Tattler Newsletter September 25, 2017 (Sep 25, 2017)

September 25, 2017

Opening

President Teri Treat called the weekly meeting of RCOB to order at 12:30 PM.

President Teri thanked all Rotarians for attending our Centennial Celebration Gala and commented that we certainly blew our cover as a stuffy, conservative group with our rather uninhibited behavior that evening! She then thanked the following club members for their invaluable contributions to the success of the event and presented each with a gift:

Sandee Lindhout – organizer of the Centennial Luncheon
Mark Knittel – audiovisual guru
Marty Haines – club history guru
Jan Marchbanks – overall organizer of the Gala

Teri also thanked the entire Centennial Celebration Committee for making the event such a success.

She urged that Club members use this important anniversary to reach out to former members to rejoin as well as to continue to recruit new members. She stated that the video of the history of RCOB shown at the Gala is available to any Club member to help in this effort.

Announcements:

Our Centennial Celebrations were a complete success and thank you to all those who attended our luncheon at the Leopold Hotel and/or the Gala on Saturday night.

The exciting elements of the Luncheon and Saturday night event was videos produced by Josh Burdick and Ben Mallahan. There are three videos which include the 1940 film from a Rotary Picnic at Birch Bay (look close and see if you spot our own Brian Griffin at 8 years old), Centennial Keynote speaker Howard Behar and an excellent Rotary Clubs of Whatcom County promotion video.

These are must view videos and here is the link: https://veritasmediapro.wistia.com/projects/ih4lhr630r. These links are also available on our home page of our website at bellinghamrotary.org.

Annual Rotary Blood Donation Drive will take place on December 4. Members will be able to sign up for specific times before and after the meetings of November 13 and 20.

Lydia Place Annual Cider Press and Ribbon Cutting ceremony will be held this Thursday, September 28, 4-7PM, to celebrate the completion of the refurbishing of Lydia Place, mainly financed by the RCOB and Bellingham Bay Rotary.

The first of 6 Rotary International Presidential Peace Building Conferences will be held in Vancouver, BC on February 9 – 11, 2018. President Teri is planning to attend and will report back to the Club.

President Teri urged that Club members read a recent excellent editorial in the Bellingham Herald about homeless people, written by our own Hans Erchinger-Davis.

Guests of Rotarians:

John Harris introduced visiting Rotarian, Jan Wray from Utah

Del VandeKerk introduced Eric Richey, Whatcom County Deputy Prosecutor

Scott Hume brought Sarah Arnold with Salish Wealth Management

Paul Grey introduced special guests and our speaker, Peter Kasango and his daughter Nakyuka "Allen" with the Naluhonjohe Village Water & Sanitation Project co-sponsored by the Rotary Club of Bellingham in Uganda. Peter and Allen came to help us celebrate our 100th Anniversary.

Program:

Paul Grey introduced our speaker, Rotarian Peter Kasango, who, with his daughter Allen, is making his first trip to the United States from his home in Uganda. Peter helped start his local Rotary Club in 1993 and was its founding president. His club has completed numerous projects to help the local community, including drilling numerous wells and establishing a microloan program for businesswomen.

Peter's topic today was a progress report on the Naluhonjohe Village Water and Sanitation Project in Uganda, a joint effort of his Rotary Club (Bweyogerere RC) and the RCOB. This is the second joint project between our two Clubs, the first being the Buffujja Water Sanitation and Hygene Project.

This project was needed because the water source for the local population of 10,000 people, mostly peasants and children, were two open water holes and an out of date, dilapidated well. With the area's alternate cycles of flooding and drought, this system could not provide consistent, clean drinking water.

The project is being financed by a Rotary grant of $35,000, of which $10K came from RCOB, $10K from DDF and $15K from World Fund. The tasks completed so far are:

Water pipe channel trenching done by the community , with women doing most of the work
Community training in improvements of sanitation & hygiene in water usage
Women attend training in Menstrual hygiene, cleaning , use & care of re usable sanitary pads
Periodic project evaluations involving the community and Rotarians & Rotaractors
Delivery & Distribution of Water pipes along the trenches and Plastic Water Tanks to the water points
Installation of water pipes in the trenches by the community with help from Rotarians
Training for the construction of energy saving stoves–

Remaining tasks to complete:

2000 sanitary pads to be distributed with education
800 Energy-saving stoves to be built-
Construction of 3 Eco-Stanza toilets-
Final Training Reviews with Village-
Official Hand-off to the Village leadership-
Project will be completed by Jan 2018 and within budget!

Peter closed by thanking our Club for our support of this project and inviting us to the first ever Rotary Project Fair in Kampala, Uganda on February 8-10, 2018.