Welcome to spring and the last quarter of the Rotary year 2012-13. 

This is a very busy time for clubs and members as we work to complete our goals for the year and look forward to the next year of Rotary.   In just a couple of weeks we will celebrate Rotarians at Work Day, Sunday, April 21st.  How will your club participate?  How will you tell the community about your efforts?  Twitter?  Facebook?  Website?  Local Media?  Make sure you tell the story of your clubs participation in your community! 

Have you registered for the District Conference to be held in Colville, Washington? 

This is going to be an action packed day and half of Rotary and fellowship.  If you have not registered yet, just click on  June 6-8 on the calendar to the left and it will take you directly to the registration site.  We are looking forward to you coming to Colville.  

The Coeur d’Alene Sunrise Club held its raffle drawing for the quilt made in Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa and one of the tickets purchased at the district assembly was the winning ticket!  Carol Caroll is the proud owner of a beautiful quilt made at the Mzansi Zulu Quilt Centre.  http://www.quiltsafaris.com/mzansizuluquiltcentre.html

     A little background:  Our club has been supporting this quilt center that was established by two former members of the Hilton & Howick Rotary Club.  The center teaches Zulu ladies and men to quilt for the craft market.  The area where they live is desperately poor and the high incidence of HIV/AIDS is awful.  Our club partnered with the Hilton & Howick club to establish a pre-school for AIDS orphans seven years ago.  It is still going strong.

     The quilt center founders, Rick & Elisabeth Baratta, have moved back to the US but are still involved with the quilting program.  The Sunrise club has been selling these unique quilts and sending the money back to the quilters for seven years.  Last year they gifted a quilt to our club as a thank you for our support.  We decided to raffle the quilt for PolioPlus.

     Thank you for helping us raise $2000 for PolioPlus!

In February 2R013, District Governor Michelle Lee and her husband Dirk were joined by Greg and Kristie Ehman of Golden, BC and Frank and Robyn Vanden Broek of Cranbrook, BC to take part in the first every Rotary Friendship Exchange to Pakistan.  A Rotary Friendship Exchange in an incredible opportunity for Rotarians and their spouses to experience, first-hand, the hospitality and culture of another country.  An RFE is an incredible way to develop friends, bridge cultures and create lasting memories. 

The RFE to Pakistan was exceptional.  The warmth and hospitality of the Pakistan people was truly heart-warming.  The guests were treated to a number of sites, projects and club meetings, as well as the incredible opportunity to take part in numerous polio campaigns.  It was truly inspiring to see all the work that was being done by Rotary in Pakistan to put an end to polio forever.  It was a great message that we could bring back to our clubs and to remind our members that the fight against polio is close, but we must not stop short of the finish line.  

The team also worked to put together a video for the Rotary Friendship Exchange video contest that highlights our trip and our experiences.  We have just heard that the video has been named a finalist with final judging to be completed by mid-April.  The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHMWmBZrSYc

 If you are interested in hearing more about the opportunity to take part in a Rotary Friendship Exchange, please contact your Club or your District Representatives (Greg Ehman, Linda Krahn, Sheila Hart, Scott Owen and Andy Doman)

PDG Ron Ross offers your club this opportunity to make a difference in a library in Honduras.  READ ON:

There is a large public school, built in 1948 in downtown Tegucigalpa, that is called The United States School, that has a library called the Abraham Lincoln Library, that is sadly in need of books. I have attached a picture of the front of the school, and the sign in front of the library. Mike Balahura and I met with the Principal, Librarian and Vice Principal.

I’m looking for a Rotary Club in the US, that will take on the project, working with Dr. Roberto Tinoco of the Rotary Club of Tegucigalpa, that will take this on as an International Project. It probably fits a District Matching Grant, or Community Grant. It won’t fly as a Global Grant (I don’t think) because TRF seems totally opposed to buying “stuff”. It could be done in stages. They need books, in both Spanish and English.

Attached are pictures of typical books. Most are dated 1980, and as you can see, are pretty dog eared with tape on the tape, to hold them together. This is an inner city school, with many of our Market Children in attendance, so they don’t have I-Phones, I-Pads, Kimbles,  Nooks, and other ways to get reading materials. They need books, preferably new books in Spanish. The government has recently decreed that English should be taught starting in grade 1, but as yet, there are few students who can read English, but a few English Books would be helpful. They could be rejects from libraries in the US or Canada.

