There was strong attendance at our Veteran’s Day meeting last Wednesday. Chef Pasha dazzled our taste buds with a culinary experience from New Orleans. We dined on peaches, andouille sausage, red beans and rice, shrimp etouffe and topped it off with pecan pie!!
There will be a Rotary Foundation Seminar on November 21, 2015. The seminar will be held at the Alfond Youth Center in Waterville from 10 am to 3 pm, lunch will be provided.
Judy Swazey reminded us that our Club is responsible for covering December hours at The BH Food Pantry, please check your schedule and see Judy to sign up to cover a shift or two.
Sharon Linscott informed us that anyone can sponsor a wreath for the Wreaths Across America program for $15, please see Sharon for more information, or click here.
Our Holiday Party will be on December 2, 2015 at Geddy’s at 5:00 pm. We will continue the tradition of the annual auction. Please bring your auction items to Gina or drop them off with Annette at the ferry terminal.
We enjoyed a very informative presentation from Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko about the NEW strategic plan for the Abbe Museum. You can see the plan by visiting abbemuseum.wordpress.com.
Bar Harbor Rotarians are volunteering to support a program that seeks to help alleviate hunger in some young children in the community.
Maine children and families face recurring food insecurity. Even on Mount Desert Island, sizeable percentages of students qualify for free and reduced school lunch. When the weekend comes, too many kids worry about their next meal – and too many return to school on Monday, worn out for not having had much to eat over the weekend.
In response to this local need, last spring the Congregational Church started a new Backpack Program for local students – an exciting collaborative effort among K-8 schools (administration, guidance counselors, school nurses, and teachers), businesses, congregations, volunteers, and the Bar Harbor Food Pantry. The MDI Backpack Program helps alleviate students’ hunger by sending them home on Fridays with palatable, shelf-stable, nutritious, easily-prepared food. With parental permission, faculty and staff at local schools offer the program to needy students, distributing food discreetly. By the end of the nine-week pilot program in the spring of 2015, the program had provided 172 packages of food in three area schools.
The MDI Backpack Program runs strictly on in-kind food donations, charitable donations, and volunteers. For the 2015-2016 school year, the program plans to serve 30-35 students each week, with an anticipated budget of $6000; they have worked hard to identify foods that are kid-friendly, nutritious, and cost-effective.
Rotarians volunteer each Friday to spend less than an hour at the church to load used plastic shopping bags with a carefully selected "menu" of food to supplement the diets of children over the weekend when they do not have access to school lunches. These menus are developed for their nutritious value and with recognition for the ages of the children. For example, kids in K-4 may get mac & cheese which they can microwave and eat right out of the container (yes the group did determine that even in homes with fewer resources than average, most have microwaves) while older kids get mac & cheese in a box which requires boiling the macaroni and adding milk and the cheese packet. The packages are then delivered to school officials who place them in backpacks of students selected for the program, which avoids any peer censure.
For the first weekend of Rotary involvement, Service Projects chair Shaun Farrar, in seeking 4 volunteers (the "assembly" room in the church is small) got nearly 20.
Perhaps the best way to describe what s classification talk is, is to say what it is not.
First, it is not an autobiography. Avoid the temptation to share your life from birth to the present. Think of this rather as an opportunity to attract someone to your chosen vocation. Imagine you are mentoring a young person who may be interested in joining that field. Focus more on what it takes to become a banker (or a barber, or a teacher...) and what the work environment is today.
How to Give a Classification Talk
When a lawyer, a coal dealer, a mining engineer, and a merchant tailor first met in 1905, they gave birth to Rotary and, by the nature of their diverse occupations, to the association's most distinctive feature — the classification principle. Today, the classification principle remains a cornerstone of Rotary, promoting fellowship and service that is based on diversity.
By limiting active membership by classifications, each club becomes a cross-section of the business and professional life of the community it serves. Also, the classification principle makes sure that no one profession or business becomes the dominant force within the club.
Another benefit of the principle is that representatives of many fields are brought together, providing the opportunity for Rotarians to broaden their knowledge of the contemporary workplace. This, in turn, enables Rotarians to fulfill one of the basic obligations of Vocational Service— recognizing the worthiness to society of all useful occupations.
A way to share information about your vocation is to give a classification talk at a club meeting. The following guidelines are designed to help you give a good presentation.
