The Westerner for October 22, 2012
Meeting: chair, Rob Dunseith; music, Jerome; grace, Don
Guests: Hank Hendricks, Rotary Club of Edmonton South; Cathie Graves-Evans, spouse of Duane
Condolences: both Dan Graham and Danny Chau lost their mothers in the last week; all Club members are sorry for their loss. Bert Andrews fell and broke his leg - he is in ward 3S2 of the University of Alberta Hospital - good luck on recovery, Bert
President's Travels: Rob mentioned a good trip to Scotland and, even, admitted to trying some of the local brew - no specific brand mentioned.
395 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron: former member of our club, Ben Turner, is talking to the squadron about New Generations Rotary Membership on October 23. Kieran will attend as well to start the membership process if any of the older air cadets want to join our Rotary club. Thank you Kieran.
Cosmopolitan Music Remembrance Day Concert: call Jim Spalding if you want tickets for November 4; 7:30 p m
50/50: Hank Hendricks and Mike Ryan did not match cards, $105 carried over
Finemaster: Bill Buckham fined Rob Dunseith for too much fun in Scotland, Duane for filling in so well as meeting chair, fines if you watched football this weekend, fines if you are going south this winter, and Jim Spalding for not giving enough time to Bill to prepare for finemaster duties (editor thinks Bill had too much time - many fines )
Gift Cards: see Brian to obtain Safeway or Sobeys or SaveOn cards for your own use or for gifts (Christmas is rapidly approaching) Last week, Chris, Rudy, Mike Henry and Dave bought $2,900 worth of cards, which resulted in a $232 donation to our Club. Thanks guys.
McCauley Park Rink Project - There is now a second round of voting happening, so please go to http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf13413 to vote for our project to have a chance at winning a big cash prize. You can vote every day, and we need everyone to vote every day if we want a chance at winning.
Guest Speaker: Duane introduced his wife, Cathie, as she was one of two ladies that visited Belize this summer to participate in the annual Belize Summer Education Program. The other lady was Wendy Mitchell who attended with her son. Cathie is a speech language pathologist who works with teachers in Edmonton to help students with speech problems. Wendy is one of the teachers that Cathie has supported and works with many students who have such troubles.
On a previous visit, Cathie met Wanda, a Belizian Rotarian, who mentioned the large number of students that had various learning problems. They had tried to implement the Summer Education Program on their own but found it was difficult to get the students to keep reading for 2-1/2 hours per day. Cathie and Wendy decided to go down to try and help.
This year the Placentia Rotarians wanted a video made of the Seine Bight Summer School. This video was shown to our club as Cathie and Duane had just finished editing the production. Duane will take a copy with him to Placentia this November. The video is a fitting tribute to this joint Edmonton West/Placentia project. 30 students meet each morning to work on reading skills. Rotarians provide a snack to start and then read to students. In addition, our club funds a scholarship program that allows Seine Bight students to attend high school in Independence, Belize. Until this scholarship program was developed, no Seine Bight students had attended high school. Part of the program is for the scholarship students to contribute a certain number of community volunteer hours and the summer teaching session is the target of getting these hours performed. The scholarship students have done very well and plan to take over this program entirely on their own in a year or two. Because the scholarships have worked so well and are sought out by most of the Seine Bight elementary students, our club is increasing our monetory donation this year. Currently, 5 students particpate in receipt of scholarship funds. There is an extensive process to decide who receives the monies. It is not exculsively based on school grades. Rotarians mentor the scholarship winners and provide tutors if needed.
Wendy determines each student's ability to read and each student is asked to keep a daily journal. Help is provided to help them prepare it and to improve their reading skill level. Students were asked to incorporate last year's Rotary International motto "Peace for Service" into their journal writing. Many of their efforts were read by the individual child as part of the video. In 2013, Placentia Rotarians plan to expand the Summer Education Program to Placentia. They also plan to have the scholarship students work more on their own in an attempt provide the emphasis to take the program over.
Cathie was thanked by Fred Kraft. Cathie's dedication to our club's project is very much appreciated.