Dear friends,

 

I have the distinct pleasure of  serving as President of our club this Rotary year. We have all been immensely fortunate for the leadership of Rebecca Price and a dedicated leadership team over the last 12 months. I look forward to working with you, who have a wealth of experience and skill, and commitment to doing good in our community!

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We are also enjoying an exciting new partnership with the Rotaract Club of London.  Our combined efforts have already raised significant funds for homeless and at-risk youth in our

communities, and I have no doubt that the London club will be our firm friends and we can mutually expand our networks of service going forward.

 

Please join us this  Wednesday at our usual time to talk about plans and aspirations for the year ahead. As we move towards a safe reopening, we relish the chance to be more physically present in serving the community, so all ideas are welcome! In the coming weeks, an exciting and empowering program of speakers will be announced, taking your feedback into account.  I note especially that July  marks the  beginning of Protecting the  Environment as a  Pillar of Rotary , and we are eager to expand on our successful green-tips program of last year.

 

You will have a chance to meet  our new and returning board members on Wednesday, too. I especially want to welcome Nawal Sachani as Treasurer.  Nawal has an incredible wealth of skill and experience to offer our club, and her joining us has been a definite highlight of 2020-21.

 

For an inaugural icebreaker,  I've decided to start us off on a musical  note ; feel free to share a piece of music that is important to you or speaks to your soul!

 

Finally, we must acknowledge that this is a time of great mourning and reckoning for Canada.  As people of service, we cannot turn away from the truth about the country laid bare by the recovery of  children's  bodies  from residential school sites.  We  know that Indigenous children were subjected to the so-called residential school system within our living memory, part of a state-sponsored genocide that, in some of its manifestations, shamefully continues to this day.  We are driven by grief for our neighbours and  the desire to help   But we are also required to reflect as a group of primarily non-Indigenous persons on our place in Canada's colonization.  Outgoing District 6330 Governor David Elliott has begun this work of reckoning in our local Rotary family.  We don't  know yet what our club's work for justice will look like, but we  commit to sitting with our obligations under the MMIWG inquiry's Calls to  Justice  and the TRC's Calls to Action, making space to listen  to Indigenous voices, and  ensuring that  Rotaract is a safe and worthwhile place to be for all.

 

See you soon.  Yours In Service,

 

Geoff Krauter

President. Rotaract Club of Stratford

Time: June 17th, 2021 7:00PM
https://zoom.us/j/98016145804
Meeting ID: 980 1614 5804