After the Land Acknowledgement Statement, all 25 Rotarians online (of whom 8 were women) were treated to the singing of O Canada in Mandarin by a little girl called Zoe at the 2016 Vancouver Chinese Heritage Festival. This was followed by this Thought for the Week:

“What are Rotary’s guiding principles? For more than 100 years, Rotary’s guiding principles have been the foundation upon which our values and tradition stand: The Four-Way Test, Object of Rotary, and Avenues of Service. These guiding principles express our commitment to service, fellowship, diversity, integrity, and leadership.”

ROTARY MOMENTS

1. Our club is either slightly over or very close to the $50 per capita donations to the Rotary Annual Fund, which a requirement for a club to be able to apply for grants from the district.
2. Everyone should have received an email from the district chair of Polio Plus, Pat Chernesky, about forming a D5550 Polio Plus Society of members who make a minimum $100 donation to Polio Plus yearly until Polio has been eradicated. Members will receive a tax receipt, Paul Harris Award points, a certificate and a Polio Plus Society pin.
3. President Doug encouraged members to respond to club meeting notices promptly – regardless of whether the meeting takes place at Breezy Bend or on Zoom.
4. Chase the Ace - the winner of $40 this week was Ed Thompson.

(Small Business Owner, Registered Hearing Aid Practitioner)

Kristy was born in Winnipeg’s Victoria General Hospital on December 19, 1978, a month premature, with collapsed lungs. After two weeks in ICU at the Children’s Hospital she was back with her family. She grew up and attended schools in Fort Garry and then graduated from the University of Manitoba with an Arts degree with a major in Sociology and a minor in Psychology (the last year of the Arts degree was taken at University of Calgary where she had moved in September 1999.

Kristy met her best friend, Trevor Tarasoff in May 2000 while they were working for UPS, making cold calls on companies every day and asking for their business. Kristy and Trevor were engaged 6 months later and got married in Winnipeg on April 26, 2003.

Between 2001 and 2006, Kristy worked as a sale representative for a couple of beer companies in Calgary and Toronto, took a year off to spend with her two children (born 2004 and 2006) , then went back to school at her brother’s encouragement (his daughter was born hearing impaired). She took the Hearing Aid Practitioner Program at Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton between 2007 and 2009. This was followed by working for 9 years as a Registered Hearing Aid Practitioner at Calgary Hearing Aid & Audiology.

In 2018 the Tarasoffs moved back to Winnipeg to be closer to family. Pictures of family members were shown and Kristy explained that her father’s family – the Stefansons – came to Canada from Iceland two generations ago while her mother’s family – the Kurtas – arrived in Canada in 1949 from Poland and settled in Selkirk, MB.

IN 2019 Kristy opened her clinic in Charleswood (called Ear Architects Hearing Care, located at 3412 Roblin Blvd). She explained that although hearing loss is a part of the aging process, it should not be considered a benign process. Hearing should be tested annually because of the results of hearing loss: social isolation (withdrawal), loneliness, depression, reduced quality of life, cognitive decline, increased risk of falls/accidents and increased likelihood (5 times) of developing dementia.

Hearing loss can occur for several reasons -aging (#1 cause), heredity, chronic ear infections, prolonged exposure to noise (industrial or recreational), side effects of some medications (aspirin, chemotherapy, some anti-biotics) and medical conditions like diabetes, anemia, arthritis, high blood pressure, stroke, etc. An estimated 1 in 5 people have hearing loss but on average wait 10 years before seeking help – because of denial, vanity, cost or lack of getting one’s hearing tested. Delaying getting one’s hearing tested may affect the ability to regain hearing in the future, even with hearing aids. Since the brain is the true source of hearing and understanding, hearing loss often affects the brain’s ability to understand speech and that ability can be difficult to regain. Hearing aids can help the brain process and understand speech.

Wearing two hearing aids – one for each ear – works best for the following reasons: safety, locating the sound source, improved understanding, less tiring and stressful, and a better perception of one’s surroundings.

Kristy ended her presentation by summarizing the services of her business “Ear Architects Hearing Care”. They include the following:

• Customized solutions on style, budget and extent of hearing loss
• Immediate appointments and follow-up with your physician
• Bi-weekly follow-up with patients to understand individual needs and answer questions
• Hearing aid follow-up
• Tinnitus counselling and Auditory Training Programs (to regain hearing of sounds already lost)
• Assisted Living devices and solutions
• Prescriptive solutions from all hearing aid manufacturers.

