Club President John Starnes called the meeting to order at 12:27 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary. He also welcomed back Jim Fowler who recently went through surgery, and Ann Ruble who was in an automobile accident last week.

 

 

Robin Mundell and John Jorgensen  were our greeters and Robin introduced guests:

Robin introduced our visiting Rotarian from the Jackson Hole Supper Club, Helen Bishop, and our exchange student Elise;

Susan Griffith introduced former student and Interact member Alex Derosier who just finished basic training with the Marines and will be headed to Japan in two weeks;

Jim Ruble introduced his wife Ann Ruble;

Tucker LaPrade introduced former Rotarian Matt Myers;

Deb Theriault introduced her daughter and former exchange student to Argentina, Anne Theriault;

John Jorgensen introduced Greg Dixson from Hilltop National Bank;

Teresa Corkill introduced Dan McGlade;

Bill DeGraeve introduced Dale Bohren from the Casper Start Tribune;

Anthony Martinez introduced John Huckfeldt;

President John Starnes then had Tim Havasi introduce Chaz Farnum, who has not been here for a while and Peaches introduce Nick Hill, and Doug McLaughlin introduced Ron Salveson, both have been absent from our midst, welcome it was good to see them back.

 

Dennis Lower treated us to a good chuckle and then Gary Pehrson had us all Rise and sing “Now Thank We All Our God” in recognition of Thanksgiving. 

 

President John presented John Griffith with his sponsor pin for sponsoring a new member.

 

President John announced that Clarke Turner is a new Grandparent with a new Grandbaby born last night; also Jeff Eidsness is a new dad.

Richard Schwahn gave us an update on his building being hit by a car, everyone is safe and healthy, quite a frightening experience.

Brian Deurloo let us know that John Wold lost his wife Jane and her funeral will be tomorrow afternoon at 3:00.

President John mentioned that Thursday night was the club social and there were about 30 people that were there, he asked all to stand who attended.

 

Jim Anderson nominated Bill Schilling for his excellent Governor’s luncheon last week.

 

President John then played us a video to get us in the holiday spirit, a clip from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. We all had a good laugh.

He then asked anyone who wished to stand and voice what they are thankful for.

Anne Theriault voiced her thankfulness for Rotary and how it has been a great thing in her life.

Dennis Lower is thankful that Donald Trump was not around when he was an immigrant.

Elise Verboomen voiced her thankfulness for being here with us and her great host families.

Susan Grifith is thankful for her new Granddaughter and her whle family.

Gary Pehrson is very thankful to be an American and to have great individuals protecting us and our freedoms.

 

Jim Ruble introduced our speaker today, our very own Dave Simonson who spoke with us about our international project in Panama and their exploratory trip down there to see the needs. Dave and his wife Deanne along with Gene and Deb Theriault went down to Boquete Panama to scout out the area and check out the things that they need for us to start the International project along with their Rotary Club down there. One of the reasons this area was chosen is because of the extreme poverty and the need for our help. There is poor water and sanitation in this area and inn most of the rural areas. They went down to see what types of needs there are and to do some service projects while they were there. The Rotary club there does a lot of service projects and has worked with other clubs, one from North Carolina. Current projects that they would like us to help with are water projects, home solar light projects, a school building project amongst others. Gene and Deb spent time at the health clinic and discovered things that need done there like sanitation, privacy doors on exam rooms etc. Gene spent time on installing small solar panels with a light bulb and charging place for a cell phone or other electronic so the families can have light at night besides a kerosene lamp. Each of these units can be purchased for less than $20 each and we have funded for about 50 of these units and the club there is working with the school system to find families that need these installed so that their students can study at night. This is a small boots on the ground project that we can go forward with that will make a good impact on the households there. Another area of service they explored was for a small in home water filter system to help with potable water for the people. They went to Tierra Oscura to work on these water filtration systems, Dave showed us some great pictures of the trip with some beautiful scenery. Then he showed us pictures of their current sanitation which basically just goes into the streams and rivers. They assembled about ten of these filtration systems while they were there with the help of a local barkeep. The one project that the Rotary Club there is very passionate about is building classrooms for High School; they currently do not have anything past ninth grade so they need a classroom for each of the High School grades. The School district said that if they had the classrooms they could provide the teachers. Currently the youth have to go live in a different town to attend High School which becomes very expensive. The people there pledged to provide the labor to build the classrooms if we can provide the materials which cost $18,400 for each classroom. Our club has set aside $4700 from the golf tournament for seed money to help purchase the materials for the first classroom. The minister of education there has no money to help build these classrooms and Rotary International has no grants to help with building. We are at the point that we now need to raise more money in order to start the first classroom so we are in a holding pattern waiting on the North Carolina Club and the Boquete Club to also raise money to help get the first classroom started. In the meantime we can continue with some of the water filtration work, solar light work among other service projects that we can help with. We are excited to leave our legacy there by helping with this classroom construction. Dave thanked everyone who has helped thus far with the Golf Tournament and other things with this project. He then opened it up for questions and Doug McLaughlin and Bill Schilling stated that they would donate $100 each to this project and then many other Rotarians raised their hand pledging money as well. Anyone who would like to donate money to the project can send a check to the Casper Rotary Foundation, earmarking it for the International project so we can get this classroom built. This is an exciting worthy project that we all need to get behind. Airfare to travel there is roughly $1,000 per person; there are host families there to host us when we go down so expenses while there are minimal.

 

President John Starnes adjourned the meeting at 1:3 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are meeting at the Petroleum Club where we will be for the next two weeks, then Casper College for one week and then we will be back at the Parkway for our Christmas meeting on December 21^st. Next week we will learn how to sign up for Rotary.org.