I know that the CDA clubs participated in the Guatemala Book Project, so I wondered if they might be interested in this one. It seems a shame that “Abe’s Library” should be in such sad shape, with no decent books, thus no readers.

INTERESTED??  Contact Karen Cook at   [email protected]  for more information

Rotarians of District 4250 in Honduras and of District 5080 in Canada combined forces with the Program “Alternativas  y Opportunidades”, to hand out scholarships to disadvantaged/poor students who live in the communities around the municipal dump, and other locations in the markets of Tegucugalpa and Camayaguela.

This successful activity, which has been carried out over two decades, one of the many social projects undertaken by Rotarians each year to help Honduran youngsters, takes place just prior to the beginning of the school year. 

“On this day in 2013 three clubs are participating:  the Tegucigalpa Rotary Club, the Rotary Club of Real Minas, and the Rotary club of San Miguel de Heredia;  I should also mention that we are dependent upon the support of Canadian Rotarians who have come to our country to hand out the scholarships and take photographs of the recipients to give to their international sponsors,” explained Augusto Mendoza of the Rotary Club of San Miguel de Heredia.

The Deer Park Rotary Club sent seventeen people to include ten members of the Springdale Interact Club to Latacunga Ecuador in August of 2012. The students from Mary Walker High School and adult sponsors dug trenches for water lines, scraped and painted walls in day care centers and contributed 3 new laptop computers and a printer for the centers administration staff. The tap water in Ecuador is polluted with minerals from the country’s 63 volcanoes.

The club donated $6000 to purchase two water purification units to provide clean water to the little children who have been drinking soda pop. Students became citizens of the world from this experience and will carry the memory of this service trip for the rest of their lives. They now know that they can change lives. The magic of Rotary makes this experience possible.

The HELP Honduras Society is a group of Rotarians located in British Columbia.

They operate a literacy and education program in Honduras, the largest component of which is the Tegucigalpa Market Children Program. The Public School System in Honduras is free, but you can’t go if you don’t have a uniform, shoes, books and school supplies. The Hondurans (mostly single mothers) who sell in the public markets could not afford to buy all those things so they did not send their kids to school. If they could afford to send one, it would be the oldest boy. The others worked in the markets or elsewhere, and without any education, many gravitated to petty crime, prostitution, drugs and extortion.

Mike Dalessi's career as a stock broker began in Bend, Oregon.  In 1989 he was asked to join a Rotary club that was just being chartered. Being a breakfast club, this interfered with his office duties at AG Edwards and after a year, he dropped his membership. 

However, in 1995 Smith Barney hired Mike for a management position in the Juneau, Alaska office and there he was again asked to join Rotary. This time Mike began to see the power of what Rotary can do. He realized that ordinary people who come together with one common cause could do extraordinary things. When he was promoted to manage both the Juneau and Anchorage offices he transferred to the Anchorage club. There he was asked to be the International Chair. 

Congratulations to the latest Clubs to achieve Premier Club Status under the Ignite Membership Program. TheClub  Couer d‘Alene Evening was the 4^th in our district to qualify and I would like to congratulate Membership Chair Terry McHugh and all club members for this achievement. Also achieving Premier Status was the Kimberley Rotary Club under Membership Chair Graham Mann.

That makes 5 clubs in District 5080 that have achieved Premier Status,  Pasco Kennewick, Beaver Valley, Nelson Daybreak, and the two above.  These Clubs have followed the best practices outlined in the Ignite Program on a consistent basis, and in doing so have added new members and engaged their existing members. Membership is everyone’s responsibility, and needs to be worked at 12 months of the year.

I encourage all Clubs to familiarize themselves with the Ignite Program. If you have questions or concerns, please contact me. Those Districts that have truly embraced the Ignite program are seeing gains in membership. In our district, unfortunately we have many Clubs that are not using the Ignite Program. Our membership in the District has dropped by 7 since the beginning of the Rotary year. It would be nice if we could stop this slide and start seeing some gains in our membership numbers.

Frank Vanden Broek
District 5080
Ignite Program

[email protected]

250-421-1523

Beaver Valley Rotary
Nelson Daybreak Rotary
Pasco Kennewick Rotary
Coeur d'Alene Evening Rotary
Kimberley Rotary