Happy Star Wars Day and Happy Birthday to our club! Our club received it's charter on May 1, 1916, so we are 107 years old this week! I was reminded of this when I received a warm congratulations from a Rotarian in India. What a wonderful reminder of the international fellowship of Rotary. I'm sharing the note from him later in this bulletin.
We are hoping our club can be a "Every Rotarian Every Year Club" with the Rotary Foundation. This means that every Rotarian in our club donated at least $25 per year to the Rotary Foundation's Annual Fund. This is the Fund that half the donations from our District are returned to the District to use for future District grants. If you are unsure if you have donated this year, please check with John Buckley, our Foundation Director; Karen Mooty, our Club Administrator; or with me and we can let you know.
If you did not receive an email with a link to Rotary International's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion survey, please let me know. I want to encourage everyone to respond and voice their opinions.
Speaking of opinions, if you or your neighbors missed our club sponsored Mayoral Runoff Debate, here is a link for watching the debate on demand. (194) Rotary Club - Mayor's Runoff Debate - 2023 - YouTube. Please share. Thank you to Rodney Gullatte, Trevor Dierdorff and another member who covered the costs for the livestream and editing for YouTube!
The Memorial Tree planting and the Our Community Serves events were both very special. At the tree planting, we remembered John Yates and Marv Thomason, and shared some memories. The Our Community Serves event honored almost 80 high school students who are enlisting in our armed forces. It was moving to see them take their oaths and to be recognized. Watch for an email or check next week's bulletin for information on the upcoming park cleanup.
Don't miss our next social, which will be in conjunction with all the other local Rotary Clubs on May 25th. We are requesting that you RSVP a week ahead. This is not a requirement it is just so we can get a rough idea of how much appetizers to order. See the information later in this bulletin for the full details.
This week's mini-fundraiser is a 50/50 opportunity drawing. Please let me know if you would like to donate an item for the raffle next week.
Our program this week is very full. First is the Diamond Awards. Please come and hear the stories about these amazing teachers! The Rotary Exchange student that we are sponsoring with the Broadmoor Club, Charlotte, will be attending this week's meeting so please say Hi! We will also have a brief presentation about the Tanzania scholarships that our Community Service Fund helped sponsor.
Next week our speaker will be President L. Song Richardson of Colorado College. She will be giving an update on Colorado College and also the challenges facing higher education. Check out her impressive background by following the link later in this bulletin. Don't forget to RSVP - and bring a friend!
Please take time to read the bulletin each week and check out our website that has more information about all our events, activities and upcoming speakers.
Song Richardson is an award-winning educator, legal scholar, and lawyer who is recognized for her transformational leadership in higher education. She became Colorado College’s 14th president in July 2021. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College and her Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School.
Her vision for Colorado College is to prepare students to create a more just world by igniting their potential and encouraging them to reach across difference to find common ground and understanding.
As a Black and Korean leader, she is the first woman of color to hold the presidency at Colorado College.
Before coming to CC, President Richardson was the dean and chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. When appointed there, she was the only woman of color to lead a top law school. While she was dean, the school received accolades for its commitment to students, faculty scholarship, the diversity of its student body, and its leadership in addressing the societal implications of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.
Under her leadership, UCI Law quadrupled the number of endowed student scholarships; launched a CEO Fellowship program; partnered with the UN’s AI for Good Conference; launched new revenue-generating educational programs; established a satellite program on the East Coast; and enrolled one of the most diverse student bodies among top law schools.
President Richardson sits on the board of Lord Abbett and is chair of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Presidents Council. She is a member of the Colorado Forum, a group of business and civic leaders committed to Colorado’s future; the Council of Korean Americans; and the American Law Institute.
She is frequently invited to speak on the challenges facing higher education. Her awards and recognitions include the Association of American Law Schools’ Derrick Bell Award, which recognizes a faculty member’s extraordinary contributions to legal education through mentoring, teaching, and scholarship, and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s Trailblazer Award. In recognition of her accomplishments, the Thurgood Marshall Bar Association created the L. Song Richardson Legacy Award to honor individuals whose contributions make a lasting impact on the legal profession.
