President Everton (L) and Bill Pegg (R) thank guest speaker Rylan Kinnan
Minutes of Rotary meeting November 9, 2022
Announcements:
John Thompson presented the social calendar based on feedback from the survey. See attached PDF
November 16, offsite meeting at Control VR, a virtual reality experience
November 23, buffet starts again at Concordia. No more need to order from a menu!
Club visioning- 3 themes for the club to choose from for the next three years. They are: family, community care and youth. Everton to send out a survey to get members choices
(This announcement was missed: Gingerbread house judging will take place again between Dec. 12-14. Since there are seven sessions, so we will continue with judging from a Powerpoint presentation as we did last year. Tim Bradich is looking for 3-4 volunteers to help with this, from the comfort of their own home! Please let Tim know if you’re interested.)
Trivia- The Great Horse Race was the theme in 1992-1993. It was a membership initiative with the club divided into two teams. They had a gain of two new members that year. No one guessed correctly.
50/50- pot was $145.50. John Rose, Chuck Thompson and Michelle Burke were all unlucky!
Guest Speaker:
Rylan Kinnan is the CEO of Room Eaze, a new start-up
About 5,000,000 empty bedrooms in Ontario now, and 233,000 international students. Many international students come from a multi-generation living situation
Their goal is to provide affordable student room sharing with a senior homeowner. Seniors want in most cases to age at home, but income shortages affect 32% of seniors who have no savings
Seniors may also need assistance with some aspects of daily living. Students will commit to a defined task limit, typically 5-7 hours a week to allow the affordable rent cost.
Room Eaze will monitor automated rent payments
Automated host and student check-ins by email several times a month
Hosts and students have identity verified and a criminal check done
Cost to students is 5-8% admin fee, no cost to hosts
Their goal is to drive cultural change using this model. Needs help with groups like ours to raise potential hosts awareness of the program, and Room Eaze will work with post-secondary institutions for student awareness.
This launches next week in the KW region. This is a proven model that has worked in other part of Canada and worldwide.
Rotary Community Service
A Community Service Project for ReCycle Cycles, a program of The Working Centre
The Rotary Club of Kitchener-Westmount in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Mildmay, enjoyed a banner day in providing used bicycles to be "recycled" for charity.
In total 78.5 bicycles (one was actually a unicycle!), were collected in Mildmay and transported to Recycle Cycles, a program of The Working Centre in Kitchener. Recycle Cycles refurbishes bicycles and re-deploys them back into the community.
Hard-working Rotarians in the project included, left to right, Graham Gardiner (Kitchener-Westmount), Maurice Voisin (Mildmay), Kelly Strome, Alex Pavlov, John Thompson, Jake Thomas and Andrew Williams (Kitchener- Westmount) and Pete Liesemer (Mildmay). Rotary Kitchener-Westmount collected an additional ten bikes locally for a grand total total of 88 bicycles.
Special thanks to John Thompson for organizing another successful project. Great job John!
From Left to Right- John Thompson, Andrew Williams, Karin Voisin, Jake Thomas and Graham Gardiner
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