We didn’t have a regular Rotary meeting since this was the meeting where we prepared about  a 100 bags of  food for the Good News Partners organization to help them celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.  Moha brought a guest, Professor Rives Collins, who worked especially diligently at the food packing.

 

There  was a short Rotary Club Meeting with our usual Little Honeycomb luncheon served afterwards. Then Barb explained how the 16 Rotarians present  were going to distribute about $3000 worth of essential food goods that had been purchased earlier by our members Bob Baker, Barb Tubekis, Patti VanCleave and Moha Bouacha at Costco and Jewel with the $3000 raised by our Rotary Club members for this event and that these 4 Rotarians, along with Amy and Heidi, had spent an hour that snowy morning bringing all that food into the WCH and piling it neatly on several tables. The 100 bags of these essential food goods will be distributed to unhoused individuals and families in the Rogers Park neighborhood during the Thanksgiving holiday. This is a program our Club has participated in for several years, initially through Barb Tubekis at The Volunteer Center, who started this collaboration in 2015.  The Good News Partner’s success is to help the unhoused get on their feet, find employment or GED in the case of the young women and their babies in their New Life Shelter.  There are over 60 families who have been able to pull themselves out of homelessness by utilizing the GNP services and have managed to purchase their own condominiums or pay their own rent in more comfortable space.  

 

   But the big question at our Rotary meeting was how were 100 bags of foodstuffs going to get from the WCH tables into the  minivans being furnished and driven by Bob, Barb, Patti, Moha, and Ken Drummet with only 16 or so Rotarians acting as “material handlers” and whose average age was probably somewhere between 75 and 85!  Somehow the Rotarians succeeded in working together in using carts and shopping bags and “brute strength” to get everything out to our mini van drivers who then successfully got their cargo delivered to the Good News Partners’ distribution area.

     

   All this effort was rewarded  when Rotarian Bill Leske, senior officer at Byline Bank, a full service commercial bank  based in Chicago with offices located in Wilmette, Evanston and Glenview, announced  that the Byline Bank was donating $1000 towards the cost of this very important and timely Rotarian project.

 

   Also special thanks to Heidi Sibert who on her own volition purchased  a variety of 100 special breakfast treats in ziplock which provide each recipient with a large reusable bag that holds a week’s worth of groceries and helps tide them through the week following Thanksgiving.

 

   Many thanks to all those Rotarians who helped with this very important project that will truly provide a Happy Thanksgiving to those who have to rely on the good efforts of GNP.