Mark Ober told us that this year 50 students submitted essays. A committee of Donna & Julian Crocker, Lo-rienne, Nancy McKarney, Cynthia Woodruff-Neer and Mark took on the task of reading all the essays and deter-mining the winners.. 

At the 7th grade level, Jaqui Cruz submitted the winning essay explaining how the 4-way test would have helped her in dealing with an “irritating younger brother. Jazlyn Bautista’s second place essay explained how the test would have helped her make better decisions and be more respectful. Third place winner, Arabella Feldman-Milliken essay earned third place. She explained how the 4-way test would help her to be more compassionate. 

For the first time, 11th graders were asked to submit essays. Condee Seed turned in the first-place essay conclud-ing that the 4-way test is a helpful resource in being a thoughtful friend and family member. Second place win-ner, Adair Ponce wrote about how the 4-way test helped him to prevent escalation of an argument. Two essays tied for third place. Zahaira Melendez explained how being able to ask the four questions in the test helped “better improve the mindset while also valuing the process of making a decision that won’t have a terrible out-come”. Brandon Diaz Solis submitted the other third place essay about a disagreement he had with a teacher. Because he followed the 4-way test, he took time to let the problem solve itself rather than getting into a confron-tation with the teacher. 

Congratulations to all the students who participated in this project. 

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) is an intensive leadership experience organized by Rotary clubs and districts where young people can devel- op leadership skills while having fun and making connections.  The event offers courses not often found in the regular curriculum teenagers are offered. These courses include diversity training, public speaking, team building, leadership funda- mentals, goal setting, leading a meeting, character & ethics, facilitation, fellowship and creating good habits. The retreat offers a mix of indoor and out- door activities. Very talented keynote speakers are

invited to come and teach, motivate and inspire our youth to become great leaders and to do great things. Cam- bria Rotarian Nancy McKarney serves as the Senior Administrator and club members Tim Carr and Jane Howard both served as counselors.

This year our club sponsored five Coast Union juniors to attend RYLA. They were chosen based on their leadership potential to attend RYLA. Olivia Klemstein, Ashley Klemstein, Adair Ponce, Dane Volz and Sean Schalk joined 190 students from high schools in Rotary’s District 5240 at Camp Ramah in Ojai. At our meeting on Friday, we were

pleased to hear about the student’s experiences. Adair told us that after attending RYLA,“I see leadership differ- ently. Ultimately my goal is to bring what I’ve learned back to Coast Union and any community I’m part of”. Ash- ley said “if I hadn’t come here, I wouldn’t understand the breakdown steps of how to be a leader and how I can positively impact my community”. Olivia described it as “a crazy fun experience I will appreciate forever”. Dane credited the friends he made there for teaching him so much about the world, life and himself. Sean told us that RYLA “has been a blessing. I have learned so much about being a leader and using my unique skills and talents to help my community”.

Jane Howard introduced our speaker, John Weiss and told us that he joined the Rotary Club of Morro Bay in 2001. He is a Past District Governor (2017-18) and Club President (2009-10 & 2011-12). 

John has created and presented Membership seminars since 2010, was a PETS instructor on “Engaging Members” for 4 years. He personally sponsored over 60 new members to his club, helped charter the Eco-Rotary Club Morro Bay, Morro Bay High School Interact Club and the San Luis Obispo Rotaract Club. 

John’s wife Christine is a great partner who was a Charter member of the Rotary Club of Morro Bay—Eco. Together they have 5 adult children ages 33 to 44. 

John served as a working Governor with retail and professional electronics stores in Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles. Many members of his staff have been with the company (founded with father in 1978) and industry to 20-35 years. 

John plays basketball, golf and walks when possible in between Rotary functions, church, family and work. 

He is a cancer (Stage 4 adrenal Cortical Carcinoma) survivor having been diagnosed a month before serving as Dis-trict Governor in June 2017 and continues to get monthly treatments and constant monitoring. 

Lorienne began her introduction with a quote from Rosalynn Carter, “There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be care-givers, and those who will need caregivers.” She then welcomed Karen Ortiz, Director of Development and Tamra Mariott, Development Manager. We learned that The Longest Day is the day with the most light — the summer solstice. On June 21, thousands of participants from across the world come together to fight the darkness of Alzheimer's through an activity of their choice. Together, they use their crea-tivity and passion to raise funds and awareness for the care, support and research efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association. For more information about The Longest Day, go to alz.org/TLD. 