In response to questions, we learned the following from Kristy:

• Tinnitus can be caused by working in a noisy environment or as a precursor to hearing loss. It comes from many things, but it’s not known what it stems from. Wearing ear buds for 15 minutes a day may be helpful.
• Recent innovations include using Bluetooth to listen to your phone, music or podcast through the hearing devices, an Apple watch that monitors percentage of conversations per day, and having a family member log in to one’s hearing aid (to react quickly in case of a fall).
• Frequent ear infections can present as hearing loss later on.
• Ear wax does not present an issue for hearing.
• Prices for hearing aids very depend on where you buy them. In a private practice, they start about $2000 per ear and go up to $3500 per ear. In Costco the cost would be between $2400 to $3600 for two hearing aids.
• Sounds in excess of 80 decibels are too high. Kristy recommends wearing ear plugs or ear defenders when cutting the grass or using a blower. One can find decibel meters online. An app for a cell phone is called Decibel X.

President Doug thanked Kristy for sharing the insight into her life at this point.

With no guests present to introduce at this meeting, Sarge Mike began by asking for “Happy Bucks”

PDG Jim was pleased to see the diversity at the meeting – eight women were present, representing almost 35% of the attendees.

Cathy was happy because she was finished her painting – but the REALLY happy part was that her husband remained at his computer and stayed out of her way!

PDG Nancy had a Happy Buck for the predicted blizzard that we didn’t get today, and another buck (an unhappy one) for the blizzard that we’re going to get tomorrow.

Lloyd was delighted that his ten year old grandson in Calgary got him a snowblower. His grandson is an entrepreneur that buys snowblowers in the spring, fixes them up and sells them in the fall. Apparently, he does the same thing with lawn mowers – buys them in the fall, fixes them up and sells them in the spring!

Jagdish was happy that he bought a new battery-operated snow blower because his old snow blower was a gas guzzler. (Lloyd suggested he might consider selling it to his 10 year old grandson).

Leslie was glad to be back working at ReMax.

NEXT MEETING

We will be meeting by Zoom only again next week (Monday, January 24th) and the speaker will be Kate Armstrong, the Communications & Public Relations Coordinator at Resource Assistance for Youth, Inc. (RaY). Kate speaks about the causes of youth homelessness and what folks can do to help. 

POST-MEETING CHATTER

Cathy reported that her sister Jan in Arborg has donated two quilts (originally made for a family from Syria who is now prevented from arriving in Manitoba due to COVID) to Jim Thiessen’s Sleep in Heavenly Peace program. Jan’s friend donated two more quilts. Jan is making a queen-size quilt that Sleep in Heavenly Peace will include in a raffle, bought 20 pillows from a local business that was having a half-price bedding sale, and ordered $800 worth of fabric for making more quilts to donate to Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

Lloyd informed us that we got an application into the Sustainable Communities Grant Program for 50% coverage of the costs of accessibility improvements in the Assiniboine Forest (pathways and walkways).

Nancy Hansen advised the group that Agape Table is desperately looking for new socks for their clients. They can be purchased through Amazon, she noted.

PDG Nancy mentioned that Agape Table also needs bottles with screw tops (like from vitamins) for their clients to keep liquids like shampoos and soap.

Iain thanked Kristy for a great presentation, including her family history. Kristy indicated that her mother has a 2-volume version of the family history (which Iain has apparently read). Jagdish suggested that the Neigbours of Charleswood magazine would likely be interested in Kristy’s family history.

(Sent to Bob Eilers, our International Service Chair. The RC of Wpg-Charleswood has recently donated $500.00 USD to 'purchase' five (5) stoves in Guatemala.).

We hit the ground running this year thanks to your support, and our partners at Meal a Day Fund, The Roundhouse Foundation, Good Work Institute, and Rotary clubs around the world! We are now launching an ambitious new program in a region of Guatemala called Nuevo Progreso.

Located high in the mountains near the northern border of Guatemala, almost every household in Nuevo Progreso lacks any access to safe cooking. This town has received no other stove projects, and even lacks basic construction materials.

Guatemala Country Director Alex Eaton said, “In San Ignacio, the farthest canton (community) from the central town, we realized that most people were building open fires in wood boxes filled with dirt due to the lack of access to blocks and bricks." "The need is great and people are waiting for us to arrive.”

Over the coming months, Nuevo Progreso will be the first community to test our Master Stovebuilder training program.

Stove test yields surprising results

At StoveTeam, our stove recipients’ wants and needs inform our designs and approaches. To test our Justa cookstove design for Guatemala, we recently assembled three cooks from the town of Santiago Zamora to test a series of modified stoves. Guatemala Country Director Alex Eaton said, "During the week, four models were tested and three hired ladies were in charge of cooking, cooking, cooking to see the best fit. Their results shocked my team a bit: The ladies preferred the same width, but a longer plancha (griddle) in order to cook more foods at once."

See the full results of the test, and what we're doing with this new information, on our blog!

Thank you for helping to launch our projects into the new year with more momentum than ever before. Together, we're changing the world, one stove at a time.
P.O. Box 14707, Portland, OR 97293 |info@stoveteam.org| (541) 554-4638