Only one Guest today – Ann Birmingham who is today’s speaker... Well we did have a latecomer – Nancy Penney who has moved back to Burlington so we can look forward to a new/old member joining us.
Gerry Willard announced that 398 tickets have been sold for Lakeside a la Carte – keep working the sales folks – striving for 600.
Bruce Maybury reminded those who said they would match the offer Jamie Edwards made of a dollar a pound that Mike Malloy lost, to cough up the amount of $53.50. There are still 6-7 people who haven’t paid as yet.
Our new exchange student arrives Aug 24th.
The next Bar B Q is at Jamie Edwards place on August 17th. Tickets are $25.
Next Thursday we will be reviewing our club’s budget for the fiscal year.
September 23rd is our District Conference. Cost is now $119 but new members who haven’t been members of Rotary for more than 2 years can attend at no cost. Car pooling is being arranged. See Janet Canavan.
Terry Sedore and David Dean are now looking after getting our guest speakers.
Janet mentioned that the Board is planning a Strategic Planning meeting in September – probably on a Saturday morning. If you have ideas on this subject she would love to receive them.
A Board Committee is being set up to review our Constitution and By Laws to ensure that they conform to changes in RI.
Peter Skoretz will not be rejoining the club this year.
Sergeant at Arms – Terry Sedore: Terry had a quiz for us today which was fun and involved questions such as the longest street in the world = Yonge St. and the fact that Subway has more stores than Wendy’s and MacDonald’s combined.
Guest Speaker – Ann Birmingham
Ann was introduced by Joe Watson. She is a member of the Hamilton Downtown Club and has been in Rotary 25 years. Ann was instrumental in assisting us with development of the Club’s Strategic Plan a number of years ago. She is Chair of the Volunteer Committee of Telling Tales.
Spoke on a subject we know well – Telling Tales Festival – Sept 17th, Westfield Heritage Village, Rockton, On. – where stories come to life.
Vision of the Festival is to be the best Children’s Literacy Festival in Canada.
Started by Ann’s sister who was the vision and force behind the idea of such a festival. She was involved in the publishing of children’s books and was also in Rotary. She thought that if she could get Rotary Clubs to work together, she could make it work. Involves at least 2 Rotary Districts. This is its 9 year.
Over 1000 children are bussed (sponsored by Rotary) to the festival from high priority (low income areas) schools in the Hamilton – Brantford area to promote literacy and the charm of reading. Focus is on areas that are challenged in literacy.
Rotary Clubs are very involved (19 of them) – leadership, sponsors, volunteers, publicity, donations of books, etc.
Publishers use the festival to launch some children’s books. Some authors are teenagers. If you go to the web site you can see all the authors who will attend this year’s festival. They also have year round contests – ones on the web site now are a Bookmark Contest, VIP Experience, Tween Writing Contest and Social Media Contest.
Kids come and bring books to the book swap – over 5000 books are swapped.
The Festival caters to children from babies to 14 years of age.
Glen Warnica thanked Ann for her presentation and dedication to this important facet of our society.
