Rotary Meeting October 26th, 2016
Guest Speaker: Sylvia Ceacero, CEO of Share Family & Community Services
Guests – Greg Archibald of the Centennial Port Coquitlam Rotary Club and Tess Encheta business for in-home care providers and interested in Rotary World Help, Honourable Mike Clay, Jonas Yao of the Adai Network, Jay Woollven, David’s Dad is visiting from Ontario and also a fellow Rotarian.
Dan Gallant talked about the container loading on Saturday that is now on its way to Kenya. November 5th another container will be loaded and sent to the Ukraine and in December two containers will be sent to the Phillipines. The first container ever sent from here was to the Ukraine but that country has been closed for quite a few years. It is now reopened and with the conflict there one container has gone through and in the past week it cleared their customs. There are further plans to send an entire container load of used hospital linens, towels, sheets, scrubs as well as four containers worth of brand new needles and syringes. These are surplus to an anticipated pandemic which did not materialize and there are approximately three million needles. These will be dispersed to different areas. If they expire it will cost $60,000 to destroy so donation is a good option for the Ministry of Health.
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Cleone led the RIPS on the weekend with 100 volunteers and removed 10 sq metres of weeds from Shoreline Park. Cleone gave out several golden leafs Darrell, Christina, Trudy, Jonas, Coreen and, Hon Mike Clay Mayor City of Port Moody, Patty for her husband getting the pizza and Bill who received the dirtiest volunteer award, beat Gayle out this year...
Rotary RIPS!
That is, 100 volunteers Removed 10 cubic meters of Invasive Plant Species, from Shoreline Park in Port Moody on Oct 22.
It was a great partnership between Noon’s Creek Hatchery, the City of Port Moody and the Port Moody Rotary Club. The volunteers included Rotaractors, Youth Employment Training Program (YETP), the water polo team, Adai Network Foundation, general public, Noon’s Creek volunteers, City of Port Moody Volunteers and Port Moody Rotarians. Tools were from a previous TD grant. Pizza was discounted by Panago in Port Moody.
Invasive plants compete with native plants, reduce plant and animal diversity, decrease crops and take away from the natural beauty of wildlands.
It was a super day!
Jonas Yao of Aidai Network the group who volunteered at the Ribfest and RIPS. discussed their outreach program. Their goal is to bring volunteers from Asia and bring them to local events to merge cultures and have a program IOS application to gain work here and get feedback from the community NGOs. …Analytical data and their future emphasis is for strong relationship with local NGOs and government. They have a solid presence in Coquitlam where they are most active with about 300 volunteers as they are linked with secondary schools Pine Tree, Glen Eagle and others to get involved with community. They are providing the volunteers with opportunities to get together at an event to help them understand how people here contribute to the community and make local changes to community. We will bring lots of assistance and appreciate the opportunities to build relationships with the organizations and businesses. Rotary International pin awarded by Patty.
Trudy discussed the shelter boxes. As the club discussed what to do to support the Syrian refugees we purchased four shelter boxes through Shelter Box Canada. The deployment of the boxes was delayed as they were reprioritizing the distribution. The boxes were shipped on October 14th to Cameroon where people are displaced due to conflict. So ultimately they did not help the Syrian refugees but are helping those in need.
Mark these dates on your Calendar please.
Christmas Manor decorating is November 12th at the Manor. There will be five 'new' trees to decorate this year. This will make the job much easier....Thank you Trudy for purchasing the new trees. 9:00am - 12:00 and Lunch at the Well after.
Clean up Heritage Mtn. Blvd. November 19th. Meet at Gallaghers at 9:00AM
Dec 18th Christmas party at Eagle Ridge Manor - Sign up on the events page
Innvervisions Chili lunch is on Dec 14 - Sign up on the events page
The Christmas Train is on the 17th of December and we are providing hot chocolate, the face painting and cookie decorating all by donation.
Honourable Mike Clay discussed the Tri City News A-list Award Celebration. Port Moody got three awards, Best Park, Best Place to Walk the Dog and Best Festival – RibFest. Mike asked Ian to get Rotary members to come to the City Hall to give them the award. Ribfest was up against the Teddy Bear Picnic, Golden Spike Days and Coquitlam Fireworks so there is no doubt that Ribfest is way above them all. Everyday people come up and say they were at Ribfest and it was so much fun. The fact that 32 Rotary members can mobilize 500 volunteers really shows what Rotary is about. Mayor Mike said 'We can’t do that as a City.' Patty noted, the Council is very smart in supporting RibFest. Port Moody has something special... not an us and them attitude but a together we can do it attitude.
