Dan Kenney and others from DeKalb County Community Gardens have provided critical food support for an increased number of area residents during the pandemic.
The Executive Director of the non-profit DeKalb County Community Gardens (DCCG), Dan Kenney, gave Rotarians some startling numbers on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic related to local food needs. During this week’s Rotary meeting, Kenney explained how the pandemic showed the vulnerability of many local families to employment disruptions. Kenney spoke about the changes DCCG needed to implement for food distribution and how demand for their services skyrocketed.
Kenney said that when the pandemic hit a year ago, their food distribution had to pivot from an open-market type model to one where pre-boxed supplies were loaded into vehicles in a drive-through setting. Kenney said 75% of those showing up for services were first-time clients. Beginning last March, a distribution site in Sandwich that normally accommodated 50 clients had 150 cars show up. A first-ever food distribution event at the Federated Church in Sycamore resulted in 90 cars lined up. And distributions offered by the Westminster Presbyterian Church in DeKalb have helped tens of thousands of individuals. The DCCG was also able to establish a presence in downtown Genoa thanks to the donation of a building which now houses the Genoa Area Community Food Hub. Kenney said for the year 2020, the DCCG helped 25,000 households with food and other supplies. This translated into 75,000 individuals served through the distribution of 12,000 boxes containing 800,000 pounds of food.
Kenney also reminded Rotarians about other programs and services offered by DCCG. One example is the Walnut Grove Vocational Farm near Kirkland. The farm provides work and career learning opportunities for adults with special needs. Also offered is a “Farm to Program” initiative where locally grown produce is purchased and used for distribution by local food pantries. Aiding these efforts were the addition of a refrigerated truck and a remodeled trailer with a traveling kitchen to their fleet thanks to local grants.
As the DeKalb County Community Gardens seeks to help those with food insecurity or living in a “food desert”, they hope to fund a Food Hub in DeKalb. As envisioned, it would include a commercial kitchen to provide cooking classes on use of fresh foods and kitchen equipment access for entrepreneurs seeking to begin their own food service business. Details on all their services and plans are available at their website: www.dekalbgardens.org.
The Otto and Fran Walter Foundation has pledged $15.5 million to The Rotary Foundation to start a Rotary Peace Center in the Middle East or North Africa.
The new center will offer a professional development certificate program focused on peacebuilding and development issues in the region. This generous gift from the Walter Foundation, which is based in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, USA, will fund the center’s startup costs and operating expenses, as well as an endowment that will provide peace fellowships in perpetuity for up to 40 students to study there each year.
“Rotary has, for a long time, looked at how we can make a tangible contribution to the one area of the world where the element of peace has seemed so elusive,” says Rotary Foundation Trustee Chair K.R. Ravindran. “Now that opportunity has come our way, thanks to the immense generosity of the Otto and Fran Walter Foundation. We will take full advantage to create a center where we can inspire our peace fellows to give flight to their spirit and equip them to be able to support action that will bring about peace and goodwill in a troubled region.”
The Rotary Foundation will select a partner institution to host the Otto and Fran Walter Rotary Peace Center in 2024, and the first Rotary Peace Fellows are expected to start studying there in January 2026.
Otto and Fran Walter established their family foundation to promote peace and other charitable causes, and their mission lives on even after their deaths. Otto was born in Germany in 1907 and worked as a lawyer there. When totalitarianism arose in Europe, the Nazi government enacted the Nuremberg laws, which pushed Jewish professionals out of their jobs. Summarily disbarred, Otto worked briefly as a law clerk before emigrating to the United States in 1936. He and his parents settled in New York.
His law degree wasn’t recognized in the U.S., so Otto improved his English and started professional training. He earned a license as a certified public accountant and opened an accounting firm. But he never stopped believing that he could work as a lawyer again. Eventually, he sold his accounting firm and entered law school at New York Law School, graduating in 1954. The next year, he started a law firm which, with the support of his wife, Fran, steadily grew to employ 40 lawyers.
Through his legal work, Otto helped promote peace and improve relations between Germany and the U.S. After the Nuremburg laws were repealed, he became licensed to practice law in what was then East Germany and served as an adviser to the German Ministry of Finance during the negotiations of a 1954 U.S.-German income tax treaty. Otto and Fran focused on their philanthropic foundation later in their lives, becoming personally involved in the grants that they were able to fund. Otto became a member of the Rotary Club of New York City.
Posted by The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica on Mar 25, 2021
April Fools’ Day, also called All Fools’ Day, in most countries the first day of April. It received its name from the custom of playing practical jokes on this day—for example, telling friends that their shoelaces are untied or sending them on so-called fools’ errands. Although the day has been observed for centuries, its true origins are unknown and effectively unknowable. It resembles festivals such as the Hilaria of ancient Rome, held on March 25, and the Holi celebration in India, which ends on March 31. April Fools' Day is celebrated on Thursday, April 1, 2021.
Some have proposed that the modern custom originated in France, officially with the Edict of Roussillon (promulgated in August 1564), in which Charles IX decreed that the new year would no longer begin on Easter, as had been common throughout Christendom, but rather on January 1. Because Easter was a lunar and therefore moveable date, those who clung to the old ways were the “April Fools.” Others have suggested that the timing of the day may be related to the vernal equinox (March 21), a time when people are fooled by sudden changes in the weather.
There are variations between countries in the celebration of April Fools’ Day, but all have in common an excuse to make someone play the fool. In France, for example, the fooled person is called poisson d’avril (“April fish”), perhaps in reference to a young fish and hence to one that is easily caught; it is common for French children to pin a paper fish to the backs of unsuspecting friends. In Scotland the day is Gowkie Day, for the gowk, or cuckoo, a symbol of the fool and the cuckold, which suggests that it may have been associated at one time with sexual license; on the following day signs reading “kick me” are pinned to friends’ backs. In many countries newspapers and the other media participate—for example, with false headlines or news stories.
March 31, 1732 – Composer (considered the father of the symphony) Franz Joseph Haydn is born in Rohrau, Austria.
March 29, 1790 – John Tyler, the 10th U.S. President, was born in Charles City County, Virginia. He became president upon the death of William Henry Harrison and served from 1841 to 1845.
April 2, 1804 – Prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen is born in Odense, Denmark.
March 30, 1853 – Famed post-Impressionist Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh is born in Zundert, Netherlands.
April 2, 1513 – Spanish explorer Ponce De Leon sights present day Florida and claims it for the Spanish Crown.
April 3, 1860 – The Pony Express service began in the western U.S. as the first rider departed St. Joseph, Missouri. For $5 an ounce, letters were delivered 2,000 miles to California within ten days.
March 31, 1968 – President Lyndon Johnson makes the surprise announcement that he will not seek reelection because of the Vietnam conflict.
March 30, 1981 – President Ronald Reagan survives an assassination attempt by John Hinckley after being shot in the left lung; his press secretary, James Brady suffers permanent brain damage after also being wounded.