Preparing the Talk
Obviously, the more inexperienced you are as a speaker, the more preparation you should put into your presentation.
Start by writing a comprehensive outline of all the points you want to cover in the order of their importance. Work your way from the general overall characteristics and activities of your career field to the specific duties involved in your particular job. Consider touching on the following:
A brief history of your career, including why you chose your particular business or profession.
The parts of your job you find most rewarding and most difficult. (Don't be afraid to express personal feelings; sincere emotion always increases audience responsiveness.)
Standards of practice within your field.
The ethical issues you face in your work.
The characteristics most needed for success in your business or profession.
The changes that technology, regulations, environmental factors, and other outside forces have generated in your field.
A forecast of employment opportunities in your field for the coming decade.
Educational requirements for entry-level jobs in your vocation.
The advice you would give to young people thinking of entering your career field.
Are you interested in being involved with public relations and have a hard time attending the meetings? If so, we still want your input! We’re starting a closed Facebook group, which will only be viewable by Rotarians who want to help with PR and exchange ideas.
If you’d like to be part of this group, please send Carrie an email message at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com If you do not use Facebook, but still want to be involved, no worries! Let her know by sending her a message and she will send you updates about what ideas and needs are being tossed about!
Thanks to the volunteers and monetary support of the Bar Harbor (Mount Desert Island) Rotary Club, the Bar Harbor Kids Book Festival was a massive success.
Over 200 people attended the opening ceremonies and festival activities on Saturday, giving many thrilled children and adults a chance to interact with over 40 authors and illustrators including the phenomenal Ashley Bryan. One family drove six hours to attend.
On Friday, authors worked with students at MDI High School, the Community School, Pemetic, Trenton, Connors-Emerson and Mount Desert Elementary schools. One high school student tweeted to an author after the event, "I'm literally shaking bc I just met you, this Friday has been more tolerable.”
One school librarian said, "Today was an amazing day! “ Another wrote to us, "Thank you all for making today so special! It was amazing for our staff and students. We are truly grateful for the effort you all made the passion you displayed for your craft."
For me, it was extra special because on Friday, I encountered a freshman in high school that I met during an author visit three years earlier in Trenton.
She said to me, “You saved me. I never read before you visited my school. And … It was… I had a hard time and your books got me through it. I reread them over and over during hard times. I can’t believe you came to my school right when I needed you and you are here again.”
That sort of story is going to happen forty times over thanks to the authors who volunteered their time to come up here (Some from California, Michigan and Florida) and because of the support of all our Rotarian volunteers. It’s hard for me to explain what a difference authors visiting schools makes. It is huge. It is sometimes life changing.
Thank you for making this event possible and for making a real difference in kids’ futures.
Rotary President K.R. Ravindran has named six Rotary Global Women of Action for 2015. The honorees were chosen for their dedication and service, which has improved the lives of thousands around the world.
“Every day at Rotary I see firsthand how our members work to change lives and make a significant impact,” said Ravindran. “Rotary’s Global Women of Action embody Rotary’s motto, Service Above Self.”
The women will be honored at Rotary Day at the United Nations in New York City on 7 November. They will address attendees and lead discussions on various topics related to their work.
The six...
Apply to host a booth in the House of Friendship at the 2016 Rotary International Convention in Seoul, 28 May-1 June. This is an opportunity to showcase your club or district project, recruit members for your Rotary Fellowship, share information about your Rotarian Action Group, or market Rotary merchandise if you are a licensed RI vendor.
The application deadline is 30 September. Booth allocations will be awarded by 1 November.
Apply
When Mariana Day moved in 1989 to the small beach town of Chacala, in Nayarit, Mexico, she noticed that the surrounding rural areas struggled to maintain schools. And most children weren’t able to go beyond an eighth-grade education. Day, who is a member of the Rotary Club of Bahía de Jaltemba-La Peñita, in Nayarit, had started a local scholarship program before she joined Rotary. Called Changing Lives, the program provided students with high school tuition, uniforms, school supplies, and transportation.
In addition, Rotary clubs from the United States and Mexico have been investing in the...
Club Information
Please join us
Service Above Self
Join us on Wednesdays at Noon, except for the first Wednesday of the month when we meet at 5:00 pm (check Facebook or the speakers list on this page for the location) _________________________
Birch Bay Village
1 Village Inn Rd
Bar Harbor,
ME 04609 United States
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