Bridgette has been a member of Santa Rosa Cycling Club since 2010. She has served on the board for the past four years, and is currently the club President and Ride Director. Bridgette is a lifetime athlete with a previous career as an ice skater and ballet dancer and enjoys pilates, yoga, dancing, and hiking. Bridgette enjoys traveling and has led private cycling adventures to Spain and Italy as well as “domestic” tours. When not riding her bike, Bridgette works as an environmental consultant for a firm.
Sunrise held its annual Assembly at our regular meeting on January 17, 2019. A number of club members provided reports about the club’s well-being, including Paul O’Rear, Marty Behr, Jennifer Adams, Randy Seelye, Penny Millar, among others. The good news is that we have a great club and we are moving forward with many great projects.
We also have a great leadership team devoted to improving the club and moving forward with these goals. Paul discussed the Putting on the Ritz v.2, now scheduled for April 27 at the Glaser Center. Paul has a great team for a magnificent follow-up to last year’s successful event. Paul also addressed our efforts to achieve the Presidential Citation this year. Penny updated our club financials, which are doing well. Carolyn Anderson's report included our successful charitable giving results.
Randy discussed our Foundation donation numbers; we are currently 5th in the District for Polio Plus contributions and looking to move up! Our matching points program has increased giving, but it expires at the end of the month so we are hoping for more donations. Jennifer updated our current projects, including the Food Bank, Guerneville winter shelter dinners, Glenn Oaks Ranch, among others. Marty focused on our efforts to increase membership. Marty’s team has set up a ‘speaker’s bureau’ group to identify and schedule super speakers each month. He noted that it is likely that our program featuring Francesco Lecce-Chong resulted in three new members, so we want to keep improving our speakers and inviting guests to hear these great speakers! Marty also asked us to complete a questionnaire relating to ‘Initiating New Forms of Membership.” President Rich put together a great team to summarize our past results and future goals, so many thanks to all for contributing your time and efforts to this great club!
LeRoy took time off from building his house for a trip to Arizona.
Jim Kirkbride is hustling sunrises to select raffle slots predicting a date and time for the arrival of Carmen's baby, at $10 each.
Dicksie drew the black marble! Only to learn that it was one of 19 black marbles in the bag along with one WHITE marble that would have been the prize winner.
Del encouraged Sunrisers to sign up for the Annual Progressive Dinner.
President Rich Randolph reported that the board is considering the benefits and advantages of Club Runner, and all the time and work that has been invested into this program, verses a new resource with unique, updated services called District and Club database. DACdb is widely used by other Rotary clubs and will interface with Rotary International.
As I peer out among these attentive Sunriser's, I am reminded just how diverse, talented and variously engaged each one is within their profession and Rotary connections. The more I become acquainted with each one of you, I in turn find myself within a salad bowl of enormous heterogeneity.
If you enjoy fine dining, hiking, reading: Discoveries of many types, I encourage you to seek additional depth of appreciation for your fellow members. How to expedite this?? Take a look under the Sites Pages, Member Sigh n- on the left side of our Home Page. You will be directed to where you can cllck on the listings, and view both current and former member's Craft - Vocational Talks.
Football All Stars, foreign IT Exes turned wine gurus; carpenter, contracting, microprocessing and music ~ where does one find a landscape wide enough for all those skills?? Check out the link under Committees. If you don't see your own name, it's time to brush up on your presentation skills!
Talk to Brian Rondon or Pres Rich for an upcoming speaking slot! Maybe you also know someone who would feel at home in our mix?
On a regular basis, our resident photo pro Warren Smith, as well as Club Public Relations-Image Director Jack Strange, submit pictures of what is going on at the weekly meetings. You can always find the most recent pictures at the websites photo journal called "Meeting Sighting" Please note that all the meeting photos for the entire Rotary year are at this location with the most recent on the last page.
Thanks for all the great pictures Warren!Link to Meeting Sightings. The most recent are on the last page!
4 Questions about Water and Sanitation in Haiti with Jeremy Hurst
Jeremy Hurst,
HANWASH initiative chair; Rotary Club of Grand Cayman,
Cayman Islands
1. What is HANWASH?
HANWASH stands for Haiti National Clean Water, Sanitation, and Health Strategy. It’s an initiative by Rotary District 7020 and DINEPA, Haiti’s water and sanitation agency. Our goal is that by 2030, every person in Haiti will have access to clean water and adequate sanitation, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
2. How did the initiative come about?
As a district, we’ve always felt responsible for taking the challenges of Haiti head on. I’m in one of the wealthiest places in the world — the Cayman Islands. It’s stable socially and politically. Other countries in our district, like the Bahamas, are also quite wealthy. But then there’s Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world. Our Rotarian friends are in the middle of that.
Rotary President Barry Rassin is from our district. We’ve got real credibility in Haiti, especially because of our work in response to the 2010 earthquake. When I was district governor in 2013-14, we did a lot of great projects in a lot of different locations. But it wasn’t coordinated. It struck me that we could be more successful if we worked together on a national scale.
We had a meeting in summer 2017 to bring groups to the table and open discussion. Thankfully, the planets aligned — Robert Léger, then-governor of District 7020, was a well-respected Rotarian from Haiti, and the immediate past president of the Rotary Club of Petion-Ville, Jack Guy Lafontant, had just become prime minister of Haiti. Unfortunately, he’s no longer in office, but that’s part of the reason we need HANWASH, for continuity and stability.
3. What have you accomplished so far?
We held a two-day workshop in January in the business district of Port-au-Prince. We knew the uphill task we had. Our game plan was to use this event to seriously engage all stakeholders, but especially DINEPA. It was the one party we knew we had to catch if we were going to make this work. By the second day, we had signed a memorandum of agreement to significantly increase areas with drinking water. We talked about how we would need all of our financial investment to be measurable and transparent. We would require partner nongovernmental organizations to sign the framework agreement. It was important to DINEPA, because they felt a lot of NGOs go and do their own thing, which undermines effective coordination.
We also established a subcommittee of HANWASH to build trust and relationships with the individual members of DINEPA. It was quite difficult for them to get their heads around what Rotary was. It was a learning experience for us, as well. We, and they, too, realized how unique Rotary is.
4. What’s next for HANWASH?
We picked four pilot communes [municipalities], and we have just received project proposals for each from DINEPA. The total value is $3 million. They’re primarily focused on urban water systems that are greatly in need of repair, replacement, or expansion. Global grants are likely to be our main funding mechanism, so we’re going to evaluate these using The Rotary Foundation’s best practices. And we’ll make sure WASRAG, the Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group, looks at them.
We also have seed funds in our district accounts and a Haiti donor advised fund. We recently signed funding for our partner NGO, Haiti Outreach, to map each of these four communes for existing water resources so we know which are functional and potable, and which are not.
We’ll start with four, and we want to show we can provide water and sanitation to everyone. That in itself is a massive project. As time goes on and we get the systems and organizational structure in place, we’ll scale up from four to six to 18 and eventually all 145 communes in the country.
• Illustration credit: Viktor Miller Gausa. Read more stories from The Rotarian
Rotary Club of Santa Rosa Sunrise - Founded June 30, 1986
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