Mayor Mike added that last week, Al Sholund, passed away. Al was a major contributor to the city, past Freedom of the City honouree, he moved here in 1956, was a WWII vet, helped open the library and was a great historian.
Christina has been working on Public Relations including developing a post card for the club to have multiple uses and looking into creating a global calendar of events birthdays, anniversaries etc on a weekly basis. She is also doing a Tri-Cities Ad and has been working with Face Book including a Polio day posting. Way to go Christina !!!
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Guest Speaker: Sylvia Ceacero. Sylvia expressed her appreciation for being invited and thank you to Hon. Mike Clay. She has been with Share for 10 months now, having moved into her dream job from Ottawa. She also lived in Toronto and Montreal. She is very proud to be chosen to be the CEO of Share as she came from outside the province and outside of the non-profit sector. While Share is primarily known for its very important work in the Food Bank which most people relate to, it is so much more. Even after 10 months, she is still learning about all that Share is involved in as it is a multi-layered and complex organization that works in collaboration with other agencies to deliver services including children and youth, family support services and a very high priority and what Sylvia is also proud of is their work in the drug crisis in the area. Younger and younger children are getting involved in serious drugs and are dealing those drugs. Children as young as 12 are being affected. Share is working to support those children and their families as well as working with other agencies to provide a safety net for them.
Sylvia expressed her appreciation of the open and caring culture in BC in and how generous people are with their time and resources. It’s a different mindset and people have opened their homes and wallets to help with the refugees, making them feel welcome and supported. She is the co-Chair of a local immigration partnership and is organizing a forum so that different agencies and groups can get together to see who is doing what, which ones can provide the best services in different areas and avoid duplication as well as having those in need have to chase around knocking on all different doors making things confusing and delaying service delivery.
She also talked with great warmth about the program for children from 0-6 years of age with disadvantages who come into the office and receive developmental assistance for them as well as their families who can continue with the programs at home.
She reflected on how is the welcoming and generous support of the community because of an annual 43,000 hours of volunteer work provided which is equivalent to 20 full time equivalent staff. Volunteers donate a lot of time, one volunteer comes every day he has given roughly 5000 hours in the last five years. The fulfillment they get is the contribution and difference they have made. Food Banks are a huge operation including collecting, sorting and making sure the food isn’t expired that it is consumable and healthy and that the individuals are entitled to receive it.
A question was asked about the Syrian refugees.
Around 900 families came last year and each family tends to have about 7 children. Share operates 288 units of housing for the Ministry of Housing. This is the hardest part of the relocation given the prices of housing and their units have long wait lists for those who want to go to the buildings. There are also laws in place for separate rooms and with 7 children we would need huge units to meet the regulations. So what we have been seeing is that they are being pushed further and further out toAbbotsford and Maple Ridge and they have moved to other areas of Canada where they have relatives. There are other agency settlement services which are the primary front line agencies where Share is the second line. Shelter, Food are taken care of primarily by the front line agencies. Share is focusing on the second tier to deal with the trauma from what they have seen from where they came from.
Share Offices include the main office headquarters at 25 King Edward in Coquitlam and most of children’s services. They have an agreement with Simon Fraser Society and children’s services in New Westminster. Where there is a unique intake where they house each others staff so there is one portal one service people in need just want the need met not caring about who provides the services. There is also an office on Clark street which houses the Food Bank and few blocks down is the Thrift Shop and down a bit are the Counselling services and the have a satellite site through one of the churches on St. Johns.
There is also a program for 0-6 aged children services from refuge families in Coquitlam.
Share is looking for a warehouse for storage for toys for sorting and packing so this is for the Christmas program. Rentals are very expensive. They need approximately 3000 sq ft for three weeks to sort and package the toys.
How big is the organization? There are 1100 volunteers and 110 full time equivalent staff. There is also a volunteer Board of Directors with11 members.
Where does your funding come from? The main funder is the Ministry of Children and Family Development, United Way and some Federal funding for New Beginnings the law society of BC, Gaming and fund raising.
Trudy has ordered 'WHAT IS ROTARY', so pick up some copies to hand out to friends. The Ad in Tri-cities page seems to be allowed to get larger as with the Rotaracts where they are giving a half a page. Ad's in the Tri-Cities page are half price if you take it out on the day of the Rotary page. Bring your Rotarian magazine when you are done, so that they can be re-distributed to offices without you label information.
This week we are celebrating Polio Plus and we are so close to achieving our goal of a Polio Free World.
Closing comments from Patty, It’s just amazing what is going on in our schools, very young kids are selling drugs in our school systems. As a society we need to come together to make them feel important and let them know they can provide leadership in a more acceptable way and open the way to use the skills they are developing in the other side. In your family ,and in our neighbourhood, let them know we notice them.