Rotarian, Jodi Joffe, is the manager of Parkway Presents, a new toy store that is located at 3115 Dundee Road, Northbrook. The shop, owned by Lisa Smith, began as a web-store and recently opened it's brick-and-mortar in the White Plains Shopping Center.
The store will host a private
Rotary Benefit Shopping Event
May 4th
The after-hours event will take place from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM and will be for Rotary Grandparents, parents and special guests. All Rotary members and their families are invited. Ten percent of all sales made will be donated to The Rotary Foundation.
The store carries specialty toys, gifts, games, art kits, science kits and sensory items. Many of the items are unique and state of the art. There are items for babies up to teens.
Parkway Present's logo was designed by Jodi, daughter of our beloved Larry Kanar, who we lost last Fall.
Lisa named the store as an homage to her father, a pharmacist who was a founder of the Parkway Pharmacy on the North Shore. If you remember that store you will have a sense of the great customer service Parkway Presents offers today.
Don't miss this wonderful event - make it an evening - with dinner at any White Plains restaurant!
The Rubber Ducky Race & Event Committee Meeting
MONDAY APRIL 17
We will meet tomorrow at 4:45 PM to 5:45 PM in The Board Room at the Y to commence preparation for The Rubber Ducky Race on October 1, 2023 in Village Green Park.
TheAGENDA - which committee members have received will be to plan the entire scope of the Rubber Ducky fundraising event, assign various tasks to committee members, create timelines for for tasks.
Additionally, the club marching in the July 4th parade will be discussed. If you would like to add anything to the agenda let me know and I will add it.
Denis
To Lunch Club & Satellite Club Members:
April 25th
D'Agonstino's
at 241 S. Milwaukee Ave.,
just south of Dundee Rd,
5:30 -7 p.m.
This will be a club "social" meeting that will include dinner, and games!
This is an in-person meeting - NOT a hybrid meeting.
Please make sure you let Andy & Mike know you will be attending as we must provide a head count!
We will meet to socialize at 5:30 PM, with formal meeting to begin promptly at 6 PM. We will feast on pizza, Caesar salad and soft drinks, with cookies, brownies, coffee and tea for desert. Cash bar will also available. Following the conclusion of the formal meeting at 7 PM, we will play bingo,
hosted by that renowned entertainer Mitch Portugal.
Call me with any comment or questions and have a great day and weekend too.
Rotary Training - Gain Insight & Ideas for Your Leadership Role
Whether you are taking on next year's leadership role for the first time, or you are a seasoned veteran, or you are someone who is interested in finding out about club leadership roles please plan to join us on
April 29th 9 to Noon
Harper College
(This year's spring training will be 100% in person)
How are you preparing for your role as a club leader for next year?
___Talking with your predecessor
___Taking courses on the Learning Center
___Attending the Spring Training Assembly
___All of the above
The Spring Training Assembly will be held in person on Saturday, April 29th from 9 to noon at the Harper College Wojcik Conference Center. We’ll have an opening general session and it will be followed by role based training sessions. You can find the detailed agenda in the attached flyer. Please plan to attend if you can.
Not a club leader next year? While Spring Training is targeted to incoming club leaders, it is also a chance for aspiring club leaders to learn about club leadership roles.
Yours in Rotary Service,
Linda Borton & Michael Shoultz Your District Training Team
P.S. Thank you if you’ve already registered. You don't need to register again.
On an ordinary day last August, people at a park in Copenhagen, Denmark, saw something extraordinary: a stream of runners all adorned with floating, bobbing pink balloons. The balloon carriers were part of Run With Rotaract, a three-year-old event organized by District 1470’s Rotaract clubs. This year, it raised money for education in Malawi.
The balloons served as tickets for the approximately 65 participants. And, says Philip Flindt, a member of the Rotaract Club of København Nord, they performed the equally important function of attracting public attention.
“It created something weird for people to look at — people running with pink balloons,” Flindt says. “It was a way to reach people in the community around the park. They were asking, ‘Is this a bachelor party, a bachelorette party? Why are you running with these balloons?’”
Flindt never seems to lack creative, eye-catching ideas. It’s clear why he’s the Rotary public image coordinator for Zone 18, the first Rotaractor to serve as an RPIC. He’s been promoting Rotaract since he helped found his club on 13 March 2013. That date, he’s quick to note, is the anniversary of the certification of the first Rotaract club in 1968.
