet in person or if you have concerns about such in-person meetings due to COVID-19 virus issues. While we have no real idea when we may again be able to meet in person, I suspect initially we will have some members meeting in person and others who aren't comfortable doing so. In that case I believe we would be able to allow those members to join the live meeting via Zoom from the club's laptop and still be able to see the program.
Kent Peterson, Stephanie Cosgrove, Ken Hola, Mark Stange and Mike Spellman have been working with the coalition of service clubs and local foundations to serve those affected by the virus crisis. Our club donated $1000 in seed money to the Suburban Ramsey COVID-19 Response Fund. Individual contributions are also encouraged. The focus will be on assisting those with housing issues and food scarcity although the method of doing so is still being developed. A fund raiser is being planned for July.
At the May 5 meeting we will vote on Stephanie Cosgrove's nomination to become president-elect nominee on July 1. Hopefully, Al Ramos will be able to report on the results of the Survey Monkey poll on the visioning statements developed by Dennis Erno's team.
I will continue to host Zoom happy hours on Thursdays at 5 pm. If you haven't done so, please join us for some virtual fellowship. I have been impressed with our attendance at our Zoom weekly meetings. Around 24 members are joining. Our programs have excellent as usual. Kudos to Glenn Bowers' volunteer program locators who have arranged Zoom programs so far: Anoop Mathur, Stephanie Cosgrove, Ken Hola and Charlie Oltman.
I have been very impressed how our members have stepped up to the challenges of continuing to meet and to provide service to our community. Kent Peterson and Stephanie Cosgrove have really taken the lead in the community service clubs' response to the virus. I am also impressed how the private sector and private citizens have stepped up to manufacture personal protective equipment and to research a possible vaccine or therapy for those afflicted by the virus. Businesses and people like that are what makes America great!
The COVID-19 situation is threatening our traditional methods of fundraising. With the Slice of Shoreview cancelled, we lost the funds raised by Bingo. Taste of the Hops has an uncertain future. We raise the money we spend on a year’s service project during that Rotary Year. Without these 2 fundraisers, we need to look for other opportunities and find creative solutions. Our first June meeting will be a club business meeting, focused on new fundraising concepts. Bring your ideas for discussion. This meeting will be led by Ken Hola and the Fundraising Team.
On June 9, we will hear from District Governor Tiffany Ervin from District 7670 in western North Carolina. Tiffany is an award-winning motivational speaker, boutique owner, and television host. If you missed her presentation at our recent virtual Conference of Clubs, this is your chance to hear this Rotary Geek. Her presentation is titled ‘Adventures in Service’.
June 16 brings us our own Maryna Daw and Tony Turgeon. They will give their perspectives and experiences on real estate in the COVID-19 world. Patty Hall joins us the following week, June 23. Patty is a White Bear Lake Rotarian and founder of International non-profit, H2O for Life. She recently led a group of White Bear Lake Rotarians on a trip to Kenya to visit water projects followed by a 7 day climb to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro. She will share how she trained and geared up for this once in a lifetime experience.
We end the 2019-20 Rotary year with a program regarding what is being done to combat invasive aquatic species in Minnesota. Meg Duhr recently joined the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Meg spent much of her career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote Northwest Hawaiian Islands managing habitat and biology programs and battling island invasives of the plant, rodent, and avian varieties. Since 2017, Meg served as the Integrated Pest Management Specialist for the Mid-Columbia River National Wildlife Refuge Complex in Eastern Washington where she coordinated invasive species control across eight Refuges and two military properties.
Collaboration with other Service Clubs in COVID-19 Relief
I've been making announcements of this for the last few weeks and now I want to describe it in writing. Our Club is part of the Suburban Ramsey Emergency Coalition, new partnership of Service Clubs and Community Foundations in the Mounds View and Roseville School Districts. The Coalition will respond to the COVID-19 pandemic locally by raising funds, sponsoring virtual events, donating goods and providing volunteers. Member of the Coalition include representatives of all four major international Service Clubs (Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis and Optimists), Roseville Area Community Foundation and Shoreview Community Foundation.
Our Coalition is working with the Suburban Ramsey Family Collaborative whose Director, Mary Sue Hansen will be our speaker on next Tuesday. Utilizing their resources as well as our members’ own knowledge of our communities makes us ideally suited to target emergency funds most effectively.
The emergency food shelf demand has increased by 30 to 50%. We also know that when the eviction moratorium expires, housing will become a crisis for many. For those reasons, we have selected food insecurity and crisis housing instability as our initial priorities. Grants will be made to local nonprofit organizations that are most in need of funds at the time grant awards are made.
When you donate, the receipt for tax-deductible purposes will describe the donation to the “Suburban Ramsey COVID-19 Response Fund”, an emergency fund of Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation. You may donate through your IRA or other charitable account. There are no fees for administration by the Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation because this is under the affiliation agreement with the Shoreview Community Foundation.
Contributions to the Fund by credit card may be made on-line at https://www.givemn.org/story/Suburbanramseycovid19responsefund. Checks may be made payable to “Suburban Ramsey COVID-19 Response Fund” and mailed to Suburban Ramsey COVID-19 Response Fund, c/o Carol Mills, 5845 St. Albans Court, Shoreview, MN 55126. Questions and additional information may be directed to ShoreviewCommunityFoundation@gmail.com.
