I would like to start out by saying how honored and humbled I am to be leading our club for a second time! The Rotary Club of Ventura-East has a very rich history of doing good things not only throughout the world but in our local community. I will not attempt to list the many significant members of our local community who have served in our club because I do not have the room in this column to list them all and what they have contributed and I would not want to dishonor anyone by omitting them. I would suggest that you spend the time to talk with some of our more seasoned members and learn about what's in our history.

 

The Rotary Club of Ventura-East has always been a trend setter if not the rebel. We were the 1st club in our district to achieve the distinction of being a 100% Paul Harris Club and we were the 54th club in the world to achieve this. We have been the home club of  3 Past District Governors John Carroll, Sally Adelblue and Jan Lindsay. We had a project where we were working with the Totonac Indians in Mexico and we were actually smuggling drugs INTO Mexico. We had many physicians and optometrists who received samples from their distributors and those samples were taken to the Totonacs to provide aid.

 

More recently we have been working with GoCare on projects in Nicaragua which were started by Jan Lindsay and Tom Crozier. We are currently working on a Rotary Global Grant which is a three year project and we have started working with the Mossy Foot Project in Ethopia. Mossy Foot Projects goal is to eliminate the Mossy Foot Disease which is preventable if the population would wear shoes. This project was brought to us by our member Sharon Daly. Locally we partner with many organizations, but our main emphasis continues to be Operation Ventura with the Ventura Family YMCA.

 

During the upcoming year I would like to see us continue to expand our focus and visibility in our local community. One of the projects I would like to see us fulfill is to sponsor a Blue Star Family chapter in Ventura County. We have 3 military bases in our county yet we do not have a Blue Star Family Chapter. Blue Star Families motto is "Strengthening America's Military Families Through Communities." Blue Star Families was founded by military spouses in 2009 to empower families to thrive as they serve by connecting them with their civilian neighbors - people and organizations - to create strong communities of support.  I would also like to partner with the Soroptimist club in Oxnard and participate in their program on Human Trafficking in March.

 

Most importantly I would love for us to have fun in the coming year and truly get to know each other better and work on all of our projects as a team. I would like to see us bring more networking back into Rotary, we did start as a networking group, and know more about what we all do and what we can do to help keep all of our businesses growing and thriving. Finally, I would like to see our spouses and significant others get to know each other on a more personal level. We spend time together at our meetings, committee meetings, events and other things we work on, I feel it's important for our families to know only know what we are doing, but know each other as well. To that end, Rosandra and Ashley are putting together a series of monthly socials targeted for our families called "Sip & Sees". This will be a monthly craft session where we can make something pretty and get to know others. There will be teas from SpiceTopia available as well as wine. So let your family know and bring them out for a night of mingling and crafting and having fun. The first one is coming up on July 17th from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm. There will be a $10 donation requested to help cover the cost of materials. 

 

Make sure you check out "The Not So Quite Corner" in the left hand column to keep up with what Rosandra is doing with our significant others.

 

We have a busy and productive year ahead and as I said at the beginning of this article, I am honored and humbled to be your President. If you have any questions, concerns or ideas, please do not hesitate to call or email me. I welcome any and all feedback!

 

Yours in Rotary Service,

Jeff Hata

President, 2018-2019

Rotary Club of Ventura-East