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Meeting Highlights: May 10, 2018

Meeting Highlights: May 10, 2018

ROTARY CLUB OF COMOX MEETING NOTES
May 10, 2018

President Jo opened the meeting by thanking Past President Chris Brulotte for presiding over the club meeting last week and Richard Boyle for subbing as Sergeant at Arms.

Jo noted with sadness the passing of Courtenay Rotary Club Member and Past President, Brian Rice. She indicated that she had sent condolences on behalf of our club to President Judith of the Rotary Club of Courtenay. A man who made many contributions to the community, including to Comox Valley Hospice Society, he will be sorely missed. Sympathies also go out to any of our club members who called Brian Rice a friend.

Brian’s Celebration of Life will be held on Wednesday, May 23 at 11 am at the Sid Williams Theatre, reception immediately following at Crown Isle Resort and Golf Community.

As part of Rotary Moments from the District Training and Conference (DTAC), Tim Cowan talked about a presentation by Nancy Hughes of StoveTeam International.

StoveTeam assists local entrepreneurs in developing countries to start factories using local labor and materials to produce safe, affordable, fuel-efficient cookstoves to replace dangerous open cooking fires. Use of the cookstoves improves health and reduces air pollution. Tim mentioned that as a two-time RESTOR volunteer https://restorinternational.ca/, which organization performs corrective surgeries, this solution really spoke to him as a way of preventing suffering and the number of burns-related necessary surgeries.

Take a look at Nancy Hughes’ story of Stove Team International.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sh_gSzzyVI

Put it in your calendars:
Next year’s DTAC will be a celebration for our club as it will be the time when Maureen Fritz-Roberts will be sworn in as District Governor for her start date of July 1, 2019. You won’t want to miss that. Mo is going to be an awesome DG. AG Stu Tunheim is the 2019 DTAC Chair with the help of his Deputy, Hannah Rail. So please plan to attend. Mark your calendars now for May 9-11, 2019 in Victoria!

Breaking News!!
During the meeting, President Jo was informed that Brian Mather had been awarded Comox Valley Record Newsroom Local Hero of the Year Award at a ceremony that was taking place simultaneously with our meeting! So when Brian arrived late at the Rotary meeting because of this, we stopped the action and with a rousing standing ovation and round of applause congratulated Brian on his well deserved award for his many volunteer involvements in the Valley and in the world! Congratulations, Brian!!

The club has regretfully accepted the resignation for health reasons of Maureen Eby. Maureen has been a member since 1992! That’s a lotta years of Rotary service. Feel free to reach out to Maureen – she will be missed. Maureen, we wish you good health.

The Council on Resolutions proposal from our board to change the Rotary motto from Service Above Self to Service Beyond Self was considered at the General Meeting at Conference and was defeated. Many in the room were in support of the notion but expressed concern over the cost of rebranding. Thus, this proposed change will not go forward to Rotary International at this time. Still, we planted some seeds and started a conversation and for that, we can feel gratified.

The Ducky 500 Ticket Sales Manager Tim Cowan let club members know that tickets will be ready this coming week on time for selling tickets along the Victoria Day Long Weekend in Cumberland Parade route, which is a great way for members to sell their assigned books of tickets or for ambitious club members to turn out to sell, sell, sell!. Let Tim know if you’re in! He’ll be sending out a message with logistical details for parade morning.

In the meantime, keep signing up for those sales shifts! And many thanks to the Sales Venue Managers: Kevin Wilson, Paul Witt, Frank Kerkhoff, and Bill Verburgt! Thanks for stepping up!

Youth Service Director Cathy Snyder gave an overview of her portfolio, Julia M. Loo (so good to have Julia with us from her Leave of Absence!) gave an overview of the Youth Exchange Programs, and then one by one, Cathy introduced the young guest speakers.

She started with Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) participant Myah Erickson, Mark R. Isfeld Interact Club Executive member, who thanked the club for sending her and Moe Adachii to RYLA Tacoma this past March and explained what RYLA is all about and what she found most beneficial. Her most poignant memory was of a Keynote talk by a holocaust survivor, who revisited Europe years after the war and found his childhood wartime hiding place.

Next up was Long Term Exchange Student, Claire Brisbois from Belgium who showed us photos of her family and her country and told us highlights of her stay in Canada…her emotional ending demonstrated how sad she will be to have her time come to an end and to say goodbye to her new friends. She already has plans to get together in Europe to see her closest Exchange Student friend. We hope to see Claire again before she departs in July.

Claire’s host parents, Courtenay Rotarian Rob Wolfe and Loretta Wolfe attended the club meeting and received the thanks of the club.

Finally, McKenna Heinrich and Jordana Hadfield, Co-Presidents of Interact this year who travelled to Honduras to witness the Market Kids Program and to check on our partnering projects gave an emotional, well organized, and articulate talk about their time there. Along with Brian and Cathy, they think they have found the next project for our two clubs, which is very exciting. They made proud their parents and grandparents in the audience, their Rotary mentors Brian Mather and Cathy Snyder, and all club members present!

All of the youth presenters were impressive and clearly have had life-changing experiences this year. Well done, all members of the Youth Committee for making this possible!

By the way, the club is looking for a Youth Exchange Officer to begin next Rotary year, with lots of support from LaCosta, the present YEO. Training will be on June 9. Be in touch with Cathy Snyder or LaCosta if you are interested. For easy and complete information, log onto the Rotary District 5020 Website, Click Youth Service, Youth Exchange, Learn More, Look under Program Resources for Youth Exchange Handbook. Next Rotary year, we will have 2 Outbound and 2 Inbound students to share amongst the Comox Valley Rotary clubs. Think about it!
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Next week, please come out to support Rod McKenzie in the performance of one of his last duties as Foundation Director before he assumes the role of VP….and to bear witness to the moving presentation of Community Paul Harris Fellowship Awards to 4 deserving community members.
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News Flash!

Remember DG Spouse Laurie Schouboe Carroll‘s challenge to District Rotary Clubs to donate at least 2 books per Rotarian? Well, even with a whopping 800 books donated by our club, we didn’t out-donate Rotary Club of Cumberland Centennial, the Area 2 winner of the most books given – 1400 books! But we can be oh-so-proud of our efforts. Thank you, everyone! In the whole District, 50,000 books were donated – Laurie was thrilled.

Did you know??
We can now use our ClubRunner app to find out how to contact any member in our District by opening the app, going to the horizontal line Menu bar in the upper left corner, choosing the appropriate club from the Club Listing under “District Menu”, selecting “Members” from the menu along the bottom of the screen, and looking up the member. You can also see your attendance rate and which meetings you attended, see any stories or upcoming events. How handy is that! LOVE this app!!

Congratulations to Literacy Chair David Peat and his Committee, who raised Literacy up like a Phoenix out of the ashes this year, gaining the club a Literacy Award, which was presented at DTAC!

If you would like to read our award application and take a look back to see what an amazing Literacy Champion our club has been this year, go to the Member Area of our club portal, View Club Documents, Awards, Literacy Application 2018.

See you next week!

Leif Jason

Director of Public Image 2017-2018

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