Immediate donations are encouraged so that we can donate to the urgent needs can be met now. We already have donations of nearly $20,000 as seed money and our goal is $150,000 to be raised during the coming months of emergency needs.
A donation of any amount will help. If you can invest $100, $250 or whatever you can afford in our community, the funds will used locally to do so much. If you give at GiveMN.org this week, your donation has the possibility of increasing by $250 to $2500 thanks to Bush Foundation and US Bank making hourly and daily awards.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” - Helen Keller
After ten of the first seventeen students at the Pushpa Sewing School in Amaravati, India finished the curriculum last February, the sewing school was becoming well accepted in the community and was clearly having a positive impact there. Another cohort group of students had joined the remaining students from the prior group and many of them were making steady progress toward completing the curriculum this summer, until a shelter in place order was issued throughout India in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic. It has disrupted everything in India except for the deeply rooted poverty that is so pervasive in the ghettos in the cities and in much of the rural areas. Amaravati has not been spared.
In a recent conversation with Gummadi Franklin, Pushpa’s founder and chair. Chairman Franklin was very positive about the school and the role he hopes it will continue to have in Amaravati, assuming the shelter in place order is eventually lifted. The school had come together very well and the landlord has generously minimized rental payments in view of what is hoped by all will be the temporary closure of the school. How well the school will be able to reorganized after the closure remains to be seen, but the elders in the community and the landlord want the school to remain. It has been welcomed in Amaravati.
A picture of the graduating class seated with their arms raised as they wait for their certificates is shown below. What happened here in the U.S. also happened in India. The Covid-19 Pandemic disrupted the entire country and has caused Pushpa to suspend its classes.
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 Chairman Franklin. Also with the students and Chairman Franklin is the Teacher (Suzanne) and a teaching assistant.
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. (See http://pushpaproject.org/vision_mission.htm)
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.
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 once the shelter in place directives in India are lifted. Pushpa will be there to restart the teaching when that happens.
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.
We and Pushpa are thankful for the matching grant received from Rotary District 5960 and 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.
We were fortunate to have U of M researchers Dr. Laura Niedernhofer and Dr. Paul Robbins join our virtual meeting as presenters today. In 2018 they accepted roles as Director and Associate Director, respectively, for the newly founded Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism (iBAM) at the U. They are internationally recognized experts in the molecular and cellular basis of aging, and came to the University from the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida. Their team is pursuing a goal of understanding the molecular events that lead to aging and developing a drug therapy that can influence lifespan, "healthspan", and quality of life for people over 65. The focus is on healthspan - meaning the period when one is blessed with good health. Another way of looking at it is compressing the period of decline that leads to death.
Their research has shown that there are types of small molecules called senolytics that can reverse the impact of aged, senescent cells. We have thought of aging as a process, not a disease, but this team has determined that treatment with senolytic drugs, which eliminate senescent cells, can reverse physical dysfunction and actually extend lifespan in aged animal models.
Drs. Niedernhofer and Robbins were introduced by Chad Fahning, who works a Community Events Coordinator at the U. His goal is to ensure that the people of MN are made aware of all the good and exciting things happening at the U. This presentation was fascinating and we should consider reaching out to Chad again in the future when arranging speakers for our meetings.
Today's speaker was Lew Anderson from the Destiny Rescue organization. This Christian faith-based group has a vision to end the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children around the world. They perform one-on-one rescues of children from red light districts, brothels and sexually abusive situations. They follow that with providing children the intensive care and love they need to recover from the traumatic effects of their abuse . They also provide medical help, counseling, schooling, vocational training to get kids integrated back into society. They have rescued over 5,000 children and young adults. Last year alone the number was 1,400 because of the fact that they have begun doing group raids in addition to individual rescues. Destiny Rescue has operations in Thailand, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, India and other locations that remain undisclosed for security purposes. They have offices in three donor nations: United States, Australia and New Zealand. They have received a Rotary Global Grant in support of their work. Individual donations are also highly appreciated.
In addition to his work as Regional Manager of Destiny Rescue USA, Lew is an ordained minister and recently served as a pastor in Northfield, MN.
We were fortunate to have Dr. Bret Haake join our virtual meeting today. Dr. Haake is a neurologist and currently serves as Chief Medical Officer for Regions Hospital in St. Paul. Not surprisingly, he is currently fully absorbed in dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, which he addressed in his remarks. But he started with a brief overview and history of Regions. Formerly Ramsey County Hospital, Regions was purchased by Health Partners in 1994. It extends its services well beyond Health Partners, however, serving as a regional trauma hospital and burn center. It also now has a comprehensive stroke center and will be opening a birth center later this year. Regions also has been at the forefront in addressing the opioid crisis in our community.
Dr. Haake credited MN Governor Waltz for getting our citizens to "shelter in place" early-on in the Covid-19 pandemic, which has allowed our MN healthcare systems to manage the care of Covid patients without becoming overburdened like the healthcare systems in New York City have been. However, it has still been extremely challenging for them to deal with the shortage of personal protective equipment and access to testing. Regions has been involved in a number of drug trials, including hydroxychloroquine, which has been found to do more harm than good. When asked about prospects for a vaccine, he noted than a typical timeframe would be 18 months, but with the best scientific minds around the world focused on this goal, there is reason to believe it could be sooner.
Dr. Haake noted that he is familiar with our Rotary club, as he is a resident of North Oaks with children in the Mounds View School District.
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