President Richardson’s interdisciplinary research uses lessons from cognitive and social psychology to study decision-making and judgment. Her scholarship has been published by law journals at Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Cornell, Duke, and Northwestern, among others.
President Richardson also is a classically trained pianist who performed twice with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and won numerous major piano competitions, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Harvard/Radcliffe concerto competitions.
This is Suren Poruri, Regional Chairman - Grants, RI District 3150, from India.
Your rotary club of Colorado Springs was chartered on 1/5/1916, which is today. Your club completed 107 years of service today in RI District 5470 in serving the communities across the world. I would like to extend my warm wishes to you and to all your club members on this joyous moment.
Rotary is the only organization which has global footprint and is working towards happy communities across the world with it's noble initiatives. Thanks to our rotary club founder Rtn Paul Harris, we are able to make a difference in the communities where we live.
An RSVP to Ron Rubin by May 17th is very helpful and is requested. We need to get a rough count into Tara King our Area Director so she can let the restaurant know. The clubs will be chipping in to provide some light appetizers. Each member will purchase their own drinks.
These monthly socials are an opportunity for fellowship among Rotarians and also a great way to introduce potential members to Rotary, so bring a friend!
The Ukrainian Letter Writing Project has to date delivered more than 3,000 letters, with another batch of 1400 sorted and sealed in envelopes this past weekend and ready to be shipped out next month! We will possibly have 1-2 more volunteer opportunities as the project sunsets in the next few months.
Care & Share “VolunBeer” was a great time for all who could attend, there were about 50 total volunteers so was good to have our logo represented as a sponsor at the event. Talked with a few people in our volunteer area about joining for a Friday meeting. Care & Share will have more throughout the year, likely July and Sept/Oct.
Habitat for Humanity build dates all went really well, we had about 15 volunteers across the 3 days dedicated towards the project and it was a big help to finish one of the houses getting ready for a dedication ceremony for a new family to move in! Plenty of other houses still in the process.
April
April Tree Planting – April 29th at the Milibo Art Theatre. Everything is confirmed and ready to go for the ceremony and a light walkabout in the garden and area around Millibo in honor of Earth Day, when we would have originally held the event if not for the District Assembly. Please join us as we remember those Rotarians we lost this year. This is a special way to celebrate Rotary fellowship and Rotary's environment area of focus.
May
Our Community Salutes event – May 3rd at the Flying W Ranch. We have a sponsored booth for Sam and another Rotarian volunteer to talk with attendees about what Rotary is and does in the community. Other Rotarians are invited to attend the event to honor those graduating from high school and joining military service.
Guardians of Palmer Park & Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful – Planning dates which will coincide with their already planned outings to hopefully talk with some other members of the community while helping clean our parks and rivers.
Watch for further details on this and our May service projects.
3333 Templeton Gap Road, Colorado Springs, CO 80907
PURPOSE
Now in its fourth year, the Craig and Kyle Whitney Memorial Golf Tournament was established to provide community service. To-date, this very fun event has been sponsored by a wide range of local businesses and individuals and has raised more than $50,000 to benefit our community through the programs of the Salvation Army and the Rotary Club of Colorado Springs. Beginning last year and now going forward, the Whitney Tournament also provides “scholarships” for First Tee youth.
“Being able to participate in the Whitney Memorial Golf Tournament gave our participants an experience that they will never forget because it gave them a chance to grow and provided them a safe place to fail. They were pushed outside of their comfort zones and were able to rely on all the active learning experiences that we have been teaching them through our life skills and leadership curriculum.” Emily Ortmeier, LPGA, Director of Golf and Education First Tee – Southern Colorado
We are excited to announce the Rotary Rides the Rails event, a fellowship opportunity for Rotarians in our District, and the surrounding Districts, to come together and celebrate the end of our 2023 RYLA in the Rockies Weekend.
