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Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
02/02/2015
President Bill DeGraeve called the meeting to order at 12:31 welcoming all Rotarians and guests to Rotary.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Paulann Doane
Greeters:
John Jorgenson was our greeter and he introduced guests:
John first introduced our exchange student Giulia;
Chad Nelson introduced Dustin Bench;
Joe MacGuire introduced John Wold;
Ronna Boril introduced Jens Boril;
Vickie Diamond introduced Chad Pew;
Maribeth Plocek introduced Tom Moseley;
Eric Easton introduced parent of our SOM, Sandy McDaniel;
Song and merriment:
Pinky Ellis treated us to a good chuckle and then Gary Pehrson led us in singing a schmaltsy version of “Home on The Range” with Brenda Peters on the piano.
Family of Rotary:
President Bill welcomed Gary Pehrson back;
Jim Ruble announced that Tucker Laprade’s baby boy came into the world Saturday so they now have three sons under the age of 4.
Rotarians of the week:
President Bill nominated Giulia for taking a cross country ski course and trying new things;
Announcements:
Kevin Murphy announced that Rotary Youth Leadership camp will be the third and fourth week of July so if there are any family members of Rotarians that would like to participate please let Kevin know.
Mandy George announced that February 13th will be our Foundation Dinner and will be a great time. You can sign up electronically or there are signup sheets on your tables. Also there is a signup sheet on each table for volunteers to help with the games.
Students of the Month:
We had a great student from KWHS today, Cameron McDaniel;
New Member Induction:
Crystal MacGuire, sponsored by her husband Joe MacGuire was inducted into the club today, Welcome Crystal; we look forward to getting to know you. President Bill let us know that with Crystal joining the club we are back up to 200 members, so keep recruiting.
Program:
John Starnes before introducing our speaker today encouraged us to attend this Thursday night’s fish bowl between KWHS and NCHS where his son, who is on the KWHS team, will be competing. He then introduced our speaker, Dave Simonson Fwho spoke to us about our club’s international project. Dave started by introducing the members of the International project committee; Richard Schwahn, Liz Becher, Becky MacDonald (who just transferred to Las Vegas), Lauren Griffith, and Deb and Gene Theriault. If anyone is interested in participating with the committee please let one of them know. Dave started by telling us that when he started out as the Chairperson of the committee, the Club had already filtered down the possible projects down to three basic choices. The committee used certain criteria to decide which project was the one and they put together a metrics to score each one based on the criteria. The criteria were; Boots on the ground, a Rotary link, locality of project, financial need of the region, multi-generational project, geographical access, multi club possibilities, ease of completion, and most importantly, legacy outcome, did it change lives for the better. Each board member would score each project based on the criteria and then the scores were added up and Panama was the project that scored the highest. The area in Panama is in the north east region of Panama, close to the border with Costa Rica. It is a mountainous region and is a somewhat retirement community of about 20,000 which are mostly ex-pats from countries around the world and English is the principal language. It is not indicative of the general population of Panama. Dave gave us an overview of the country of Panama where there is a lot of poverty that the government is attempting to help but there are many challenges. The area of Boquete is surrounded by a lot of rural poverty because it is not close to the big cities. There are a lot of challenges with clean water and sanitation. The Rotary club there has been very active in serving the area and has done lots of projects with water and sanitation and has joined up with other clubs from around the world to do projects. They are not a large group but they are very service oriented towards their community. In March of 2012 a group from Casper went to do some work and while there they identified a number of potential projects that need done. They saw projects such as literacy, health and emergency preparedness education and needs for projects in the schools. The committee had a teleconference a short time ago with the Rotary Club in Panama and asked about current needs and they put together a list of things that need taken care of now. One of the needs is in the area of education. There is a group of islands by the Caribbean coast called Bocas Del Toros where they have a school for K-9 but are lacking a HS. The people there are the indigenous people that are very poor and their children do not have access to a lot of food except for what they get at school. Also the youth can’t legally work until they are 18 years old so once they are done with 9th grade the only way for them to go to school is to travel to another community. So the project there would be building a three room school for a High School for the youth. Also in this area they have a garden project where they are teaching the people to grow healthier higher protein crops, they are working on English and Spanish education courses and also there is a playground project that needs done at the school to make the playground safer and put a roof over a portion of it for rainy days. They also have some water projects, one of which they are trying to decide if a 1.2 mile long pipeline for moving clean water to an area without clean water is going to be feasible. They are having a problem getting an accurate count of people to see if it would be feasible. There are places where they can drill but the hygiene is not great so the outlets for the pumps would cause contamination. There are some problems that could be easily taken care of with the right resources. Basic electricity and wiring, there are a couple of projects to deal with the lack of electrical wiring in the homes. One would be a small individual home LED lighting for one or two rooms of the home. Also the Rotary club is looking at working with a group in Panama city to possibly bring in a larger hub type electrical system. Other miscellaneous projects would be things like smokeless stoves for homes, as they now use kerosene and wood burning stoves which cause a lot of smoke in the homes; also a latrine project to help improve sanitation. There is also a lack of security in some of the schools which would be good to help protect the children. The next step for us then would be to plan a trip for the upcoming spring to do a small project such as distribute water filtration systems, or LED lights for homes but to also explore the possibilities for other projects to go back to later. He then showed us some slides of the different water filtration systems that we could provide. He summarized the projects again and the fact that we will start with a spring trip to explore the next step from there. He then answered questions, the cost to travel round trip runs from $850 to around $1200 for plane tickets for anyone who would want to go on the trip. There are additional funds available to help with these projects as the Rotary club there is very active in finding funds from many sources but they still need help with these projects. We are planning on getting grants to help whatever project we decide to take on in Panama. The local Rotary club has 25-30 members but they have a great enthusiasm for all of the projects that they want to accomplish.
President Bill DeGraeve let us know that on February 21, session 2 of RLI will be held here in Casper so if you would like to attend you can sign up online. Also he let us know that our club sponsors the BBB 4 way test essay scholarship contest and we may need more volunteers to read essays so if you would like to help let him know. He then adjourned the meeting at 1:25 with the ring of the bell, reminding us that next week we are back at the Parkway Plaza.
“Light Up Rotary”
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