Meeting of August 15, 2019
We had a number guests today, including District Governor Andy and his wife Pam, two Marshwood RYLA students (Ned Whitesell and Avery Waddell), and a prospective new member and mother of our Berwick Academy Interact Advisor (Mary Onken).
There were lots of announcements, including 1) last chance for sign-up as a volunteer at the Pumpkinman Triathlons in early September, 2) the New Voices club had a district event on August 3rd, 3) there will be a Rotary Day at the Seadogs late in August, 3) Eliot Festival Day on the last Saturday in September would like our presence there, 4) Board meeting is on Monday, August 19th, 4) the Rockwell print was FINALLY presented at the South Berwick Police Department, 5) there was going to be a Lanternfest clean-up following the meeting, 6) there is a blood drive coming soon to Kittery, 6) Interact's Evita fundraiser still had some tickets left for Thursday and Friday, 7) we plan to have our Rotary After Hours this month as a night seeing The Sunshine Boys (free to us) at the Star Theatre in Kittery on August 29th and maybe go to that Kittery brewery beforehand, and 8) the annual district conference is going to be in EARLY OCTOBER this year and each club needs to have a display of what it does (Southern Maine University).
Then Ned Whitesell and Avery Waddell, 2 of the 6 students we sent to RYLA, described briefly their experience there this summer.
Finally, DG Andy talked about his Rotary journey to this point and what we can look forward to this year. He is from the Kittery club. His eyes were opened when he worked on a project in Guatemala. This was followed by a Cuba trip to bring medical supplies and water purification systems. He firmly believes that Rotary changes the world. He touched upon the subjects of polio eradication, growing Rotary membership, the streamlined early (October 5th) district conference where Jeffrey Cadouret (sp?) will be the speaker, and he encouraged us to donate more to Rotary Foundation and to Polio Plus in particular since this is the last year of the Gates Foundation matching the donations. He looks forward to everyone thinking outside the box and making Rotary as vibrant as it can be.
Board Meeting of August 19th
We discussed 2 global grants we wish to work on. We brainstormed ideas for our participation at the Eliot Festival Day. We decided that if the Interact NYC trip is not a UN trip that promotes Rotary then we wlll not be sending any Interact students to that this coming November. We talked a little about other activities for the year, including a community fundraising event for a local cause, honoring another Citizen of the Year, how to improve our breakfast food service by helping the new cook better, and we voted to go ahead with the After Hours meeting being The Sunshine Boys at the Kittery Star Theatre.
See you all on Thursday!