Our November 19, 2020 Guest Speaker was Kevin Eisenberg, Past District Governor and current Rotary District 5130 Foundation Chair. Kevin’s topic was Rotary’s Worldwide Humanitarian Efforts. Kevin was assisted by Barry Cogbill of the Santa Rosa East club, who discussed his club’s current Africa projects. Coincidentally, our meeting was held on World Toilet Day.

It turns out that the Rotary Foundation’s first great project was the installation of public toilets in Chicago! Water/sanitation remains an Area of Interest of the Rotary Foundation. So let’s all salute toilets; they make our lives better in so many ways.

The Rotary Foundation (“TRF”) is an organization separate from Rotary International.

It is one of the top ten charitable foundations in the world, as recognized by Charity Navigator and others. 90% of every dollar donated to TRF goes to charitable causes.

TRF has four main funds: Polio Plus, the Annual Fund, the Endowment, and Disaster Preparedness. The Annual Fund is responsible for District and Global Grants and powers most of Rotary’s local and international charitable projects.

Polio Plus has had major changes due to COVID and was unable to do its door to door canvassing and inoculations. Polio’s Plus efforts now include COVID Response, just as it earlier worked on Ebola. Polio Plus is well-suited to help with COVID, since it is experienced in disease surveillance, outbreak identification, and contract tracing. And, Polio Plus workers know all about hanging around in sewers looking for evidence of viruses! (Toilets again!)

Generally, Global Grants slowed down during the early days of the Pandemic but have now ramped back up. District 5130 grants have been approved within 3 days of submission!

Kevin also spoke about the importance of community assessment in the process of selecting grant projects. TRF requires, based on experience, a strong showing that the community itself needs and wants a particular grant! COVID has resulted in some improvements to TRF, including improving communications with partners and more widely developed dissemination of possible projects. For example, see Rotary.org for virtual project fairs, where anyone can get information about potential and ongoing projects. Zoom has helped TRF get together outside of our own groups to learn more and improve our projects!

Barry Cogbill spoke about Santa Rosa East’s Africa projects. They completed one project, are almost done with another, and have two more in the works! Barry traveled to North East Uganda in 2016 and it changed his life! One successful project included solar cookers and fruit trees.

After a community needs assessment, they determined that the use of wood for home cooking was amazingly expensive and resulting in rapid deforestation.

A Global Grant funded with $10,000 Club seed money and a $35,000 match from TRF resulted in the purchase and installation of solar cookers, saving the community an average of $6,000/year and eliminating 97% of wood from the cooking process!

The Club also decided to add training for entrepreneurs to the grant based on an assessment of community need.

Our own Rotary fan Randy Seelye mentioned that we recently received a grant of $50,000 from the TRF for equipment for our Sábalos project! Our clinic is almost ready to open!

Thank you Kevin, Barry, Randy, and others for the presentation. Your dedication to the TRF cause is keeping the Foundation in our thoughts and actions and making the world a better place!

What is it that Rotarians do best, that kind of defines them as Rotarians?  A succinct answer is that they join together to multiply their impact in making positive change in the world, their communities and themselves.  Sunrise Rotary has a long history of precisely this- just look at the long list of projects Sunrisers have tackled over the years: building a ballfield, gardens, clean-ups, planting bulbs, investing thousands of hours of time caring for non-profit properties like Women’s Recovery Services.  Sunrise Rotary makes a difference!

Once or twice a year we raise funds to support all this work, as well as to provide grants to worthwhile causes like the Elsie Allen Foundation, the Living Room, Land Paths and the Fire Relief Fund.  Now is that time for Rotary Year 2020/21, and all Sunrisers are asked to join together to make the Sunrise Rotary Super Raffle a BIG success!   A raffle is a great fundraiser as there are minimal costs or investments of time- 90%+ goes straight to the causes we support.  We have about 10 weeks to sell as many raffle tickets as we can and then celebrate one lucky Grand Prize winner and several secondary winners. 

Who will buy your tickets?  To reiterate Thursday’s presentation- co-workers, friends who know your passion for Rotary, family members you see in person or by Zoom this week at Thanksgiving, neighbors, your doctor, your dentist, your stockbroker, your attorney, the guy who overcharges you to tune up your car, any real estate agent who thinks you might ever want to sell your home in the future.  How about business people you know who are looking for memorable holiday client gifts?  I’ve got my list going!  Family members who don’t want or need more “stuff”!

“I’m not a sales-y type of person.”  Not a problem.  Talk with your Team Captain about different ways to get our Rotary Club’s good work in front of your contacts that doesn’t necessarily involve “cold calls”.  There are lots of creative ways to communicate with people without traditional Fuller Brush Man door knocking! 

Together we can do this, and have a lot of camaraderie and fun along the way!

The brain child of Rob Sanville and the product of Don Mills of Sound Ideas Media. the new Sunrise promotional video, written by President Paul O'Rear with major editorial input and multiple interjections by a committee of Dick Perman, Dicksie Tamanaha. M.J. Girard and numerous others, will present the Rotary Club of Santa Rosa Sunrise to a broad spectrum of enthusiastic Raffle ticket buyers in the next few weeks and months.

Featuring a dazzling array of Sunrise standard bearers such as Dave and Shauna Lorenzen, Don Floriani, John Jones and Jennifer Adams as well as rising stars including Jim Gray, Meagan Orr, Carmen and Zoe Fuentes Guiterrez and introducing Interacter Ramiro Ortiz, the fast-paced video showcases the club's origin and service projects, as well as local and international activities supporting youth, seniors, mothers and children and the environment. 

Engineered to promote the Rotary commitment to service above self and the wheel of progress that brings Japanese teens to Sonoma County and provides dental services to local kids in need while vaccinating children in developing countries and building a surgery center in Nicaragua, the brief video showcases Elsie Allen students, Redwood Empire Food Bank distribution, local seniors at lunch and Sabalos Center patients -- a compelling display of ongoing programs worthy of major support by all Rotarian family and friends.

Click Here to see the promotional video

Our final walk/hike for calendar year 2020 is in the ANNADEL HIGH COUNTRY, but we are going to cheat and gain most of the elevation into the high country by car.  But the hike will still have quite a bit of uphill, so we are grading this a MODERATE HIKE. 

About half of the hike is on paved and gravel roads, which will facilitate social distancing.  The other half is on trails, where will have to spread out in lines to social distance.  It is a beautiful area of meadows and oak and conifer woodlands.

Meeting Time:  10:00am at the cul de sac at the end of Oak Mesa Drive in Oakmont.  Enter Oakmont at Oakmont Drive entrance off of Hwy 12.  Drive 1.5 miles and look for Oak Mesa Drive on your right.  Turn right and go uphill to the dead end at the cul de sac.  Park and meet the group there. 

Bring masks, water and good walking shoes.  Jackets if weather requires.  Walking sticks if you prefer.

Optional BYO Sack Lunch about Noon following the walk -- At a picnic area near the Oakmont entrance.  Bring a folding chair or blanket. 

Guests welcome!  If you have questions, please contact Marty Behr by telephone or text at 206-391-3427.

Look forward to seeing you on December 12.  Marty  

Top 10 Oxymorons:

10. Act naturally

9.  Found missing

8.  Resident alien

7.  Airline food

6.  Good grief

5.  Small crowd

4.  “Now, then…….”

3.  Clearly misunderstood

2.  Genuine imitation

1.  Exact estimate