Welcome to the Madison Breakfast Rotary Club

mbrotary6250@gmail.com

P.O. Box 5524, Madison WI 53705
Madison Breakfast
We meet In Person
Mondays at 7:30 a.m.
Keller Williams Realty West
555 Zor Shrine Place
#100
Madison, WI 53719
United States of America
See below for information regarding club meetings, speakers, and events! In person meetings are held at Keller Williams Realty West.
Chicago RI Headquarters Tour & River Cruise
Stories
Elena, 2024-25 outbound exchange student to Japan
Elena, Madison Breakfast Rotary’s outbound student to Japan visited the club on April 22 with her father. Elena, currently a student at La Follette High School. participates in Cross Country skiing, and is a member of the ski team and the soccer teams. Elena spends three times a week learning Japanese on Zoom. She loves to travel and is going on a month long trip to Europe with her family this summer. She leaves in late July or early August but will first go to the Rotary District meeting for exchange students and families in Grand Rapids Michigan. Elena’s family will be hosting a student from Taiwan while she is away.
 
Filipe has just moved to his third host family and attended TriCon. Madison Breakfast Rotary celebrated his birthday at their April 1 meeting at which the club presented him with a trumpet of his very own. He had taken up the trumpet at Middleton High School for the first time as was enthuestic about it.
Welcome to New Member Melissa Osborne
Melissa Osborne was inducted into Madison Breakfast Rotary on April 22, 2024. She was sponsored by Judy Levine, who introduced her. Melissa is the Director of Operations at Temple Beth El in Madison. Her work is service oriented and she has been involved with youth exchange in the past.
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Guatemala Water Project -- UPDATE
Zapote children when water was first delivered to their school
 
The village had to temporarily stop the project because of the pandemic but have restarted it and are now about 6 weeks away from providing all the houses with water.
 

The students and community workers in Guatemala.
 
Kevin Frost spent several weeks in January 2020 working on the Guatemala water project funded with a grant from Rotary District 6250. He reported that the community almost completed the large community water tank and they walked all the water lines and staked out the locations of major equipment. The EWB students and community grew together as they worked together. It was a truly life giving trip, he said. Kevin Frost also went with several students to meet Rotario Los Altos, our counterpart in Quatqetzeltanago, Guatemala. They were very welcoming and had a great interest in the project and would like to work with both our club and engineers without borders in the future.
Club Foundation Presents Gifts to 8 Organizations Totaling $3500
At the June 22 club meeting, Bruce Harville, President of the MBR Foundation, presented gifts to eight non-profit organizations for projects in keeping with the Rotary ideals. Of the $3500 total, 40% comes from investments, the rest from outright gifts.
MBR PRESENTS FUNDS to MEALS-ON-WHEELS
On June 20, Mike Kafka and Betsy Nordstrom presented the $711 grant money plus the $1365 final payment from the money Betsy raised making masks to Meals-on-Wheels. The combined total with the $2200 from previous mask donations, is a donation of $4276 to Meals-on-Wheels. With this donation, we have made it possible for about 500 meals to people who would have had some tough choices to make because they couldn’t afford meals and other necessities. It is a wonderful thing we do in delivering meals and knowing that more seniors are able to get them during this time. Because the club was initially turned down for the grant, it inspired more giving.
Five Area clubs join MBR in a District 
Grant Proposal for a Library in Kenya
Gary Muldoon has submitted a District Grant request for Kongoni Community Library in Kenya. If approved for funding, the project will help build and open the library in its new location after the library’s board was given notice to vacate the government building it was housed in. The project is located in Kakagega County, Western Kenya, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the country. The library was averaging 150 uses a day and housed in a county building until government authorities gave notice to vacate by July 31, 2019. Designs for a new library have been approved by the library board, land has been purchased and the ground floor has been roughed in. While there are other components to the library, this project is focused specifically on providing doors, windows, plumbing, electrical wiring and fixtures, allowing the library to open when completed. Once opened in its new location, the library/community center will serve over 5,000 people who live in the area.
 
Five District 6250 clubs, Madison East-Monona, Madison South, Stoughton, Waunakee and Madison Horizons have signed on as Contributing Clubs pledging a total of $3,250. Madison Breakfast has pledged $500 and Books Are Power, a non-profit that sets up libraries in Africa, has pledged $3,000. The remaining $500 will come from individual contributions. If you would like to pledge money toward the project please contact Gary.
Madison Breakfast Rotary presented a check for $2200 to Independent Living Meals on Wheels Evening Program!

 
 
In the first quarter of the year, it came to the attention of one of our delivery teams, Betsy and Doug Nordstrom that the route they delivered with their Rotary Club was shorter than usual. This was due in part to a loss of funding from United Way of Dane County. 
 
With the arrival of COVID-19 more seniors than ever were requesting meals. Rotary International made some funds available to districts for immediate relief for communities. Preference was given to projects that involved Rotarians. Betsy applied for the grant, but the money was gone. As Madison Breakfast Rotarians waited to hear if the grant was coming through, most quickly wrote checks or donated through the Rotary website. 
 
At the same time, Betsy started to make cloth masks for family, friends and friends of friends…. Somewhere in the process of making and distributing about 80 masks, people started to offer to pay. She requested that $5/mask donations could be made to Meals on Wheels through the Madison Breakfast Rotary website. The outpouring has been very generous, way more than $5/mask!  
 
Meals on Wheels employs people to make meals. Volunteers deliver hot, nutritious meals to home bound senior citizens and disabled adults. Every recipient gets a daily check in with their meal. Even now, when we have to practice social distancing, volunteers ring the doorbell of a house or apartment and wait for the appreciative recipient to pick up the meal. If the person doesn’t come to the door, there is a contact person to call and finally, Independent Living is contacted if that doesn’t work. Knowing that this is often the only human contact in a person’s day makes this moment of contact as important as serving a hot nutritious meal to a homebound senior. 
 
It is still possible to donate and yes, Betsy is still making masks. Please email bnordstrom@tds.net for masks and go to www.madisonbreakfastrotary.org to donate. 
Welcome to UW-Madison’s New Director of Marching Band

Club president Betsy Nordstrom, February 5 speaker Dr. Corey Pompey, and Rhea Myers.
 
Dr. Corey Pompey addressed the club on February 3. In the introduction, Rhea Myers mentioned that Dr. Pompey went to the University of Alabama and played in the band and that his favorite instrument is the saxophone. Dr. Pompey had been the assistant band director at Pennsylvania, but most recently was at University of Nevada-Reno. Advice he received from Mike Lakrone was “Do what you know how to do.” Dave Olson, the assistant band director who has good connection with the students, has been very helpful in navigating the first season.
 
A part of the band director’s job is to get permission to use music and the rights to the music cost money. For example, the band cannot obtain a John Williams arrangement. A customized arrangement, when procured and paid for, can played for 1 to 3 years. In August, band members go to leadership camp to learn to play and march. The first week is learning how to march. The band works hard and it is a very athletic activity. Varsity band is a class and members are required to play at a certain number of sporting events.
 
Our thanks to Dr. Corey Pompey for his visit to the club and for his presentation.
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Speakers (see events below)
Gary Muldoon
Apr 28, 2025
Book Project Update
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Upcoming Events