Here's What's Happening at East Polk Rotary

Todd Ross was last week's Sgt. at Arms and tickled our trivia tastebuds with Special Olympics fast facts.

The South Africa trip is scheduled for January 16-28, 2014.  Reservations are due by the end of August. 

Ryan Edsen introduced Mary Core of Goodwill Industries, who spoke about Goodwill's mission, and about the stores, your donations, and the integration with helping challenged individuals.  She spoke about how many people Goodwill has helped turn their lives around, find employment, and generally offer a hand up.  Mary cited that the Goodwill retail stores are still the centerpiece of Goodwill and that without ongoing donations, the stores would have nothing to sell.  Most of their revenue is generated by the stores, but a small amount comes from other sources such as cash donations.

She also mentioned that in addition to retail stores, they have an outlet store on S.E. 14th Street which sells goods by the pound.  Clothes that do not sell there are bundled and sent to recyclers who may turn them into rags or ship them to Third World countries where they are quite useful.  They also keep a huge amount of stuff out of the landfills, including computer equipment which they will accept and recycle.

Marti rolled out the new flyer for this year's Africa Night event in October.  She pointed out that they are useful for soliciting auction baskets as well as selling tickets and sponsorships.  Since last week's meeting everyone should now have received a copy via e-mail.

This week is our monthly business meeting.  See you all tomorrow.