Many of you may remember Rick Castiglione sitting in front of the camera delivering the evening news in Calgary. Rick’s biggest love is that of telling stories and he created a story about Cambodia in the early 1990s when it was still suffering the after effects of the Kmer Rouge regime. Rick just finished his teaching career at Mount Royal University where he skillfully guided students in the broadcasting program to creating compelling works of interest. Rick heard about our club’s projects in Cambodia and was eager to tell the story of Rotarians making a difference in the world.

 

The Rotary Club of Calgary Downtown, World Community Service committee hired Rick to write and produce a half hour documentary about the work of Rotary with a primary focus on international efforts. He travelled with Walter Haessle, Frank Sparks, Kurt Kowalchuk and Manon Mitchell to Cambodia in December of 2015. Rick also visited the club interviewing members of the leadership team and rounding out the story of the impact our club has on our community both locally and internationally.

 

This wonderful documentary entitled Making Change Happen will air on CTV (nationwide) sometime in the fall (either Thanksgiving or Christmas day) three times this Christmas season: December 24^th December 31^st and January 1^st at 6:30 pm. Stay tuned to CTV and watch how the people in Rotary Make Change Happen!

The Rotary Tom Jackson Stay in School Program wishes to thank the ArtTalks group for their ongoing support.  ArtTalks recently had a fundraising event where they raised $11, 835 and were able to combine this with a partial-matching grant of $5,500 from Calgary Foundation. 

 

Since 2014, the ArtTalks group have contributed $77,724, matched by Calgary Foundation to combine to $130,942. 

This has been an amazing weekend.  We had a great day yesterday buying toys, gifts, clothing and, of course, grocery gift cards.  

 

On December 10 many folks pitched in to wrap and organize the gifts.   We are looking forward to delivering gifts this week, but we all agreed that this was a great day!! 

 

I hope the whole Club can understand just how incredible this little project really is.

George