e-Strathconian, 15 April 2025 (Apr. 15, 2025)

Thanks for visiting our site! The first ClubRunner site in District 5370

"The Friendly Club"

Tuesdays at 12:00 p.m.

The Varsity Kitchen

4211-106 St. NW
Edmonton, AB
Canada

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Our Club meets the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month. The 2nd Tuesday is a "Meeting with a Taste" - a social event, date and time to be determined. Members will be notified by email of the details. The Board Meeting is the 4thTuesday of the month.

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Rotary Club of Edmonton Strathcona

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New Meeting Location

Please note that our meeting location for the month of May has changed, see the address above. We are trying out a new location. You will be able to order your meal from the menu and pay for it directly.

Meeting Updates from Members and Guests

Posted by Vi Hughes on Apr. 15, 2025

Club President Loida Lumanlan with Jose Ferreira

This week we had three short informal talks from one member and two regular guests covering a wide range of topics.

Stephan Jansen van Vuuren gave a short update on the roll out of the new Primary Care Networks that Family Physicians in Alberta will belong to and how they will be organized.

Jacob Bodnaruk, our Rotary liaison with Inclusion Alberta, which endeavors to find meaningful work for adults with disabilities, gave us an update on their recent very successful conference.

Jose Ferreira, our yearly visitor from the Rotary Club of Valongo, Portugal told us about the Rotary Senior’s University in Portugal that his club helps to administer. This is a program that has been in place for around fifteen years now. These are Community programs that various Rotary clubs in two districts in Portugal run in their local areas.

Classes are offered from 9-5 every weekday and cover many different areas of interest from music (choir, instrumental) to dancing to languages to yoga, economics and history. They also host pot luck dinners for attendees each month. The programs offered differ from one Rotary club to another.

His Rotary club of eighteen members administers a Senior’s University that has twenty two volunteer instructors and had just over eighty-five seniors who took part this past year. They hold their classes in an old building that was not being used.

It is run as a non-profit organization by a volunteer board made up of Rotary Club members. Any senior in the community may attend at a yearly cost of about one hundred fifty Canadian dollars per year plus a yearly administration fee of about forty Canadian dollars. The fee covers the cost of utilities for the building in which classes are held. They also apply for and have received grants from local government which help to cover their costs.

We would like to thank Jose for telling us about this very interesting Rotary Community program.

Rotary Club of Edmonton Strathcona Home for Dinner Evening

Posted by Eric Germain on Apr. 09, 2025

Our Rotary Club provided the Home For Dinner at Ronald McDonald House (RMH) on Tuesday April 8. It was our Meeting with a Taste & a Twist for April.

Jenna Black, RMH Programs & Family Services Coordinator helped us coordinate the event and visited with us during the evening.

We provided, prepared and served a great dinner for 60 guests at RMH which was very well received. Many of our dinner guests thanked us and our Rotary Club very much.

RMH is a home away from home for out-of-town families from across Canada, who come to Edmonton for our excellent children's hospital services and medical specialists. They have 37 suites and 2 off site near by suites for families.

We had an informative tour of RMH by staff member Holly, of the craft room, the library, movie theater, kids playrooms, and the Magic Room where children who are guests get to pick out their own special gift.

Thanks to our Rotary Team: Rose Marie Basaraba, Vi Hughes, Vince Campbell, Ivan Docker, Ken Germain and Eric Germain.

Another successful Rotary Club Community Service Event. Well Done!

Courtney Lee, Sport Central

Posted by Vi Hughes on Apr. 03, 2025

Club President Loida Lumanlan with Courtney Lee

This week we were pleased to hear from Courtney Lee from Sport Central. She told us that Sport Central is an organization that supplies children’s sports equipment of all kinds to families in need in Northern Alberta, from Red Deer north to the border. Their mission is to empower kids (to be able to take part in sports) one piece of sports equipment at a time. They supply this equipment free of charge.

They accept donations of gently used sports equipment then repair, refurbish and redistribute it to kids aged 4 to 17 in families facing financial hardship. If the equipment can not be restored adequately, they recycle it. They do not accept clothing. She said they carry equipment for twenty different sports including Baseball, Basketball, Bicycles, Cross country skiing, Figure Skating, Football, Kids Golf, Ice Hockey, Ringette, Snowboarding, Soccer, Tennis, Volleyball and more.

They have a well signed location at 11847 Wayne Gretzky Drive where they accept donations, repair, refurbish, fit and distribute equipment. They sharpen all skates before distribution. They try to outfit a child within five days of the request for equipment.

They have three other locations in Edmonton where they store and distribute equipment from and in addition they have forty-nine donation locations around the Edmonton area.

Courtney said that they work in conjunction with seventy six different social services in the Edmonton area such as Kids Sport, Catholic Social Services, the Newcomers Center and many more. They deliver pallets of equipment all over Northern Alberta including to schools in Northern Alberta who are in need of equipment for their children. They also work with the roughly one hundred RCMP detachments in Northern Alberta so supply deflated balls and a pump which the officers can carry in their vehicles so that they can play ball with the local children as an outreach activity.

She said that they outfitted thirteen thousand children in the last year. They repaired just under twenty-three hundred pieces of equipment and just over twenty-seven hundred bicycles. Demand for their services is increasing each year and they anticipate it will reach twenty five thousand within the next few years. Courtney said that they would like to be able to amalgamate their four repair, storage and distribution locations all under one roof.

