We are starting something new this week and going forward for our senior active members. From 11:45 am to noon, one of the scheduled greeters will be at the entrance closest to our meeting room to greet and let our senior active members into the hotel. We hope this will make it easier for members to attend.
Also, let's not keep Rotary a secret. Our club does amazing things. We should be proud - and do a little bragging too. For example: we just finished a warm clothes drive that resulted in over 200 items donated! We have all our slots filled for judging the High School Mock Trials over the next few days. Now we begin the Care and Share Spread-the-Love peanut butter and jelly drive. Whew, that's a lot! Look for lots more details further in the bulletin.
We are also doing amazing things with our international projects and involvement with global grants. Later in this bulletin is an update on a water project in Niger. It is a project that provides water, supports agriculture and is a business enterprise - all in one. Check out how our club and the Community Service Fund is making a difference globally.
After telling your friends, coworkers and neighbors about what great things we do in Rotary, invite them to come see what great people we are too! Invite them to a meeting or one of our two upcoming socials. Our February 7th social and mini-fundraiser for Flight and our March 1st one at a downtown speakeasy, District Elleven.
And on that note of new members, we have a prospective member orientation meeting the first Tuesday morning of every month. You can contact Caryn Adams or Dick Harwood for more information on the meeting. It covers all the basics about Rotary and is another way to engage prospective members.
This week our speaker will be Deborah Hendrix who will speak on Celebrating Black History and Education.
Next week we will have a Mayoral Candidate Forum. Because of the expected number of members and guests, please plan on arriving early. We will be going through the business portion of the meeting quickly to allow for as much time as possible for the forum, so we would like everyone to go through the buffet line a little earlier next week. Watch your inbox for an email from our program director, Trevor Dierdorff, with a survey on what issues you would like discussed at the forum.
Come and bring a friend. Don't forget to RSVP by Monday at 5 pm.
If you can't attend but would like to watch the meeting, let our club administrator, Karen Mooty know and we'll try to Facetime the meeting as we are no longer Zooming the meetings.
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.
Come join us for an informative Mayoral Candidate Forum! All twelve candidates will be attending our forum. This might be a great meeting to bring a guest with you.
I wanted to reach out this morning with some good news on our Ukraine letter writing project; after some delays in getting to Poland, the latest batch of letters have finally arrived and are ready to be distributed to refugee children and mothers this weekend and next week! Attached are pictures you can download and share, including one of the full boxes of over 1000 letters, and a great example letter of an American child to a Ukrainian child. And with additional funding from the CSF, this project has already grown to triple the expected outcome initially thought last year, with 30+ states and a school in France having sent letters through the program!
I'll have more pictures to update as they come in next week but I just love the sentiment in the letter below and I thought it would be a great message to share with our club! Thank you all for making this program possible and I look forward to see where it can go from here!
ShelterBox HERO Clubs are foundational to our ability to respond when disaster strikes. To show our gratitude for your generous support, we are hosting an exclusive online Rotary Club HERO event on:
We hope you can join this event in hopes this informative session will inspire you to renew your HERO club status before the end of our current Rotary year.
ShelterBox is proud to be Rotary International's official project partner in disaster relief. Together, we are putting the partnership into action.
This exclusive event is open to every club member. ShelterBox USA President Kerri Murray and other executives from ShelterBox will deliver reports on our current response work, the impact we make in the lives of those we reach, and how Rotarians make this work possible. There will also be an opportunity for you to submit questions.
Thank you for being a Shelterbox HERO, I hope to see you on February 11.
Can you believe it's already February!? I hope everyone's new year has kicked off right and y'all are ready to get into our next month of service projects, starting off with one of our biggest supported local non-profits, Care & Share!
Care & Share is back with their annual Spread the Love event, where they will be taking peanut butter/ almond, etc. and jelly/ jam donations from Feb. 6th to Feb. 14th, at any of the donation locations found at the link below. I will also be collecting donations this Friday at our weekly meeting and at next Friday's meeting to do a bulk drop off. If you do drop off on your own please let me know the amount in an email, and always feel free to snap a picture or selfie to post on social media and tag our club!
Care & Share has also put out the call for attendees to their largest annual event, Recipe for Hope, where guests will be provided the opportunity to hear powerful stories of hope and courage from their neighbors who have experienced hunger. Join over 1,000 guests to learn more about how you can help to bridge the gap between hunger and abundance, and how Care and Share is able to further their impact by partnering with more than 270 agencies to provide food assistance to thousands of families and individuals across 31 counties and 52,000 square miles throughout Southern Colorado.
The event will be held on March 2nd from 12 p.m.-1 p.m. in Broadmoor Hall at the Broadmoor Hotel, and is free of charge to attend. You will also get to hear from fellow Rotarians like Monique Lewis and Rodney Gullatte who will be speaking at the event! For more info or to reserve your spot at one of the available tables, please respond directly to Monique Lewis at her email: monique@careandshare.org or by cell at: (931) 561-4432
Thank you all for a great first month of clothing donations, over 200 items donated, and I look forward to what the rest of the year brings to our club!
Our club, through the Community Service Fund is supporting the following projects:
Practical Education Network (PEN) in Ghana with a $5,000 grant
A science lab for Maasai High School in Kenya with a $2,500 grant
HKMU in Tanzania with a $3,000 grant
So wonderful things happening throughout the world as we kick off 2023!
Below is an update on the Niger project we sponsored last year.
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!
Update on Global Grant from David Smith
Last year your club contributed $4000 to the Farmers of the Future Income Generating Global Grant (GG2127084). This project was approved and funded late in the fall.
Background:
In 2015, the United Nations ranked Niger 187 of 188 countries in human development. Niger disparately needs economic development!
Substantial malnutrition, including stunting and wasting, and subsequent irreversible cognitive impairment are rampant in Niger. Fifty percent of women ages 15-49 years are suffering from the effects of chronic anemia. Malnutrition causes stunting in 48% of the children under the age of 5 years.
This Global Grant addresses both economic development and malnutrition. We will clear 2 acres of land, dig a shallow well, install a solar powered irrigation system and train village women and children to grow high-value, highly nutritious crops.
In addition to providing the 25 families in the cooperative with highly nutritious food, profits from sales of produce will be divided between the families and local schools.
Progress Report January 2023
The following photos show that the well was drilled, a submergible pump was installed, water was found, solar panels were installed, and women are organizing to grow crops. To make so much progress in a few months is remarkable.
We've had no new wild polio cases reported for the last 15 weeks, yeah!
Meanwhile, the state of New York is still surveilling polio in wastewater and urging all residents to get vaccinated against Polio. Remember, polio anywhere in the world can be transmitted to anyone in the world.
Poliovirus Weekly Update 28 December, 2022, World Health Organization
The number of wild polio cases for 2022 as of December 28 is 30 (2 in Afghanistan, 20 in Pakistan and 8 in Mozambique).
The total number of wild polio cases in 2021 were 6 (1 in Pakistan, 1 in Malawi and 4 in Afghanistan).
The total number of wild polio cases in 2020 were 140 (84 in Pakistan and 56 in Afghanistan).
The total number of wild polio cases in 2019 were 176 (147 in Pakistan and 29 in Afghanistan).
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!