Please meet at the Leadville Train no later than 12:30 PM, Sunday, June the 4th, for a 1 pm departure. The train takes approximately 2 1/2 hours. Adult Tickets are $54, Kids (4-12) are $32, and our RYLA youth tickets are $35. Profits from group tickets sold through our link go to benefit RYLA in the Rockies. MyEventRunner - Event Public Fill (crsadmin.com)
Tickets purchased will be available on the day of the event. All ticket pick-up and train rule information will be sent to participants prior to the event.
We can't wait to see you in Leadville for the first of many upcoming fellowship events across our District!
PEN (Practical Education Network) in Accra, Ghana (installation of online training facility) $5,000
Science Lab at Masai Mara High School in Kenya, Africa. $2,500 (with $2,500 from the Los Altos, California Rotary Club)
Social Work Scholarships at Hubert Kairuki Memorial University (HKMU) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Two individual scholarships) $3,000
School bus purchase for Rotary Volcanes School of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico $2,000 (Tri Lakes Rotary Club project; total goal from area clubs and District grant $16,000)
Ukrainian Letter Project (supplies, printing and shipping) $2,600
Ankara Turkey disaster response $3,000
Our Community Salutes (recognition of high school military enlistees) Vendor Booth $500
March is WASH Awareness month, so lets take a look at RCCS engagement with the 6th SDG! Two water purification enterprises were just installed at 2 Maasai communities in Kenya. Once certified and launched this Spring, both will be run by Maasai women and will be supplying purified water to over 20,000 per day, and generating an annual revenue stream of over $300,000 combined each year. This was funded 90% by a Program Related Investment from a Minnesota Rotary Club, and 10% by our own CSF and an anonymous club member.
We are developing some exciting projects going forward. These include:
A Refuge de Higene in Guatemala at Escuintla Regional Hospital. For the past 4 years, the H2OpenDoors project has been adding purification equipment made here in Colorado. This last January, an expedition of 34 installed the final system, bringing total capacity to 100,000 liters each day. Next January we return to cut the ribbon on a new 20 toilet and sink building to provide sanitation and hygiene for the family visitors to the hospital. Their pediatrics unit performs 45,000 births annually.
A rural community in Peru will be receiving a large water system from Global Water First, our social impact investment strategy to fund projects. Our Minnesota Rotary partner will be funding their second PRI for $80,000 to establish a water business. An expedition will be promoted to Rotary members in late Spring once political unrest calms down there.
Ethiopia and Somalia are experiencing extreme drought. Global Water First will be working with Alight Foundation to rehabilitate dozens of boreholes and establish water distribution points to serve over one million people.
At EarthX in Dallas on April 19-23, we'll be displaying 6 water tech configurations made in Rocky Ford to an estimated 200,000 attendees and investors. EarthX is the largest environmental and climate conference in the world, and for the first time we will have our own Rotary Pavilion. Opening day of the Expo features a presentation by Jon Kaufman, followed by Past RI President, Mark Maloney.
Update on the Monument Club's Mexican School Bus project from Khurshid Qureshi: The project has been approved by the District Grant Committee. Inside the bus, there will be a engraved plate for your club name. Outside the bus will be Rotary Logo and District 5470 painted on the back. We will have formal ceremony for handing over the bus keys to the school in Purto Vallarta. Your partnership in this project has helped us to get this grant. It is also a model that how a newly formed small Rotary Club can accomplish big things by leveraging a bigger club. - Khurshid Qureshi
Warmly,
Jon Kaufman
P.S. If you are interested in participating in our International Committee, please email Jon Kaufman jk595@aol.com to be added to the notification list!
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If you have bulletin announcements, please email the EXACT WORDING of your announcement to kay.rendleman@comcast.net by Wednesday at 5 pm. I don't write your announcements, but I do make them nice 'n' fancy!
