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Maple Grove Rotarians definitely get their hands dirty with projects such as planting 90 pollinator plants at the Woodland Mounds Senior Center, an affordable senior living apartment, and planting 60 trees at Maple Grove Central Park. The club contributed $5000 as did the MG Lions and an arborist was on hand to assist in the planting in cooperation with Maple Grove Park and Recreation.
Year of Service
Year of Service Challenge – Read to Succeed!
What is Read to Succeed?
Each Rotary/Rotaract club in District 5950 is invited to find a partner organization who would benefit from receiving books or book services. The partner can be ANY organization – a school, charity, senior center, etc. – local or global. Each club chooses where to focus their project.
Anytime from now until the end of January – your club can join the challenge. Once you decide where your books are going you can determine the type of books and how you will collect them – bringing books to a meeting, designating money to purchase books or making an online wish list are all options. Let’s see how many books can be collected in our district by the end of January! There will be club and individual prizes awarded so don’t miss out on the fun!
Click the links below to see the full instructions for the challenge and also a template to add a label to the books before they are distributed so the recipient will know they are from Rotary. Many thanks to the City of Lakes Rotary Club for sponsoring this challenge!
Year of Service Update – Environmental Projects
Rotary is the best kept secret – we need to change that! The goal of the Year of Service Initiative is to share stories of great work that clubs are doing and find ways to learn from each other and join together to make a difference. Check out the examples below of ways clubs in District 5950 are taking on Rotary’s 7th Area of Focus – Supporting the Environment.
Also stay tuned for the November newsletter for details on a fun literacy challenge championed by City of Lakes.!
The 5950 Conference held at the MN Landscape Arboretum featured two environmental speakers and the location of the conference itself at one of Minnesota’s premier locations for research helped conference attendees get into the mindset of thinking about the environment.
The Twin Cities Rotary Eco Club, the 4th non-traditional, cause-based Rotary Club in the world, leads our district’s Environmental Action Team and is a wonderful resource for this topic. Utilize the speaker bureau list they developed for environmental topics (add link) to find a great speaker for your club. They are also leading a grant project to install solar panels on Habitat for Humanity homes. The Eco Club has had 17 Eco Challenges from 2019-2023 – check out their website to learn how to challenge your club to take action.
Maple Grove Rotarians are leaders in hands-on environmental projects. They planted trees and pollinator gardens and sponsors buckthorn removal in their community – partnering with a local Lion’s club to purchase equipment to facilitate buckthorn removal events.
Eden Prairie Rotary hosts a spring Eco Expo educating 3000 people annually on environmental topics. With 50 vendors on all things environmental, this club not only educates their community to take action but they also collect donations that help fund their service work all throughout the year making this event a great project and a fundraiser all in one.
Excelsior Morning Rotary switched to reusable cups in 2023 for their annual Concerts in the Commons music series and Oktoberfest keeping over 22,000 plastic cups out of landfills and raising awareness of how small changes can yield big results.
Global Travelers E-Club is planning to kick off “Talking Trash” on Oct. 24th – a challenge for Rotarians to clean up the environment wherever they live and post their photos and stories on the club’s social platforms. Bags of trash will generate donations to the club’s foundation account. A way even an e-club can participate in hands-on service.
If your club is looking for something new to engage your members and community – what better way than to learn from a club that has had success in this area. For more information about any of these projects – click on this link (add link to longer article) for more detail including contacts for the above projects.
The environment was our first area of focus for sharing but there is more to come this year! If your club has a great project to support education/literacy, food insecurity or mental health/homelessness – let me know so that your club can be featured in an upcoming newsletter. Together we can share the great work of Rotary!
Melanie DeLuca
Year of Service Initiative Chair
rotarymelanie@gmail.com
About 3,000 people attended second annual ECO EXPO held at the Eden Prairie Center Mall last year and the club’s 3d expo will be held next springOn April 20th. Website www.epecoexpo.org
For virtual clubs like Global Travelers, it takes some creativity to help members engage in hands-on service that is not connected to a longer trip or group effort. “Talking Trash” is the result of thinking how to motivate members to serve individually but with a common purpose.
The 2023-24 District Conference was held at the MN Landscape Arboretum in Chanhassen on Saturday October 14 and included environmental speakers and eco-friendly bags. Steve Solbrack with the Eco Club is a wonderful resource for all things environmental –steve@solbrack.com
An estimated 7,000 people show up on a Wednesday night to hear popular bands perform at the biweekly Concert in the Commons in Excelsior.The crowd consumes thousands of beers, but you wouldn’t know it by the number of beer cups in the trash. That’s because there were very few left behind because they’re reusable.
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