Club Meeting March 17
We had a bright green St Patrick’s Day meeting, thanks to hats, bow ties, and badges provided by Jessica Brennan. We were joined by two visitors from McMaster Rotaract Club and Thie Convery and Kanwal Shankardass from the Noon Club. . Ernie Roman added to the Irish flavour by singing a song and dancing a jig. Not to be missed. Acting SAA George Gould collected Happy Dollars, starting with his own to celebrate his birthday and beer count of 530 different beers tasted. Derek was back from a UK trip, where the daffodils are already flowering. Barb celebrated grand-daughter #2. Alycia celebrated her new puppy – A Border Terrier and Jessica told us of her son’s successful graduation concert at Mohawk.
Announcements from Jan Southall reminded us to nominate Paul Harris winners from the Club or community for our dinner on April 28th. Bill Armstrong asked for volunteers for the May 30th Lobsterfest to give their names to Harold Grunenberg, and to start assembling Silent Auction items.
We had two speakers at our March 17th meeting, Taylor from McMaster Rotaract and Thie Convery from the Noon Club. Taylor described the work of his club in raising funds for the National Service Dogs and for Prostate Cancer through the Movember activity. He encouraged us to attend their Parisian themed Gala taking place on March 27th at the McMaster Faculty Club; tickets $60 with funds raised going to TrueVision Ghana, an organization helping children impacted by AIDS. If you go, take a soft toy for donation to Ronald McDonald House.
Thie gave us an update on End Polio Now which has raised $1.4 billion since inception in 1985. It has succeeded in reducing worldwide polio cases from 350,000 a year to 333 in 2014. Polio is now only occurring in 3 countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Funds raised by Rotary are now being matched 2:1 by the Gates Foundation.
Thie then promoted the Rotary District 7090 Million Dollar Dinner in which members are encouraged to make a pledge of $10,000 US to the Foundation, with many different ways to make the donation as a one time, multi-year or bequest donation. Contact Thie if you can consider this donation at 905—627-9970 or thie.convery@ipcsecurities.com