Welcome to our weekly bulletin. We are still making adjustments and like to hear from you, how we can make it more informative and fun.
Please contact John for your comments, inquiries or future bulletin item suggestions.
Thursday's Meeting
Several guests braved the heat and fire haze to attend today’s meeting and helped make it a fun/informative one. Pres Jeff introduced Lional (Oliver Cronicle) and Jean Jacobsen, Mike Watkins, Barry Reid, Joyce Erickson and Tahira Saeed from the Penticton Sunrise Rotary Club.
Pres Jeff commended the members who participated in serving dinner to the migrant workers on Saturday at the Baptist Church….evidently it was fun and worthy of supporting again. He also shared a letter of thanks from the recipient of our Club high school scholarship, Sarah Smiley. Two excellent community contributions!
Tahira was introduced again as our guest speaker and she proceeded to inform and entertain us all in her capacity of Executive Director of SOICS (South Okanagan Immigrant and Community Services). Tahira was born in Pakistan but actually immigrated to Canada from the US, so well qualified for this role. SOICS is a non-profit organization providing free services to immigrants, temporary foreign workers, international students and refugees to a large area in the S. Okanagan from a head office in Penticton and a branch office in Oliver. They are funded primarily by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. She has a staff of 16, speaking 9 languages, delivering an impressive range of services – I believe she said they annually serve over 1500 clients coming from over 80 different countries. My mind boggled at the paperwork that must be involved, such as rules/regulations, cultural diversities and the training they provide. Check out their website at www.soics.ca to learn more about the impressive range of services they provide and the difficulties they face.
Tahira also spoke briefly about International projects the Sunrise Club is working on in Bangladesh. I understood two award-winning projects in villages needing sanitation and income generation (sewing machines and cattle) are completed and they are moving ahead on another two. Impressive projects in addition to a very impressive speaker.
Barry Reid, a PP of the Sunrise Club, shared with us three fundraising events that they are hosting and invited our participation. The first was the 23rd antique car show on August 4th at Rotary Park on Okanagan Lake; the second was the 35thannual Sandcastle competition at Skaha beach on August 9th; and the 3rd a Scotch Tasting evening on November 3rd at the Penticton Golf club. Entrants are welcome at all three or just come to watch the cars and sandcastles.
The 50/50 ticket was drawn for Barry Reid and he promptly donated the $35 to Rotary Foundation….good lad!
Next week's Meeting
will be a business meeting with the focus on the upcoming LOBT.
Lobster on the Beach Ticket are available
Since the announcement on Facebook indicating that tickets are now available, we already received several inquiries.
Please contact Judy at judymillerbennett@hotmail.com or phone at 250 485 8876 for tickets.
Please share the posts with all your friends.