January 25, 2023 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Guests: Dave Gosselin, Willamantic CT; Cindy Bemis, Wentworth/Warren
Tony was absent today so no Trivia
50/50 was won by Ken Evans. Braden won the chance to draw for the ace of spades but he drew another card and so the game goes on.
Today’s meeting is a club forum. Interact students had been scheduled to speak to us today but they cancelled because of midterms. We will reschedule them at a later date.
Braden made an announcement about Paul Harris fellows. Ken Evans received a pin with a ruby,, so he is Paul Harris +7. Mike received a pin with 3 rubies some is Paul Harris level +9. Congratulations and thanks to both.
Page 26 of this month’s issue of the Rotarian includes an article on Alex, Steve, and Susan’s work in Ukraine. 800,000 paper copies of the magazine are going out and reach a total of 1.3 million Rotarians worldwide, so this is excellent publicity.
Steve spoke about the next steps for the Ukraine project. We are aiming for $10 million total so we can continue to help our friends in Poland and Ukraine. Marybeth Bentwood and Mike Heinrich are doing excellent work in social media to promote the project. We are reaching out to other Rotary clubs for their support. The group went to Lyndonville last week and met with members of that club, as well as folks from the St. Johnsbury club, to give a presentation on our effort in Ukraine. The event was well publicized; the Caledonia Record and the Burlington ABC Station covered the event. The clubs were very receptive to us. We had hoped to have a speaking slot at the upcoming district conference, but the slots are all filled. We can have a table at the conference, as well as at the training session in April 1 in Lyndonville. Susan will be speaking at New London and Holderness schools in next week. We did get a call from Plymouth MA Rotarian who was disappointed with the way RI handled Ukraine donations so he was excited to hear about our project
In other publicity efforts, the team also spoke to the Arne Arneson show on Pacific radio. This program has its biggest audience in Houston. On the 11th there will be a fundraiser concert at the Meredith Congregational church (Saturday during the ice fishing derby). The main things we are supplying to Ukraine are food, warmth (generators, sleeping bags), and some solar lights and we are relying on our Polish partner to help determine what is really needed.
Note upcoming district events: PETS March 10-11, District Conference April 28-30.
The Northeast styrofoam committee met after our board meeting last week. We are on hold until the collection bags arrive in Gilford. Once they come in, we will need to schedule something about 6 weeks out to give us time to publicize the event.
Braden noted that next week’s meeting will be led by Beth and Mike will lead and it will be interactive. On 2/15 we have our local speech contest, so we will need to volunteers to be judges and timers for this. On March 18 we will host the regional round with the Bristol and Lincoln contestants coming here.
Rabies clinic will be held on March 4,1-2 pm at the Police Department. Charge will be $10 (Dr Coty donates everything so this is a good fundraiser for us). We will have posters available to distribute soon. We will need tables and 10 chairs (Alex can provide these) as well as a trash can for poop. We will need about 10 people to help.
The scholarship committee will meet at end of March/early April. We get scholarship apps from PRHS (40-60) and judges whittle it down to 8 or 10 students. There will also be a separate committee for the technical education grants. We need to get working on this program soon; last year we didn’t start trying to contact students until after the school year had ended, and it was hard to reach the students. As a result we were only able to give out one of the planned five grant.
Braden will have super bowl squares next week. Half of the proceeds go to the club, so if you sell tickets to non-Rotarians you need to be sure that they understand this.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary