Newsletter 7-17-12
**Rotary Club of Needham**
Newsletter for meeting of Tuesday July 17, 2012
Location: Needham Sheraton
Pledge of Allegiance: Pres. Charles
Song: America Led By: Bob Cocks
Invocation: Bill Rosenthal
Announcements:
· **Next Week’s meeting will be held at the Tippett House at 920 South St. in Needham. They are hosting us a ‘lunch and tour’ of their updated facility because of the Club’s involvement. No meeting at the Sheraton**
· Reminder, Channel 2 will be airing a one hour documentary about the Town of Needham Thursday night at 10 pm on Channel 2.
· The Pancake Breakfast has been scheduled for Saturday, November 3rd at Needham High School. Glen is looking for volunteers: drop him a line!
· Bob Welling resigned from the Club after decades with the Needham chapter. He sent a letter thanking the Club and its members for all the great years!
·Crutches for Africa is going well according to Karen. The local papers have published information to the local communities about the effort and where people can drop of crutches, canes, walkers. Clean out your attic and basement and SPREAD the WORD
·Looking for several hosts for a 4-day stint to host folks as part of the Bandy Hefler exchange this fall. See Karen for details.
·Looking for STORAGE SPACE for all the Rotary gear. We are losing our space at Jim Brown’s place and need to find a new location by November.
Guests: Zelda Rosenthal, Bill’s daughter; Mark Rosen, Former District Treasurer; Shirley MacPherson, Asst. District Governor from Brookline Rotary; Brenda Diaz, new Director of Marketing at Wingate; Melissa’s Mom.
Happy $$$: Lots of Happy Dollar welcoming our DG and guests; Karen for filling the Dictronics van with crutches and all to go to Africa; Eric Rosen for his upcoming trio to New Mexico to see his family.
50:50: Rick Davis had the correct ticket (first time he has come close to winning in his 25 years in Rotary), but to no avail. $96 in the pot.
Joke of the day: Have yet to figure it out…
Guest Speaker: Our District Governor for 2012/2013 Rick Deitz came to visit us as is tradition in the Rotary world. This week he has 8 club visits scheduled, hoping to have all 54 visits in the District finished by late September.
Rich joined the Southborough Rotary Club in 1998, and has been very active in Club and District activities since.
He detailed how RI’s theme this year is “Peace Through Service” this year, and how we should make an effort to demonstrate this in o ur dealings with others.
He also outlined has goals as DG for this year, including:
·Increase membership in the District and in each club by 10% net. In our case, that means 4 new members. He says we are below 1300 members in our District, and in the future that could mean we get merged into another District.
·Increase the percentage of women in clubs to 50%. While we have a high percentage, a lost of clubs have very few women in their clubs.
·Target and attract younger members. The average age of Needham Rotarians is way too high.
·Enhance our PR efforts.
· Adopt the ‘Future Plan’ of Rotary Foundation.
·Have every member give $100 to the Rotary Foundation.
These are wonderful goals, ones our leadership should strive for.
Rich detailed the progress which the Rotary Project of eliminating polio from the world is going. Last year at this time, there had been 252 cases of Polio reported world wide. This year, the number is 88. That’s great progress, but our goal is zero!
Sounds like a great year coming up!