At 12:15 pm on April 23rd, President John Chandler called the Rotary meeting to order at the InterContinental Hotel. The club was serenaded with the song “Side by Side for Fast for Hope” by the Rotary All-Star band of Jerry Faletti, Joe Kovarik, Bill Given, Ed Coleman and Doug Hartford. Shari Clifford gave the inspirational moment (borrowed from Michael-jon Pease) about Rotary. John led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance and the Rotary 4 way test. The scribe was Linda Mulhern. Bill Collins introduced one visiting Rotarian from the Mendota Heights/IGH club. President John noted that the club won 3 awards at the recent district conference in Rochester. We were runner-up for Community Service due to our work at Cleveland Circle, the Rondo project, the Reading Together program and numerous projects with Rotaract. We were also runner up for Vocational Service due to RYLA, Education Day and visiting businesses during Rotation day. We were also awarded the Governor’s Citation for our membership growth in particular for new members under age 40 and women joining our club. President John also talked about visiting another club and highlighted club #9 in Minneapolis. They meet on Fridays and are one of 5 clubs in Minneapolis. Both Milestones, i.e. length of time in the club and April birthdays were noted for a total of 10 members that had joined in April and 11 members with April birthdays. The club membership sang “Happy Birthday” to those celebrating birthdays this month.
Jay Pfaender introduced our speaker, David Newman, who has been president and member of the Fridley club and is now a member of the Stillwater Sunrise club. He has made 11 trips to Nicaragua for “Fast for Hope”. The Fast for Hope started in the 1970s and is dependent on Rotary contributions with no foundation grants used. This provided an opportunity to be creative, make mistakes and learn from them in a single community of El Corozo, Nicaragua. The idea was to focus on all of the needs in a community rather than just one project. The steering committee consists of 4 former Rotary governors, 1 nominee and the current Rotary governor. Poverty is defined as the ability to live off $1.90 per day. The project started in 2007. It is easy to get to Nicaragua and it is the 3rd poorest nation in the western hemisphere.
David suggested viewing Poverty Inc, which shows the mistakes made to eliminate poverty by providing “emergency relief for naturally occurring situations and becoming patronymic. It creates challenges by competing with local businesses rather than building relationships and using local resources. Mission trips are “feel good” projects but are not efficient, but do help to build the local relationships. A community needs to identify the needs and solutions and be the first investor, while moving at the pace of the community which is often so entrenched in receiving aid.
The pattern must be broken from the “culture of obedience” due to dictatorships and natural disasters which have occurred in Nicaragua over the past 50 years. The community needs to learn to work with neighbors and trust themselves while building confidence to eliminate poverty. Currently there are three community programs in El Corozo, one for women’s advocacy, one for children under 5th grade and the other for children older than 5th grade. The community uses pharmacy kits for health care and the individual responsible must be trained, while any item used are paid by the person needed the medication. Books are centrally located for use by the children’s group. The steering committee is working on determining a scorecard for what has improved for individual families as well as the community.
Currently there is civil unrest in Nicaragua, with 325 deaths and 500 imprisonments due to increased taxes and reduced pensions and roadblocks that went up, doctors have been fired and there is an exodus of people from the country, NGOs have been attacked and the independent press has been shut down. A group of Rotarians from our district went down from February 28th through March 3rd though, and found that the community with new leadership had determined that a community center was needed with WiFi in the cafe, so work continues on improving the community.
David was given a certificate of appreciation for speaking to the club and a donation will be made to Tree House.
Jerry Faletti was able to make an Elmer L Anderson presentation to Bo Aylin for his donation to St Paul Foundation of $1000.
President John updated us on the Challenge Update with Club #9, it has been determined that the president of the losing club will need to say “Club #_ is the best” during the joint meeting next year, so hopefully we can prevent future President Michael-jon from having to promote Club #9 next year…please give to either Rotary International or the St Paul Rotary Foundation (or both) to eliminate this possibility!
Chuck Standfuss wanted to update the club on the recent board meeting. He promoted attending the Sunrise meeting next week, the visioning summary is upcoming, along with a by-laws update. Paul Meekin will take the 2nd year of Bill Collins term on the board due to his resignation. The board is looking at charging less for dues with meetings only twice a month, along with recognition of members working on service projects. There would also be a service membership to members that provide $1,500 in service to the club as well as promoting the opportunity for “St Paul Latitude” memberships for leaders under 40 years of age, but are not Rotaract, these individuals would need to co-lead a project and attend one meeting a month. This will be effective as of 7/1/19.
There will no meeting next week, but register on line for the St Paul Sunrise meeting on 5/2 at 7:15 am. A social gathering will be at Camp Bar on the afternoon of 5/2. New membership orientation will be 5/16. The visioning meeting will be May 7th. A program, “I came to testify” a documentary will be at the Hamline Mitchell law school on May 19th based on human trafficking.
The meeting concluded at 1:12 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Linda Mulhern
Scribe