Courtney said that they currently have eleven paid staff and about ninety active volunteers. They are always in need of volunteers to clean, repair and refurbish equipment. They also accept monetary donations which they use to purchase new equipment such as helmets or bicycle bells for sanitary or safety reasons. She also said they receive some funding from the Alberta government ‘Every Kid Can Play’ program. We can help by donating equipment, donating funding or volunteer time.

More information is available on their website at www.sportcentral.org

Supporting Education in Namibia: A Visit to Mondesa Youth Opportunities

Posted by Carin Jansen van Vuuren on Apr. 03, 2025

I’m happy to report back on our visit to Mondesa Youth Opportunities (MYO) in Namibia in March of this year, where our club donated C$3,500.

MYO is a well-known intensive after-school education program located in the Mondesa Township of Swakopmund, Namibia. It is a flagship project of the Rotary Club of Swakopmund and has been operating for over 20 years.

The program focuses on students from disadvantaged backgrounds—young learners with great potential but limited support at home. At MYO, students receive extra classes in subjects like English, Mathematics, Reading, Life Skills, Computer Science, Sports, and Music.

The goal is not only to enhance their education but also to help them grow into confident, responsible, and well-rounded individuals. The program emphasizes positive thinking and self-esteem, laying the foundation for future generations.

MYO is a nonprofit organization, and all students participate in the program free of charge.

The school relies exclusively on donations from the local community and international supporters to sustain its operations.

We were only able to make this C$3,500 donation to such a worthwhile cause because of the hard work and dedication of our club members who tirelessly raise the funds. Their efforts make a real difference, and I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who contributed.

We have had the privilege of visiting this project in the past, and this year, during our Namibia-Botswana Tour, we once again had the opportunity to see MYO’s impact firsthand. On March 4 the whole tour group visited the school, where we were toured the school and then were warmly welcomed with music and singing performed by the learners. After the performance, we socialized with members of the local Rotary Club of Swakopmund over a traditional meal.

Our group included Canadians and Americans who are passionate about supporting education. Among them were four Rotarians: Stephan and I; Lindsay Robertson from the Rotary Club of Edmonton Riverview, which has previously donated to MYO with us, and Lori Landstrom, President of the Rotary Club of Seward, Alaska, who is currently working to put together a district grant in her Rotary district to further support MYO.

More photos from this visit are available in the Mondesa Album on this page.

It was an inspiring visit, reinforcing the importance of education and the role organizations like MYO play in shaping young people’s futures. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to this donation and to MYO for the incredible work they do!

U. of A. Honours Ron and Brenda McCullough

Posted by Vi Hughes on Mar. 22, 2025

This past Friday the University of Alberta honoured the McCullough family for their many contributions by naming a reading room in the newly restored University Commons building which will open officially in the fall of this year. The building was formerly known as the Medical Sciences building from 1922 and later as the Dentistry Pharmacy building before being completely refurbished and having a large, airy and light filled addition attached to the north side of the building. The McCullough Reading Room is the original medical student reading room located above the main south entrance to the building. It is a large, light filled room with a fabulous ornamented plaster oval on the ceiling which had been covered up many years ago and has now been brought back to it’s original glory.

The McCullogh family has long been associated with the University through Ron’s parents Mac and Mattie McCullough and now through Ron and Brenda. They have given generously of their time and funds, supporting more than twenty projects over the years. They have served on committees and boards, done fundraising for the Alumni Association and in 2008 created the Lillian McCullough Breast Cancer Research Chair at the U. of A. Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta. They more recently created the ALES Centennial Dutch Endowment Travel and Experiential Learning Award which awards yearly scholarships to students in the Faculty of Agriculture, Life and Environmental Sciences (ALES) giving them an opportunity to study and learn at the world renowned Wageningen University in the Netherlands and are also actively involved in the current University Innovation Fund drive.

The University President Bill Flanagan and Associate Vice President Kelly Spencer generously thanked the McCullough family for their many contributions over the years. They said that they are sure this family measures success by how well you have served society. The current recipient of the Breast Cancer Chair, Dr. Ing Goping spoke of the research funding her associates are bringing in and the work that her lab is currently doing and two past recipients of the ALES Centennial Dutch Scholarship told us about their experiences. Kelly Hopkin the architect of the refurbishing then spoke about the work that was done to restore the reading room to it’s original glory. They were then presented with a beautiful framed glass artwork as a memento of appreciation. In closing, attendees were then given a tour of the McCullough Reading Room.

KIVA Update

Posted by Ken Germain on Apr. 04, 2025

Here’s the folks that we are now helping with a small loan.
Plus the many who continue to pay back, regularly.

Elder Doctor Francis Whiskeyjack High School Interact Visit to Ronald MacDonald House

Posted by Vi Hughes on Mar. 24, 2025

Last week our Interact club at Elder Doctor Francis Whiskeyjack High School visited Ronald MacDonald House to prepare and serve a tasty meal of Pasta, Tomato Sauce, Meatballs, Salad and Garlic Bread to the residents and their families who are staying there. Ronald MacDonald House provides a 'home away from home' for families of children who are currently undergoing treatment at the Stollery Children's Hospital.

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