Currently, more than 690,000 people in California are living with Alzheimer’s disease, and over 1.12 million family and friends are providing care. 

The Alzheimer’s Association, California Central Coast Chapter provides free edu-cation programs, support services and care consulta-tions across the counties of San Luis Obispo, Santa Bar-bara and Ventura counties while also supporting critical research toward a cure. 

Joni Kirby has enjoyed sharing many of her personal life’s moments through “untrainings” for over thirty years. She is passionate about reminding other that their happiness is always carried within their inner heart space. Joni cur-rently lives in Cambria with her fur babies, Love and Faith. 

“Our lives are full of satori moments—powerful snippets of time that, when recognized, invite us to awaken, become aware, be present, and find enlight-enment.” “Through inspiring personal stories and wisdom acquired over time, Joni Kirby teaches us that we do not need to be trained to be. Instead, she encourages us to live as Rylan did—awakened, dancing, and celebrating life in the mo-ment. As she leads others on the satori journey of reawakening, also known as Rylan’s untrainings, she reminds us of who we are deep inside, to love, live, and learn in the moment, to laugh often, to re-member that all is well because we are one, to embrace the joy that is always with-in, to breathe in the space of stillness between thoughts, and to intentionally plant our life’s garden—all while embracing the beauty of life.” Joni’s book, Satori Moments, shares anecdotes and wisdom intended to inspire any-one interested in finding their way back to their true selves and the I-ness within and it is available on Amazon All proceeds are donated to Dr. Loh’s Childhood Cancer Research. 

Estero Bay Kindness Coalition started in December 2017, when founder Bobby deLancellotti met with the principal at Del Mar Ele-mentary school in Morro Bay, CA to inquire about how he could serve the most vulnerable students during the holidays. The princi-pal connected him with 10 families. Bobby bought them 2 gifts each: a fun gift, a practical gift, and a $100.00 gift card to a local su-permarket. In January, the principal sent Bobby a letter thanking him for the impact the gifts had on the families. She also informed him that 64% of the students at Del Mar were living at or below the poverty line. This broke Bobby’s heart, so he decided to do some-thing about it. 

In March 2018, he started Got Your Back, a program that helps feed kids over the weekends, providing 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, 2 dinners, healthy snacks, fruit, milk, and juice to each kid enrolled. The kids in this program rely on “hot/reduced lunch” at school to eat during the week and would often go hungry on the weekends. By June 2018, Estero Bay Kindness Coalition was serving 48 students with Got Your Back. The following school year, it jumped to 8 schools and over 200 students in the SLO Unified School District. During this time, our organization became a nonprofit 501 C-3. By the 2019 school year, we were feeding over 200 children in 8 schools. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and schools closed their doors in March 2020, Bobby met with local principals to get connected with some of the most vulnerable, food insecure families in the SLO Unified School District. 

The Estero Bay Kindness Coalition went from feeding school kids on the weekends to feeding whole families for the week, virtually overnight. 

To meet the needs of the families referred to us by 1 of our 8 partnered schools, we created Bags of Love, a program that delivers 3 bags of groceries per week to 164+ families in the greater Estero Bay area. The bags of groceries consist of healthy, protein-rich breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, juice, milk, and fresh, local produce. During this time, we also created Sunshine and Seed, a new and gently used kids clothing collective where kids can shop for free. 

When schools reopened in 2021, we reimplemented Got Your Back, sending kids home with healthy meals and snacks to eat over the weekends. 

The Estero Bay Kindness Coalition has built a team of over 80+ volunteers, 2 team leaders, and 2 food pantries. They are currently partnered with 8 schools, 41 for-profits, 18 nonprofits, and 10 churches 

Interact Club members plan various fundraising activities so they can raise money to donate to causes select-ed by the Interactors. In previous years, the club has donated to such causes as high school scholarships, Camp Ocean Pines, HART, Feeding America, Doctors Without Borders, St. Jude’s, Skate Cambria and FFRP. This year we were joined by Interact members President Violet, Ave, Oscar and Robert and their Interact Advisor, Ayan John-son. 

The Annual Interact Bake Sale is always one of our favorite meetings because the baked goods the students make are auctioned off and, invariably bidding wars break out as auctioneer Bob Kasper uses humor to encourage high-er and higher bids. It is just another example of our motto: “If it ain’t fun, it ain’t Rotary”. 

At Friday’s meeting, there were a lot of laughs, we got to enjoy some delicious baked goods and the 2023 Interact Bake Sale raised almost $4,500!