“Philip is a fantastic advocate for Rotaract,” says Becky Giblin, a dual member of the Rotaract Club of Auckland City, New Zealand, and the Rotary Club for Global Action District 5150. “When he’s given an opportunity, he not only represents all Rotaractors in the best way possible, but he works to make sure other Rotaractors are given similar opportunities.”
Photo right: Rotaractor Philip Flindt serves as the public image coordinator for Zone 18.
As one of Rotaract’s biggest fans, Flindt is always seeking ways for it to grow and thrive. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was part of a group that started World of Rotaract, a 24-hour-a-day video call to keep people connected. It eventually evolved into a worldwide network.
“At first, the point was to make sure people were well — to just talk to each other,” Flindt says. “We hosted conferences for 500 people. We had online parties. I’m a DJ, so I played about 10 parties online for a couple hundred people. We had talks, we had game nights, we had movie nights. It became a way to work together, all because we got to know each other on Zoom.”
World of Rotaract has helped people cooperate on projects and has generated very close bonds, Giblin says, including her friendship with Flindt.
“It has built a level of trust and friendship that is surprising, considering we have never met in person,” she says. “The World of Rotaract team is not just a community, but a family that is spread out to all corners of the world.”
Failing fast and sharing hats
To find successful new ideas, like World of Rotaract, Flindt recommends using an entrepreneurial, “fail fast” approach.
“Get all the bad ideas out of the way as fast as possible, and run with the ideas that work,” he says. “When you do a project, don’t just think about the project. Put on your ‘membership’ hat, your ‘foundation’ hat, and your ‘public image’ hat at the same time. Or get together in a group and share the hats.”
All this hat-switching has led to initiatives like one that supports the Give Every Child a Future campaign. GECAF aims to vaccinate 100,000 children in nine Pacific Island countries to protect them from human papillomavirus, rotavirus, and pneumococcal bacteria. For an event called Move for GECAF, Rotaractors got moving — literally. They flooded social media with pictures and videos of people running, dancing, doing pushups, or holding signs showing how much money they’d raised.
Flindt likes projects that accomplish several goals at once. He says the success of Run With Rotaract wasn’t just in the US$2,000-3,000 it raised.
“We didn’t just fund a scholarship for a student in Malawi. We created awareness in our local community,” he says. “It’s about creating impact. If you couldn’t run, you could walk, or join the crowd of onlookers. We had people who were pregnant, we had kids in strollers — all different types of people. That’s kind of the fourth point of Rotary’s Action Plan, the ability to adapt to the environment.”
Flindt has learned a lot since he became an RPIC. Zone 18, which includes his home country of Denmark, as well as the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, and Sweden, is extremely diverse. Recognizing this, Flindt is reconsidering his initial plan to refrain from spending much of his budget on travel.
“I see that I need to get out there,” he says. “I need to go to the districts, to be there physically. I need to create these connections and make sure we’re communicating.”
Heeding warnings that global action is still far too slow to avert climate calamity, more Rotarians are racing to fill the gaps in funding and climate action. This issue reports how they are delivering funds and expertise to hard-hit communities, promoting climate resilience, equity, health, and economic development. ESRAG's Chair Pat Armstrong and Chair-Elect Yasar Atacik link you to ESRAG's growing trove of online resources. Conferences and webinars within and beyond Rotary highlight ethical, effective ways to move money to solutions more fair to all concerned.
Here are our April 2023 stories:
Resources to Galvanize your Climate Action
Rotarians Reviving Pakistani Villages
April 19/20 ESRAG Project Webinars: Flight Carbon Calculator and Climate Action Now
Solar Saving Lives in Ghana
April 19: Meet Transition Network Founder Rob Hopkins on Save our Planet
Imagine Low-Carbon Energy Security: good news from Canada
Teaching Climate Solutions in Türkiye
Plant-Rich Diet Catching On!
May 9 Sustainable Investment Europe Conference in Paris
Simposio Latinoamericano del Medio Ambiente in Ciudad Juárez June 5-6
See the online article for pictures of Rotaractors with the Istanbul Maslak Rotary Club welcoming and gathering travel information from participants at D 2420's first climate action conference on March 4. Tulip Sustainability used the data as part of its calculation of the emissions generated by the conference. Maslak RC, a carbon-neutral club, offset the omissions. Safak Ozsoy, ESRAG Zone 21 Chairwoman.
.png)
