Written by Patrick Hart

 

Our president, Rich Schoeneman, presided over this week’s meeting, and we opened with a pledge and a prayer. Once again though we left those longing for the return of a song a tad disappointed.   

 

Rick Mittelman bragged about the birth of his second grandchild, George Ernest Mittelman. While he had the podium, he  also mentioned that he was looking for a candidate to replace him as social director for our club.

 

Elliott Pinsel told about the great time he had on his recent trip to Italy, which is a country everyone should visit.

 

Tom Miller bragged that he had closed the contract on selling the Pet Factory, which he says makes him officially retired.  I guess up until now, when he no longer went to work, he was just being lazy.

 

Tom Zengeler is about to become an empty nester with his son Andrew having been accepted at Villanova.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Seb Karasu will be celebrating a birthday this Saturday, as she continues making her way down the fulfilling road of life.

 

On Saturday April 23 our club will be cleaning Highway 137 between Butterfield and Milwaukee at 7:00 a.m.  Contact Pat Hart if you can volunteer.

 

On Saturday April 30 Tom Gore is looking for volunteers in another environmentally conscious project.  That morning the club will be collecting electronics for recycling from 10:00 to 1:00 in front of Sunset Foods.  The used electronics will also benefit Blue Star in their efforts to help the disabled. 

 

 

Bill Rickert is trying to identify a worthy individual to receive the club’s Service Above Self Award.

 

Next week we have a special speaker Congressman Brad Schneider, and we will start the meeting early at 7:15 to give him time to make his presentation.

 

Ron Lapin says you can still join the Sunrise Rotary’s Monday evening golf league, and he hinted that some fantastic prizes will go to the top players.

 

 

This week Tucker Olson gave us a quiz on population trends in Lake County Illinois.  Hopefully someone other than Tucker, who rumor has it is plotting an election strategy, found the subject interesting.

 

This week Gabriel Munro spoke to us on  the Amarok Society. The Amarok Society works to improve educational opportunities among children living in poverty stricken areas in Asia and Africa. This is obviously a serious need when you consider that one in three children in the world is currently growing up illiterate, and other organizations are also attempting to address this problem.

 

The Amarok Society though takes a bit of a different approach from the more traditional strategy of trying to build additional brick and mortar schools for children. Such institutions face a number of handicaps in the localities Amarok has targeted, and  Mr. Munro illustrated some of these challenges by narrating a couple of personal stories of children from the city Dhaka.     

 

Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh, and it has a population of over 20,000,000, many of whom live in extreme poverty and are illiterate.  By law children in the city are entitled to a free public school education, but for several reasons these institutions often fail to achieve their goal.  Students still have to pay for textbooks and supplies, which leaves school out of the price range for a number of them, while other children are unable to attend classes, because they are working to help support their families.  There is also a widespread practice called “shadow education” in which teachers dismiss their classes early, so they can spend time earning extra money offering private tutoring to students who can afford it.  Another problem for female students is that frequently they are married at very young ages, which ends their ability to attend school.

 

So instead of trying to educate children in these cities, Amarok offers daily classes for local mothers, who then go home and pass on what they have learned to their own children and those of their neighbors. This system works well because the mothers actually know and care about their students. Furthermore, the process also enables more children to grow up with a literate mother, which is a big advantage in trying to learn to read and write.  All of the teachers Amarok hires for this program are from the locality they work in, and a number of them are alumnae of their schools for mothers.   

 

   

This week we had $26.00 in the sure prize, and with the progressive pot continuing to climb, it had slowly but surely reached a grand total of $310.00 with only 44 cards left.  Doug Fendon’s ticket was the first drawn, and having grown soft and risk adverse after months of lounging in the Arizona sun, he took the sure money.  Jeff Harger then shot for the moon and fell short when he only pulled the king of spades.

 

Our speaker will be Congressman Brad Schneider, and remember we will be starting at 7:15 to give the gentleman time to make his presentation.

 

Greeter and Prayer:  Bill Taranowski

 

Fun and Frolics:  Elliott Pinsel

 

QUOTE FOR THE DAY:

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”   Nelson Mandela