Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
01/06/2020
President John Griffith called the meeting to order promptly at 12:25, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Chastidy Greenwood
Greeters:
Matt Snyder and Nicole Tholson were our greeters today and Matt introduced the members who brought guests:
- Our visiting Rotarians today are, Helen Bishop (Jackson Supper Club), Jonathan Boudreaux and Joanne True ( 5 Trails Club);
- Richard Schwahn introduced his daughter Madeline and his wife Michelle;
- Ann Ruble introduced our former exchange student Elise Verboomen;
- Lisa Scroggins introduced Joan Mills;
- President John Griffith introduced Luke Gillian (Meals on Wheels), and Joe Ries, (Cowboy Supply House);
- Eric Easton introduced the parents of our SOM, Bill and Chrisa DeGraeve as well as Shawn Weis from NCHS;
Song and Merriment:
Gary Pehrson led us in singing Cowboy Joe;
Family of Rotary:
Glenn Januska let us know that his Nephew, Brandon, is with the 82nd Airborne and they were deployed over the weekend so he asked us to keep all of our military personnel in our thoughts and prayers.
Lisa Scroggins let us know that their son was in Iraq as a private contractor and thankfully all of the private contractors were able to get out of Iraq.
Rotarians of the Week:
Steve Loftin nominated those who helped last month at the Food Bank of the Rockies, Sabrina Foreman, Charlie Shopp, and Phillip Rael.
Announcements:
President John Griffith announced that our new member orientation will be January 23rd at Raccas.
Miamie Sleep let us know that on the table are sheets for volunteers showing what areas they need help with. Please sign up for what you can help with. They also are going to make magnets for vehicles so sign up if you would like one and if you have an old magnet sign please get them to her so that the dates can be updated.
Steve Loftin announced that today we have the first opportunity of the year to pack meat at the Food Bank of the Rockies, he needs 6 or more volunteers.
Special Guest Minute
Elise Verboomen, former exchange student with our club from Belgium, let us know of all of the fun things she has been doing since being our exchange student 4 years ago. She stayed with the Schwahn Family and then with the Rubles when she was here and has kept in touch. After going home in 2017 she started a 4 year degree program in International Hospitality Management at a school in the Netherlands a couple hours north of Amsterdam. She loves the program and because of it she has been able to travel quite a bit, she is now finishing her third year. Last semester she was able to go to South Africa for 3 months then to Paris for 3 months and she spent 3 weeks traveling around Vietnam. In South Africa she did a minor in Revenue Management but she had a light schedule so she was able to do some traveling while there. She also did a minor in Strategic Management while in Bali. In South Africa she connected with the Rotary Club which was different than our club but she was able to volunteer for some of their projects while there. She learned a lot from her social interactions while in these other countries. She leaves for home tomorrow and she will have 3 weeks of school in the Netherlands then after that she will be going to Barcelona for an internship as a sales and revenue intern at a 5-star boutique hotel. She is excited and will be working on her Spanish. This is her fourth time coming back to Casper since her stay as an exchange student, every time she comes she thinks it will be the last time but then she comes again and it gets harder and harder to leave so one day she may decide to just stay. She got here on December 22 and has been doing lots of fun things. She loves coming back and is sad that it is time to leave again.
Student of the Month:
Our Student of the month today was our future outgoing exchange student to Italy, Gabe DeGraeve from NCHS. A well-known part of our Rotary Family.
Membership:
Al Scroggins sponsored by his wife Lisa Scroggin, gave his classification talk today. Al was born and raised in Sunflower County Mississippi where B.B. King and Archie Manning are from. His father was from a long line of flat land dirt farmers so he grew up working outdoors and enjoying the outdoors. He graduated from Mississippi State with a BS in Animal Science and he was a member of the livestock judging team in College. He stuck with livestock and crop production for his career and was a volunteer 4H leader and served on the County Livestock Show Board of Directors. He has 4 children, 3 sons and a daughter, his oldest son is 44 years old and his daughter, the youngest of the 4, is 14. His youngest son was just recently married. In 1980 he accepted a position with a large Cattle feed yard company in Gonzales TX where he was the assistant manager in charge of animal health, and later he went to work in shipping and receiving for a firm. His first marriage ended in 1982 but in 1984 he met a dynamic young lady on a blind date, he said it goes back to the saying that a blind hog can find an acorn. He and Lisa, his “acorn” were married in 1985 and moved to the hill country of western TX where he was involved with several ranching and hunting operations in that area until he went to work for SW TX telephone company as purchasing agent and warehouse manager. They moved to Casper when he retired from this job. In Texas he was on the board of the county fair association as well as serving as a member of the Edwards County Fire Department as well as serving on boards for other civic organizations. He said moving to Wyoming has been a good fit for them, they really enjoy it and have been well received. He has, over the years embraced the western cowboy lifestyle and since moving to Wyoming he found out there is another way to be a Cowboy, “Go Pokes”. He is happy to be a member of our Rotary club and meeting and making new friends.
