L to R: Ellen Weber, Membership; Carin Jansen van Vuuren, Youth Service; Jim Peddie, President Elect; Donna Hutton, President; Vince Campbell, Immediate Past President; Audrey Martyn, Secretary; Graham Gilchrist, Treasurer.
The 2019-20 membership dues are due. An electronic invoice was emailed on July 3, 2019. The due date is August 16, 2019.
You can pay online from the link in the invoice or you can always open and click the link in the My Billing Account Balance link in the My ClubRunner box on the Admin page after login.
If you wish to pay by cash or cheque, give the $280.00 made out to "Rotary Club of Edmonton Strathcona" to Graham Gilchrist at your earliest convenience.
Membership fee in the club covers District dues, CN$80.00 annually and Rotary International dues, US$55.00 semi annually or US$110.00 annually.
Thank you for your prompt attention.
If you have any questions, please contact Graham Gilchrist, Treasurer, e:grahamtg@telus.net
This week we took part in a Community Engagement Consultation with two people from the University of Alberta Government and Community Relations department. Alexis Ksiazkiewicz is the Associate VP of Government and Community relations and Emily Ball is the Director of Community Relations. This consultation is part of the University of Alberta’s institutional strategic plan entitled ‘For the Public Good’ to engage with the community. The university wants to know how they are doing, what things are they doing poorly, what things they are doing well and suggestions for how they could do better to engage the community. As part of this plan they have struck a twenty-five member committee composed of half university members and half general public.
They have developed a plan to survey people from across the province to engage with people, gather and compile information. The four main questions they are asking people are:
Is the university doing a good job of creating reciprocal, mutually beneficial learning experiences, research projects, partnerships and collaborations with the community? Community being their campuses, city and region, province and nation.
Is the University doing a good job of engaging with the community, and if not, what is missing?
How can the University improve existing programs, initiatives and activities?
How can the university move forward on fulfilling it’s objective to engage with the community?
Since February they have conducted over seventy sessions all over the province. They have met with the Rotary District and are now in the process of talking to and gathering information from many of the local Rotary clubs as well. They are asking for written answers to these questions from people in the community. They also have a website (uab.ca\cec) where people can obtain more information and add their comments. They expect the process of gathering information to be completed by fall, when they will begin compiling their results and making recommendations. These recommendations will then be submitted to the University Executive for final decisions.
We were then walked through the process of a table top session where each question was asked and our members gave their opinions. We were also asked to write down our opinions on forms which were provided. We hope that our input will be useful and that some of our suggestions will help the university to change and move forward to become more engaged with our community.
Dear Members of The Rotary Clubs of Strathcona, Mayfield, Urban Spirits, Whyte Avenue, Grand Prairie and Hinton,
We hope you all are fine and here we are doing well too. In this letter we will tell you more about us and about our School. Our school is located in Dhaka. The school is in a slum of ‘Uttar Badda’ area. One of the rooms in our slum is our School. 25 mothers from our community come here to learn and we 25 mothers teach 125 community children. Our school starts in the afternoon for two hours. Many mothers of our school work as part-time housemaid. We enjoy our schooltime as this is the only time, we are free from work and live in happiness. Our school is our meeting place for learning and sharing our topics with one another. We take help from each other, share problems & ask for suggestions from our friends.
Our teacher teaches us through various types of activities like games, song, story and role play. Same process we follow to teach our neighborhood children. Here we mainly learn English, Bengali & Math. Our teacher also discusses many other relevant issues to our life like mothers’ health, child development, food & nutrition, health & hygiene, bad effect of dowry and household conflict. Now we understand our mistakes that had already done and we want to correct them for our better future. Even, we also aware our community people by discussing with them about our learning.
This month our teacher took a session about ‘Puberty Stage’ for the teengae girls of our community. On that session some of us were present there too. From that session the gilrs came to know
The definition of ‘Puberty’
The changes that take place during puberty ( physical, social & mental).
Our teacher asked them what happened in their earlier life. They shared with us
They felt lonely and confused.
Anxiety and stress.
Mood swings problems.
The physical changes.
Getting unexpected behavior from their family members and relatives.
More interested in being with friends.
Some have more conflicts with their parents.
Most of them thought, these puberty things are so humiliating.
To overcome from these feelings our teacher suggested to all that,
Take everything normal as the changes are natural.
Instead of suffering from inferiority, anxiety and stress the teenager can involve in various kinds of social activities and accelerate their hobbies and creativities.
The teenagers should more open with their parents and discuss everything has happen with them.
Parents should be more tolerant towards their children and become friends of them.
Take nutritious food and lots of water.
Now we are going to tell you about our friend 'karima'. She is very keen to learn and doing well among all of us. She helps our teacher for making materials and exercise cards. She has a daughter of 1 and a half. She takes her daughter in our school. Her family also supports her. But the earlier time things were not easy. Karima's husband didn't like that she attended in school. He had doubt on her wife and didn't allow her to go out alone. He used to quarrel with her. One day she came to school and told us about her problem and thought that might be her last day in school. We became surprised and asked her more about the issue. After hearing the whole thing, we decided to talk with her husband. Our teacher and some of us went to her home and tried to convince Karima’s husband. He thought learning at this age for her wife was meaningless. Then our teacher gave some example of differences between an educated mother and an illiterate mother. How an educate mother helps her family by empowering herself. She gave examples of some of our friends who were doing very well being educated. After talking with him for an hour, he became little convinced to send his wife in Amarok Mother School. Later on, we visited several times to their home and talked to her husband. Now Karima is very happy to come at school and teaching her neighbor's children and her husband fully supports her.
Our friend Panna has shared in our school that her younger daughter ‘Fateha' is doing very well in study. Because Fateha is now in 8th grade, so it become difficult for Panna to teach her. Now one of the girls in our slum who studies in college helps her. Fateha teaches her youngest brother, two of her cousins at home. This year she will attend in Junior School Certificate Exam. Panna says, "I don’t know how much we will able to support her but we will give our maximum effort to continue her education." We wish her prosperity in life.
Wish for us too that we can be the pioneers of changes of life of women live in our slum.
Our outgoing President Vince Campbell thanked all of the members of his Executive and extended thanks to everyone in the club who has helped to make his tenure a success.
He presented our Rotarian of the Year Award to Carin van Vuuren for her outstanding service to our club over the past year.
Our incoming President Donna Hutton introduced her Executive and also the members of the various committees that will be helping to keep our club running smoothly. Donna said that almost eighty percent of our club membership help out in some capacity with club business.
She said that the three key commitments for our club this year will be Communication both with our membership and others including the use of social media, Staying Connected with our members and Having Fun.
DiscoverE is a nonprofit organization through the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Alberta that provides fun, accessible, and inclusive summer camps to youth in Edmonton.
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