Luncheon January 7,2016

 

Pres Marieze introduced 2 guests of Gail, Benjamin Guth and Jeniffer Bussman,  Eva Duguid (current host mom of Camille), Marilyn from the Kamloops West Club and our guest speaker PDG Roger Perry. 

Roger is the Rotary Foundation Chair for District 5060. At the best of times, anyone charged with trying to make Foundation sound scintillating is doomed.  First of all,  you are asking for more money from each of us annually and then you have to describe where it all goes, which apparently is a bottomless pit of acronyms! But Roger did a very credible job, even if he had to share the news that beginning in 2016, only 95% of donations will go to Foundation and 5% will need to be allocated to operating expenses. 

In the 2013-14 Rotary year, some $400m was raised in our District for Foundation. That money goes into trust until 2016-17, earning interest for the 3 years. 50% of that will then go to the World Fund (Global Grants, scholarships etc) and 50% will go to District Designated Funds ( mostly local and international projects). We can access these funds for qualified projects as we have done in the past and plan to do again this year with the South African project. The real advantage lies in the various grants and matching funds that can conceivably start with $10m of our club money and grow to $65m from Rotary funding plus Canadian Govt matching funds (6.5 : 1). But it all starts with EREY...every Rotarian, every year. There is no minimum amount but all Rotarians are asked to donate something to Foundation...this is how we fund all the good that Rotary does around the world.  There are lots of easy ways to given and Jim King, our Club Foundation Chair can show you how easy it is!

 

Over lunch, we had an interesting presentation from Benjamin Guth, Program Manager for a Toronto employment company, Mobilize. Their mission is to provide Canadian sourced workers between 18-30 on a rotational placement basis to employers in the tourism, hospitality and food services businesses. They provide the recruitment, payroll and admin components of the hire but not the housing. This is a fairly new approach replacing a formerly internationally sourced workforce with a Canadian one. They placed some 200 workers in their first year and are expecting significant growth this year...they are a preferred vendor partner with TOTA (Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association). A neat talk and a worthy idea.

 

Next weeks speaker is Lee Chic, Local Cordinator for SOBC (Special Olympics BC).

 

Pres Marieze is off today to S. Africa on holiday and while there will investigate the international project for the Club....safe travels! PE Karen will step in to run the next 3 meetings.

 

Good meeting!