Southmouth March 10, 2008

Presiding:  President June Manning

Anthem:  Ron Kozub

Toast: Ian Forbes

Grace: Don Beard

Guest Introduction:  Peter Snodgrass introduced Salvatore and Cynthia from the Folk Arts Festival and Kristine Akilie from Mainstream.

Sergeant-at-arms:  Cathy Henry celebrated International Women's Day with happy Dollars only. Norris started by saying he was happy for new wheels, George was supposedly happy according to Cathy (note to Cathy - Is an "extracted happy dollar not a fine?); Ron Kozub was happy to report that 75% of the people that passed him while he was stuck in a snowbank did offer him assistance - not a bad report card on humanity! Paul massuet happy that he has a snowblower! Sheila was happy and Don happy that the volunteers for last Saturday's Bingo didn'tt have to show up as Bingo was cancelled due to the storm. Jim and ian were happy to be sitting with the ladies at their table who were clearly having a good time! June happy as always. Well done Cathy,

Announcements:

June reminded the board members of the meeting this Friday at 7:30 here at the club.

June said that she had received an update email from Matt taylor from Guatemmala. His wrist is tired from extractions and Georgette was lamenting the lack of general health education that leads to the extractions. Otherwise all is well!

Paul received the fourteenth cheque for the Every Rotarian Every Year campaign.

Ed Telenko happy to have Salvatore and Cynthia here from the Folk Arts group. Salvatore thanked our club for the Howard Etherington Award on behalf of their organization. It's the Fortieth Anniversary of Folk Arts this year and he invited us to have a booth at their festival this year.

Ron Kozub announced the change he has implemented in the Duty Roster at the sign-in desk. If you have any announcement for the meeting of the day you are asked to let the desk know so that they can fill in the sheet for the meeting chair. The chair will give the sheet to the reporter at the end of the meeting for recording purposes. Great idea Ron!

Paul reminded us of the Bike Trek June 7th. He is looking for riders and prepping us for the pledge sheets!

Ian reminded us of the Brock Rotaract samosa orders. Delivery on March 17th at our meeting. Three more orders were taken and the count is now 150 Samosas.

50/50 draw:  Debbie Garneau once again had her number drawn but unfortunately pulled the five of hearts. The pot builds once more.

Guest Speaker:

George Fitzpatrick introced Kristine Akilie from Mainstream. She is the Communication and Community Development Coordinator. mainstream is an organization that provides vocational training and life skills training for developmentally challenged adults in our community. They assist in the integration of these individuals into our community in a meaningful way by partnering with many local schools, businesses and industries.

Kris gave us a brief history of Mainstream starting with its' beginnings in 1984 to its' status today with 230 participants and 52 staff and a budget of 2.3 million. Today they partner with Niagara College, Brock University and Ridley College in student placements and assistance. They depend on and benefit from assistance from the United Way, May Court and Meridian Credit Union and others.

A recent partnership is with the City of St. Catharines on a grafitti removal project. This was reported in the Standard and sounded very interesting and useful to the city. The second phase of the project is an educational component with visits to local schools.

Kristine updated us on a new 9 unit "geared to income" housing project in partnership with Mountainview Homes.

Visit Mainstream at www.mainstreamservices.com

Kristine was thanked by Jean Holbert Leighton.