The Rotary Club of Langley’s 40th regular meeting of this Rotary year was held via Zoom on April 30, 2020. After allowing a fifteen minute social time for members to log in and exchange pleasantries, president Wayne called the meeting to order and gave his official welcome. In it he quoted from remarks our RIP Mark Maloney had made when announcing his theme.
Welcome from Wayne: Our Rotary theme this year is Rotary Connects
the World. “Rotary allows us to connect with each other, in deep and meaningful ways, across our differences,” Maloney said. “It connects us to people we would never otherwise have met, who are more like us than we ever could have known. It connects us to our communities, to professional opportunities, and to the people who need our help.”
Maloney also called on every Rotary and Rotaract club to identify segments of their community not represented in their club by creating a membership committee with diverse members.
“Through Rotary, we connect to the incredible diversity of humanity on a truly unique footing, forging deep and lasting ties in pursuit of a common goal,” he added. “In this ever more divided world, Rotary connects us all.”
Officially we had one guest, Nora Truman. However, since Nora joins us so frequently, we now treat her as one of us and forego the formal introduction. An interesting, slow version of Happy Birthday was sung for PE Veronica, who will be celebrating on May 2nd. Lana was wished a happy anniversary as well.
Fifteen new azaleas have been added to the collection for the garden at the Arboretum, Les reported. Wayne advised that Rotary will be holding a virtual convention in June that will be free for us to attend. We wait for details. Claudia reported on procedures for welcoming new members and will be updating our membership application form. Wayne informed club members that twenty-three applications for scholarships were narrowed down to thirteen, and numbers 4 – 13 had been distributed to the scholarship committee members for their evaluation. Three of those ten will then join the top three to become this year’s six scholarship recipients. Twenty of the applications were from females, with only three from males, and the top eighteen were from young women.
PE Veronica headed up a discussion about social activities and members expressed a desire for more of them, starting as soon as we are allowed to meet together in person. Veronica kept track of the suggestions made. We had thirteen people participating, and finally got to hear from Bob Lukie, even though we could not see him. The screen shots saved by Leon shows us “in action” during the meeting.
Wayne shared before and after photos of the improvements made at LCSS through our district grant project. We still have the hands-on part, sanding and painting, to do once we are again allowed to gather.
We closed with happy and sad dollars for Polio Plus, and a toast to Canada. For more pictures please visit April 30, 2020.