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After singing the anthems, Pete Wasberg gave our invocation and Jamie Larson led us in songs. With no announcements we went right into brags and Anthony Nordan led off, happy about a malaria vaccine and one of our songs. Pete Wasberg was happy and sad; in the former category he referenced a trip to Ireland in September to play gold and his ninth grade niece scoring her first goal in soccer and her team finishing second in state; the death of his stepfather caused the latter emotion. Mary Pettit contributed for not being able to attend our meetings in person in the recent past and happy about her son moving back to the area from a teaching job at the U of M in Duluth. Kathy Austvold was happy to be home while John MacFarlane enjoyed the Vikings game in person the prior Sunday, sitting 20 rows behind the winning field goal. Zach Stach reported he was leaving the next day to participate in a wedding in Tennessee, one of 20 groomsmen! Jake Hexum reported on a business trip to Florida and Wally Cole enjoyed being in Wisconsin the prior week and seeing a club meeting on Zoom. We then heard from Jake Hexum and a challenge he has issued to the club. As you may recall, he has been working with Engineers Without Borders for what is now ten years and is currently serving as the President of the Minnesota Chapter with approximately 90 active members. They do both domestic and international projects that help communities meet basic human needs. Right now they have a project going in Colfax, Wisconsin and also conduct energy assessments for non-profits to help them identify ways to reduce their utility costs. They also just finished a school project in Patzac, Guatemala that had a total budget of $80,000; there are 500 people in the community and they speak an indigenous language, which made their communication a three step process, from their language to Spanish to English. All money is raised through donations, including a requirement that the benefitting community make a 5% in-kind donation. Rotary was involved in the Patzac project, including the assistance of a local Rotary club in Guatemala. Before committing to a project, their is an assessment trip where they have to talk to a certain number of community members to verify what they actually want. Jake commented upon the community's poor spring fed water system that hopefully provides water every other day but that what they really wanted was a new school. There old one was overcrowded, built of mud brick and was cracking in a known seismic zone. The school had a barely workable outhouse which Jake described as the worse he has ever seen, so bad that the students would not use it but an adjoining field instead. The project the Minnesota Chapter is now working on is another school, this one in Rio Azul, Guatemala. It will be la high school for a 2000 person community that has a budget of $170,000. The assessment has been completed, a plot of land donated, and ground breaking will be in a couple weeks. They are working on a $30,000 District Grant from the Rotary District that includes Minneapolis and Jake is challenging our club members to donate to the project. He will provide $500 to match the first $500 given by club members, and then he will also give another $500 to our club to use on our other various projects. This is a wonderful challenge and I encourage everyone to consider giving some amount toward the effort. After the meeting those assembled broke into their assigned groups to identify how they are each going to be responsible for identify, inviting and bringing new members into our club. No reports have been received yet as to the progress being made and those would be appreciated. |
