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Donation from Stratford Community Fund

This week Keri Sheridan was sworn in as our newest Rotarian. Congratulations Keri and welcome to the club.

Bill O'Brien, Director of the Stratford Community Fund, and a long-time Stratford Rotarian, presents Stratford Rotary Foundation with a $44K+ donation so that Stratford Rotary may continue the mutual tradition of good, community-based work done by the Community Fund over the decades. The Community Fund was originally started by Stratford Rotary many years ago.

DeMarko Avant

This weeks speaker was 15 year old DeMarko Avant, who is a sophomore at Bunnell High School in Stratford, and dual enrolled in CT State Community College with over 24 college credits earned.

In August 2024, he published his first book titled “The Teenage Boss: How to save, budget, and invest as a teen”.

He is the Vice President and Founder of Youth Money Management, a nonprofit 501 c3 that services the State of Connecticut. Just recently, YMM launched a new activity workbook for project based and collaborative learning to accompany the book.

Youth Money Management aims to empower young people in financial literacy, teaching them how to save, budget and invest in their future with the hope to avoid adult debt accumulation.

His remarkable work is already embedded in schools, juvenile detention centers and community-based youth organizations. For more information regarding programming,

Children's Christmas Party

The Lunch today was a great success thanks to Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. They were quite a hit. 20 children from several Stratford schools were treated to a lunch of chicken tenders and French fries. Always a hit with the kids. Each student received a gift from Santa. Photo's were taken of the children with Santa as they received their gift. Thank you all for making this a great success again this year.

More photos in the Photo Albums.

Rotary Shredding Event

Today we had our Rotary Shredding Event at the Baldwin Center. It was an absolutely beautiful day weather wise. We had a steady stream of residents bringing their old files for shredding, Stratford's Rotary Paper Shredding event offers a secure and efficient way to dispose of documents while preventing personal information from getting into the wrong hands. Items such as medical records, credit card statements, checks, and bills can pose a serious security threat if handled improperly. Rotary uses Meyers's professional "onsite service" to ensure that they are securely and effectively destroyed. You can even watch and see your documents destroyed.

FEMA Aid to Connecticut after Torrential Rains

At todays Lunch Meeting we had Helen Yeh, Jeff Davidson and Greg Forrester representing FEMA. Greg presented and he discussed the FEMA efforts in Connecticut after the heave rains and flooding this past August. Below is the breakdown of the FEMA assistance.

Author Tish Rabe

Thank you to today's guest speaker: Tish Rabe a bestselling children’s book author, singer, songwriter, children’s media producer, animation head writer, children’s book publisher, and an expert in creating all forms of quality media for children and families.
Tish Rabe lives in New York City and Mystic, Connecticut and has written or adapted more than 40 Dr. Seuss books since Seuss's death.
She has written over 135 children's books[3] including titles for Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Bear in the Big Blue House and Curious George. In 1996 she began writing The Cat in the Hat's Learning Library, a new series of non-fiction science books for early readers.
Her books include Oh, Baby, the Places You'll Go!, which is meant to be read in utero, and eleven other titles that present science concepts to early readers.
Her book, My Oh My—A Butterfly! was named by the Bank Street College of Education as one of the 40 best books for children in 2007. Her story for Nick Jr. Magazine, 'The Best Dressed Guest,' won the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Educational Publishers.
She has also written scripts for several children's television series including Clifford, Clifford's Puppy Days, I Spy and The Country Mouse and the City Mouse Adventures.
As both a songwriter and music producer she has created children's songs that have been broadcast on PBS Kids, Fox, Nickelodeon and HBO Family.
She is a graduate of Ithaca College.

Stratford Volunteer Corps

Thank you Dr. David Chess on your very informative presentation on the Stratford Volunteer Corp.

Stratford Volunteer Corps is a volunteer organization supporting our local community. They help bring agencies, classrooms and teachers together with volunteers who can help support the mission of learning. Making a big difference connecting people and lifting our children. SVC was the recipient of a $500.00 Grant from Rotary to help with their programs.

SVC is looking for someone who can help us manage our volunteer coordination of services. This is a work from home at your own time.

There are numerous opportunities for people to get involved in the program such as:

Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants. CIRI provides a compassionate array of high-quality legal, social, and educational programming for refugees, immigrants, and survivors of human trafficking and torture.

Caring Hospice

Caring Hospice seeks patient care volunteers to provide companionship to patients at Spring Village. Certified pet therapists welcome. https://caringhospice.com/volunteer/

There are more opportunities to get involved.

Their website is: https://www.stratfordvolunteercorps.com

Police Activities League

Thank you to Erin McLaughlin for an informative presentation on the current and future activities that the Stratford PAL will be involved in.

The Stratford Police Department recognizes that we must do more than just enforce the law. We must build and maintain positive relationships with the people we serve, especially our youth. We hope that strong police-community relations will in turn make Stratford a more united and safer community. We strongly believe that PAL should not just focus on sports, but on youth enrichment, education and leadership.

Stratford PAL is an organization of law enforcement officers and civilians who work together towards the positive development of our youth. Every dollar we raise is used directly for the benefit of the many programs sponsored by our organization. We heavily rely on donations to support our activities.

Professor Jonathan Wharton

Dr. Jonathan L. Wharton is an associate professor of political science and urban affairs. He is a faculty advisor to SCSU's College Republicans, College Democrats, and Golf Club. Wharton earned his BA (History, cum laude), MPA, Ph.D. (Political Science, state and local government) from Howard University, an MA (History) from Rutgers University and George Mason University's study abroad programs in Asia.

Wharton currently serves on the Connecticut Democracy Center board and volunteers for New York City area chapters of his Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. He is a choir singer and council member at New Haven's First Congregational Center Church on the Green (moderator, deacon from 2017-2021). Wharton is a frequent tri-state area NPR stations' contributor as well as ctnewsjunkie.com and Hearst CT columnist for the New Haven Register, Connecticut Post, discussing state and local issues (media portfolio: https://muckrack.com/wharton). Wharton served on the Preservation Connecticut (2019-2024) New England Political Science Association boards (2018-2022) and New Haven City Plan commission (2016-2020). He was also New Haven Republicans chairman (2016-2018) and served on the Republican State Central Committee (2018-2020).

Prior to academia, Wharton worked for US Representatives Charles Rangel (D-NY), Glenn Poshard (D-IL) and Chris Shays (R-CT). In addition, he was a research analyst in the New Jersey state legislature's Office of Legislative Services and government affairs researcher for several Washington nonprofit organizations.

Stratford Library Shares their Lego Storied

Sheri Szymanski, Executive Director of the Stratford Library, brought her staff to tell us about the Lego Project the Club supported financially.