Program (Wyoming Food for Thought):
President Elect Lisa Scroggins, introduced our speakers today, Jamie Purcell, from Wyoming Food for Thought. Jamie said that they started the organization in November of 2012 because the universe decided that they needed to. They started with just giving out weekend food bags for kids. Her favorite quote is “If you can’t feed 100 people then feed just 1.” When they started there were about 3,000 kids in Natrona County who were food insecure. So having a 3 year old and a 5 year old herself she thought ok how are we going to feed 3,000 kids, but Mother Theresa said start with feeding one, so they started small and are building from there. In January of 2013 they started small by distributing weekend food bags, starting with about 170 and now they are serving 800 kids every single weekend. They do not do it alone and their goal is to source food locally. She has several food source heroes and one of them is Will Allen, he said “you couldn’t put folks inside a blighted neighborhood without a strong family unit and without access to healthy food and expect them to thrive, if you could create an environment in which people felt secure and healthy you could provide them with the possibility of a better life.”
As Casperites and Rotarians she knows that we want the best for our community and our neighbors and that is what their work does as well. They have three pillars at Food for Thought, to provide, empower, and educate. To Provide means to provide immediate assistance which is why they started the first program of weekend food bags. In 2014 they gave out almost 80,000 free meals in 2018 that became 236,400 meals and in 2019 they gave out 289,000 meals that are sourced locally given out free of charge no questions asked to kids up to 18 years of age. They do their programs different than the traditional food banks as they are not really a food bank or food pantry. They are working to change the food system so that everyone has access to healthy food year-round. To this end they also do community gardens and year-round farmer’s markets. When she started, she had the idea that they would source all of the food locally because the more local the food is the better it is for you. They thought they would be able to work with local producers and get all of the excess food and it would work great, the reality was a little different than what she envisioned. In 2014 they took over the farmers market from the volunteers that had been doing it. They quickly learned there was not a lot of local food left over. So, from their perspective they need to create the solution. They grew the market to make it year-round and are the only one to accept food stamps. They also started a program they have in Michigan called double up food bucks where they get sponsors to help offset the cost of giving out free money for Snap users, they can get up to $20 in addition to their snap funds to get local produce. They also wanted to help scale up and grow local small businesses through the farmers market. With the laws in WY you can produce food at home and sell it at the farmers market. They still were not getting all of the food for their bags locally and they realized it was because of scale, there is not enough commercial kitchen space in our community to do what they want to do. They bought an old 1988 bus to use to distribute food around town for those who need better access to food. Back in 2015 the Wyoming food freedom act would allow them to do that but they took that provision out in the 2017 revision of the act which they didn’t know about until after buying the bus. They have two options, change the law or figure out how to fill the bus legally. So, they found a commercial kitchen that they can manage and rent out by the hour so that the food producers can use it to be within the law. The building they found has the ability have store fronts, a commercial kitchen, a food hub etc. it is the old VFW downtown. They purchased the building at 420 W 1st street and every Saturday from 9-3 is their farmers market. They want this to be a place to grow food, teach people about food, scale up the local food businesses and have the ability to improve the access to food. The intention is to allow the kids to have the food necessary to do better in school and improve their lives. They also envision a community where people are engaged and have upward mobility with year-round food and local food can be the solution to hunger.
She then opened it up for questions. They are still looking to feed all 3,000 of the hungry kids in our community. She added that there is a network of food banks around the state that they can help each other have what they need. They eventually want to be able to be self-funded within the next five years by producing and selling as well as giving away the food. Their annual budget is about $250,000 which is from donations. They do not go to the Food Bank of the Rockies because of the rules that come when you partner with other organizations and they do not want to have to worry about those rules. They are partnering with Ridleys and are able to get the same prices for food that they would pay at the Food bank. They also get a lot of food donated. They are doing workshops to help people understand food and nutrition better but they need more volunteer man power. The greenhouses and gardens are free gardens that anyone can go get food from them. They want to use the gardens to educate people on growing food and also to allow them access to good and healthy food. Once they get the kitchens up and running with the equipment they need to process some of the food they will be able to grow and process more of the food for their food bags. They are establishing a network with other food hubs around the state to be able to share food and take care of needs around the state. The food hub here they are going to have a business incubator to help these small local food businesses to grow. They are partnering with different business around the community to help these small businesses grow. They will have rentable market stalls where people can sell their food goods.
President John Griffith concluded the meeting at 1:21, PE Lisa Scroggins let us know that next week, January 13th, we will be meeting at The Nic and our program will be Mark Lyford, the director of UW Science Initiative.
“Use Rotary to connect your world”
