February 16, 2021 Meeting Notes

President Earl Crowe started the meeting at 8:00 am by having Ruth Dagg lead the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Milt Herman lead the club with the Invocation.

Rotary Moment

Earl continued the Rotary Moment theme of "Women in Rotary".

Earl spoke to another part of the Rotary story regarding women joining Rotary clubs as members. The first attempt to allow women in a club was in an Indian club in 1950! Further attempts resulted in several Rotary Clubs having their charters cancelled by Rotary International. Rotarians tried several methods to skirt around or change the rules, including removing references to gender in the Rotary constitution and bylaws. A California club even took Rotary to court in 1983, lost, but didn't give up. They appealed and eventually won the case in the U.S. Supreme Court in May, 1987. Rotary admitted its first woman in the U.S. later that month. In 1989, at its first meeting after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Council on Legislation voted to eliminate the requirement in the RI Constitution that membership be limited to men.

Within our Wenatchee Sunrise Rotary Club, 30% of our members are women.

Announcements

Kathleen McNalty thanked everyone's contributions for Valentine gift bags for the 16 women and 6 children at the Grace House. Personal care items, Valentine's candies/cards, gloves and socks were some of the items needed. Club members volunteered to fill ALL the bags for the women and their children. Thank you to Jackie Rector and Kathleen for organizing this!

Kathleen also mentioned Learning Well would like to come next week to share some ideas regarding a conservation project. Learning Well is a Christian school based in the Wenatchee Saddlerock Presbyterian church.

Robin DeRock announced (with a flourish) that there would be a Spring Foundation event on May 12, 2021, instead of the annual District Conference. This Zone-wide fundraiser covers 43 Districts in four countries. The cost is $110, but $100 is a donation toward your Paul Harris award. Robin is looking for a few local volunteers/champions.

Wayne Massing followed up on last week's public image meeting where club members met to discuss the club's future website. It was proposed to move to Club Runner so that two sites would not need to be maintained as well as reap an annual cost savings. This will be an 18-month transition project.

Next Monday, there will be a test hybrid meeting at 1pm. Some will be in person and some on Zoom. Tune in next Tuesday to see how it turned out! If you can't wait (my, aren't you impatient), contact Kathleen to find out how you can help make it a success.

Brags and Confessions

Jill bragged that her laparoscopic surgery resulted in no sign of cancer; hooray! She feels great! Milt matched her $5 donation for the good news.

Robin gave $10 to brag that her mentee Chloe helped her with shopping for her Grace House Valentine bag and that Chloe picked everything, so the bag turned out great! Also, the Blackhawks are in 9th place for now. She also confessed that her handrail painting project has become a handrail/molding/doors project.

Ruth donated $2 for picking her son up from Central Washington University on Friday, who then had sawdust in his eye and had to go to the emergency room, but he's ok now. Whew!

Kathleen bragged that she took her purple people eating two-door tutor car to Pybus Friday, but confessed that it should not be taken out in the snow. She was unable to make it home and had to abandon the car on the side of the road. She's hoping to get it up the hill once the snow thaws this spring, or today if they finally plow her road, whichever comes first.

PJ offered up $5 for a new snow blower attachment for his tractor. The one foot of snow that fell at his place made it the perfect gift for himself at the perfect time.

Bill found $5 to brag that he spent last week in Sun Valley. It took him 9 hours to get there...13 hours to get back. It was such great skiing, he brought back a lot of the snow on his car. He had a wonderful time.

John McD bragged that his eldest son has been happily bragging about 70 degree weather all winter at his home in San Antonio. When he called his son over the weekend, he found out he has been out of power for 2-3 days and his pool has frozen. He will need to replace a lot of equipment in the pool and landscaping. He's a good Boy Scout though and has been cooking his meals on a camp stove.

Program

Jack DeGruchy and Lockie Bracken, Rotarians of the North and Mediators Beyond Borders International members spoke about Peace. Both are Kelowna, BC Rotarians and have been working for the past year with the City of Kelowna and a coalition of public and private groups and people to build a Peace building project.

They have also become active with Mediators Beyond Borders International (MBBI). MBBI's vision is to "Build a more Peace "able" World". Their mission is to "Build local skills for peace and promote mediation worldwide. They particularly wanted to highlight some consulting initiatives and conflict assistance that MBBI has been involved with.

MBBI has a number of consulting initiatives:

• Trauma-informed Peacebuilding and Development Assistance (TIPDA)
• Environmental Conflict Management and Stakeholder Engagement
• Organizational Conflict Management
• Police-Community Crisis Rapid Response
• Workplace Conflict and Communications Problems

TIPDA Assisting with conflict includes:

• Cattle raiding among farmers and pastoralists in Kenya
• The Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone
• Peace force staff in South Sudan
• USAID in South Sudan

MBBI is a Rotary Work Group and is active all over the World. Since 2009, MBBI has been an Official Observer Organization of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change talks and the Conference of the Parties. MBBI's Climate Change team advocates for the inclusion of mediation processes as part of the climate change policy.

The two said they have learned things from their involvement with MBBI that they use in their personal and professional lives such as "loving one another even when people sometimes say or do things we don't like."

They say that Rotary needs to build alliances with all like-minded groups to focus on hotspots in the World. No one organized group has the strength and financial capacity to solve the BIG issues alone.

They started with the idea of a Peace Pole in an area park and have been encouraged to think bigger. This led them to the Peace Tower Beacon of Light. It is like a totem pole, reaching to the future. The designer is Jose Hernandez, one of the featured stories in the Netflix docuseries "Surviving Death". Look for ways to collaborate; it calls us to Peace when lit up. They believe this will be a beautiful addition in Kelowna and more may be done in the future.

They hope it will create a discussion point for others to stop and contemplate during a time where many streets, schools, and work places lack peace, they hope for this to promote positive peace. They would like people to come and sit while they contemplate Peace in their life.

It will also give people who stop to enjoy it a chance to learn more about Rotary. Their goal is to complete the Peace Tower by World Peace Day, September 21, 2021.

One of the ways they are fundraising is through their hour4our website. Where people are asked to "Honor the past, Do good today for the future of our children". There they ask for a donation of one hour of your income.

Earl thanked Jack and Lockie for their presentation, and said the club would donate a children's library book in their name to the local library.

Next week, JC Baldwin, Chelan Douglas Regional Port Authority commissioner will be our keynote speaker.

President Earl closed the meeting with a mention to keep Jim Huffman in your thoughts and encouraged members to make time to reach out to Jim.

Finally, an inspirational quote from Robert Collier, 'Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.' Meeting adjourned at 8 am.

ROTARY POST NOTE:
Did you know that The Rotary Foundation has spent over $3 billion on programs and projects to support humanitarian efforts and scholarships through its 100+ year history?