There were 27 members present with President Leske presiding. Representing the WCH was Nancy Forster. Our guests were our District Governor, Julie Clark, and our Assistant District Governor, Mary Bak. Julie proceeded to induct our new Club member, Crystal Leroy. Julie encouraged Crystal to “talk up” Rotary to her friends and contacts and invite them to our meetings and possibly our membership.
ANNOUNCMENTS: Bill reminded us of the Rotary One Summit scheduled at Harper College on October 20 with breakfast being served at 7:30 and the meeting going from 8:30- noon. This is an opportunity for any Rotarian to attend and learn more about the organization. Bill also mentioned Rotary’s World Polio Day scheduled for October 24, plans for which will be discussed at our Oct. 18th meeting. October 27th is “Make a Difference Day” at the Indian Hill train station from 9:00 AM to noon where volunteers will organize and package donated materials to be given to 15 charities—volunteers can sign up at our next Rotary meeting. Rich also mentioned that he had Rotary District Directories available to all members upon request.
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Rich Lalley called Joe Nash up to the podium to thank him for all the work he and his committee did on last Friday’s Rotary benefit at the Kenilworth Club where approximately 160 attendees partied and raised over $26,000 to be used to purchase winter coats for needy children in the Chicago area. These coats will be distributed from 4 Chicago City libraries during November and Rotarians are invited and encouraged to attend one of these presentations to get a full appreciation of what these coats mean to the kids. Rich proceeded to make a donation to the Rotary International Foundation in Joe’s honor which made Joe a Paul Harris Fellow.HAPPY BUCKS: Patti donated in appreciation of about 100 members of her Church, Winnetka Congregational, packaging 21,000 meals recently to provide the Kids Against Hunger program. Tony donated in recognition of our new member, Crystal Leroy, and he offered to sponsor her as a Paul Harris Fellow if she brings in a new Rotary member within the next year. Mary Komlofske from the WYO donated due to a four-fold increase in kids signing up to attend the upcoming WHO Halloween party. Mary also appreciated the generosity of the WCH in giving back to the WYO $30 for each ticket it sells to the Winnetka Antiques & Modernism Preview Party scheduled for November 1, such money to be used for WYO youth programming. Bob Baker donated in honor of his Father who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and Bob was able to visit this area on his recent trip to Germany.
DIG N GRIN: In anticipation of the coming holiday season, Eric Birkenstein read letters written by kids to Santa Claus.
SPEAKER JULIE CLARK, DISTRICT GOVERNOR: A detailed bio of Julie was included in our October 11 Notice. She started her presentation by reading the new vision statement from Rotary, which is: “We see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change—across the globe, in our communities and in our nation.” Julie has been a long time member of the Schaumburg-Hoffman Estates Rotary and explained how she was losing interest in attending weekly meetings for about the first year of her membership. But when she was asked to head up a committee to publicize the benefits/advantages of Rotary she became enthused about the organization to the extent that, after spending time in her marketing career and experiencing some health problems, she started doing training programs for Rotary. After doing these programs for 5 years or so she decided to accept the invitation to be District Governor. She emphasized that Rotary offers all members the opportunity to be active and develop their skills in all sorts of areas. That is the object of the Rotary One Summit scheduled for October 20 at Harper College. All the Rotary clubs in the District pay for this educational opportunity and it gives everyone the chance to learn how they can more effectively communicate the value of Rotary. It is a challenge to get new members these days because our young professionals want to do service rather than spend a lot of time in meetings. That is why the Winnetka/Northfield Rotary should appeal to these young people, because of our many service projects. She encouraged our members to attend a Rotary International Convention for knowledge and inspiration. The next one is scheduled for Hamburg, Germany in June of 2019 and in 2020 it will be in Hawaii.
In answer to questions from the audience, Julie said that Rotary’s overall membership has stayed fairly stable at 1.2 million. North American membership is down but International membership is on the increase. She also reported that more “inbound global grants” are being given to local Clubs. Our District has 13 of these grants and efforts are being made to expand such grants to all 28 Districts. An example of work done by these grants is in her home Club they have worked with Harper College to develop a training/education/mentoring program for middle age and older people who want to get back into the work force and/or improve their employment positions. When asked about completion of the Rotary polio project, she said that a few cases have been reported in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Algeria and it will take at least 3 years of zero cases in the world to end Rotary’s initiative. She also said that Rotary was very concerned about the climate change issue but that there is no plan at this time to replace the polio initiative with a climate change program. Julie then gave our Club the new Rotary banner entitled “Be the Inspiration” and explained its format and colors and that it is Rotary’s new motto.