This Thursday will be a very interesting presentation by Tony and May Acchar.  Tony and May fled Aleppo, Syria with their twelve-year-old twins to the relative safety of Lebanon three years ago.  In February 2016, they arrived in Canada as refugees and have settled in Spruce Grove.  Tony and May will show through pictures and words what life was like in Aleppo before war devastated the ancient city and provide a glimpse into life's challenges and successes as newcomers to this country.  I think this could be a great opportunity to invite a guest to hear some stories about this situation.

 

1.  The Rotary Club of Spruce Grove has been invited to attend a noon hour Grand Opening of the new Goodwill Impact Centre in west Edmonton on Thursday Feb. 2nd.  This facility will house a 4 000 sq. ft. facility for storage of YCR2 bikes as well as a workshop for working on the bikes.  Details to follow.  This event will take the place of a club meeting on that date.

 

2.  On March 18th there will be a RCMP Regimental Ball at the Heritage Pavilion in  Stony Plain.  We are in the process of inviting the new Commandeer of the local Detachment to be a speaker at a meeting in February.  This event will also have a fundraiser and the proceeds will go to First Nation's youth in the area.  The Rotary Club of Spruce Grove's initiation of our Connecting with Aboriginal Neighbours Committee certainly has been instrumental in establishing the seeds of this project.  More details to come.  Thanks Arlaine.

 

3.  Friends of Rotary     A reminder we are establishing a group of community members who would like to keep in touch with what Rotary is doing.  This means that we will send out an email once per month to these folks.  It will start in the first week of February.  It requires that, a.  a of our community is interested,  and, b.   that a club member recommends them to this group.  Recommendations are made to our club board and have to be approved by the board.  Please get requests to the board meeting on Jan 24th yourself, a board member or through myself, John Oldham.

 

And last of all...as I mentioned at the beginning, Happy New Year...and I must say that as I reviewed 2016, looked forward to 2017, I also reflected on what I was grateful for!!  I came across this cartoon.  As it says...I am grateful that ...