Rotary club of Vermilion
August 1, 2019
Call to order 7 am
O Canada
Rotary Grace
Four Way Test
Rebekah filling in for Mary Lee this week
Birthdays and Anniversaries
Carolyn White’s birthday August 6
Announcements
Fair raffle ticket sales down $300 from last year. Total sales $4670 exp including prize money $2400 profit $2270. Any suggestions for next year just let Shawn know.
International Convention in Hamburg Germany June 1-5
attended by Scott & Bernie Webb and Erwin & Rebekah Warkentin
- Rebekah-They toured parts of Europe visiting Erwin’s family prior to attending the convention. When arriving at the convention they attended one of the two opening ceremonies, which are held to accommodate the 25,000 people at each ceremony. First day speaker was Daniel Flynn, an entrepreneur from Australia who started project “Thank-you”. I looked online for a better explanation of what the organization does https://thankyou.co“We started Thankyou because we live in a world where 1 billion people live in extreme poverty. At the same time we’re spending billions of dollars on every day products. Our idea is to empower people to choose a better product that gives 100 per cent of profits to ending extreme poverty. We’ve had to make huge sacrifices to make it happen. For three years, we volunteered out time and worked two jobs to fund the dream.”Rebekah and Erwin took the opportunity to meet local Rotarians for fellowship by joining the Rotary Club of Stade-Elbmarschen at one of their meetings. This is a new club chartered in 2017 and is situated about 70km out of Hamburg. Their club meetings are held at 8 in the evening to allow Rotarians who commute to the city on a daily basis to attend meetings. There were many different countries represented at the gathering, including Rotarians from Norway, USA, and Romania. The speaker on the third and final day was Chris Wells, founding member of a UK Rotaract club. He delivered a solid message through humor and excitement and stressed that service should be fun and inclusive. “Dogoodery” is a positive way to get engaged in the community.
- Erwin-attended a session where the speaker was the CEO of a Digital Communications company. His message was don’t be a yes man. HIPPOS(highest paid persons in office/opinion) can be the killers of great ideas. Don’t agree just to agree, speak up if you have an idea. Lack of innovation will lead to lack of success. Also don’t spread fake info, find the truth before repeating. Another speaker Dr. Gerd Muller spoke of how we can provide hope for the people of this world because projects are not based on a political agenda. Erwin also attended the break-out session “Rotary under Nazi Rule” Some clubs during that era would remove “undesirable” members, others would fold of be shut down because they refused to remove the “undesirables”. Erwin also joined the “Fellowship of Flying Rotarians”
- Scott-The Hamburg Convention was Scott’s 5th International Convention. The first day he and Bernie did a 5km walk for polio awareness. That evening they attended the host hospitality event, after a somewhat of a long wait, they were able to enjoy food supplied by the top chefs in Hamburg. The second night they attended the flag ceremony. Third night was wine fellowship. Scott and Bernie met up with Meek’s parents and visited some of Bernie’s family that she had never met. They met lots of new people, some that coincidentally had lived in Vermilion at one time, or were neighbors of Scott’s brother in Nova Scotia.
Cash Draw-$150 Al Hardy – Bruce $100.00 Randy Fadden Bruce
Sargent’s report-one again I missed the reason why we had to pay but I know it was a good one! Sorry Erwin!
Meeting adjourned