President Sofie Ameloot welcomed everyone to the Centerville Rotary Club and led reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. PDG Harvey Smith provided the prayer and then the Club sang God Bless America.

 

Quote of the Day: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."   Steve Jobs

 

Thanks to today’s greeter, Dale Berry.

 

Welcome to today’s guests: Liz Fultz, Director of the Washington-Centerville Public Library, guest of Bill Menker; Virginia Rodriguez and Leticia Vargas from El Puente.

 

President Ameloot presented a $1,000 check to the Washington-Centerville Public Library for purchase of books for the Rotary book donation program.

 

 

Bill Menker gave the background on book donation program, noting it covers the areas of Rotary focus. The donated books have a special book plate that honors the speaker and notes it is part of the Rotary book collection. Each speaker takes time to choose a meaningful book.The program benefits our community through literacy and all areas of focus and it raises our visibility in the community.

 

The book plate includes the club’s web address. When people do an online catalogue search for one of our donated books, they will see a list below of the Centerville Rotary collection and with a click, they can see a full list of the books in the collection. The books cover all ages, fiction, and non-fiction. So far there are 12 books in the collection.

 

 

 

 

 

Virginia Rodriguez noted El Puente means The Bridge. Their main focus is education through an after school program for 1-6th graders. She noted their copier was failing, and mentioned it to Sofie on a bike ride. Sofie made it happen!

 

They also give resources to parents, and hold monthly meetings by grades sharing how the parents can assist their children. They will hose a health clinic next week, providing free vaccines and eye exams. Virginia noted the importance of creating partnerships.

 

 

President Ameloot shared the club has donated 517 hours of service so far this year, with a majority of that at the Pancake Breakfast.

 

 

Our club membership is currently at 66 members. We gained two and lost two since the start of the Rotary year. District 6670 is offering a FREE Zoom program next Thursday on tips for increasing membership. Sofie encouraged all to register for the program.

 

Here are the details....

Thursday, November 14

6:30 - 8:00 PM

Via zoom

Cost: $0

 

The window in DACdb is ready for your registration here: https://rotarydistrict6670.org/

 

Who will you hear from during the evening?

 

Carol Hughes - The Rotary Action Plan and Growing Membership

3 Young and Newer Club Members - Talking about why they reached out to join Rotary and Using the Learning resources for personal growth in Rotary

Troy Patton - What did the Springboro Rotary Club do to grow their club and get into the Rotarian Magazine?

Rotaract - How to connect with your local college to start a Rotaract club

How do we start a Companion Club and grow our Rotary membership? - Patrick Langano (Rotary International)

 

For Operation Warm this year, we raised $13,356 which purchased 636 coats.

 

Lisa Goris May announced the dictionaries are here. Volunteers are needed next week Dec 14, to label the books. We'll head to Centerville Schools Board office immediately after the noon meeting. A sign up sheet is available to deliver books to the schools. Thanks to Jackie D’Aurora for organizing.

 

Upcoming service opportunities include:

11/19, 10 am-1 pm - Hannah’s Treasure Chest

11/19,  6-8:30 pm BOGG Ministry will be passing out food at Chevy Chase

Adopt a Family program - children’s names are available to adopt. Gifts need to be dropped off on December 5.

Dec 8 Amazon Wish List will be open for Shoes for the Shoeless. We will make sock donations.

 

Has worked with the Centerville-Washington Park District to donate trees for Grant and Village South Parks and new signage for the Bill Yeck Park seed nursery.

 

Frank Perez announced that with work commitments, some are not able to make the weekly lunch meetings. The Coffee Club provides another opportunity for Rotary connections. It will meet the 1st Tuesday of the month, the first 1/2 hour for networking and then Rotary announcements. The first meeting will be next Tuesday, Nov 12 at ContempoRoast, 967 South Main Street. (Delayed one week because of the election.)

 

A new Business Application is now available on the website under the Prospective Members page. There are three types of Business memberships available:

Individual

Sole Proprietor

Corporate

 

 

 

Kelly McDonald explained a new Nonprofit Leader Membership approved by the Board. The idea is to introduce new people to Rotary, from organizations we interact with. Someone in the club nominates someone who is the Executive Director of a non-profit. Invite at no charge to them.

 

 

 

Sofie sent an email out following the meeting for the club to vote on the new membership categories. Please respond to her email, if you haven’t already.

 

Rotary Holiday party 12/12, 6:30 pm at Yankee Trace. Sit down dinner and live music. Members will be billed for their regular lunch but no charge for their guest. RSVP to Crissy.

 

Rotary Women Connect - all are invited to attend tonight.

 

Brick Laying Ceremony honoring Sally Beals, Don Gerhardt & Joyce Young was well attended and a good remembrance.

 

Congratulations to Frank Perez for achieving Paul Harris Fellowship +5.

 

Kelly is leading a working group to explore ways to broaden the current Educational Foundation. He is seeking pro bono legal help to develop the documents, and the committee hopes to be done by early next year. This will help broaden our ability to gather donations - for those organizations who can only donate to non-profit causes.

 

Thanks to Ron Hollenbeck, Chuck King, Boyd Preston, and Frank Perez for their help researching this idea.

 

Uriah Anderson said the letters for the Paul Harris Fellow club match have been mailed out for those who didn’t receive them already. If you want to give online but are having difficulty, he can help. If you haven’t paid for your pancake tickets yet, please pay so we can finalize the financial report and present it to the club next week.

 

Happy Birthday to the November birthdays:

Crissy Allums

Ray Merz

Brad Huffman

 

Congrats to the November Wedding Anniversaries:

Pat Beckel & Hao Cai

 

Congrats to the November Join Date Anniversaries:

Doug Bockrath - 8 years

Tyler Roark - 1 year

Raj Grandi - 10 years

Ram Nunna - 12 years

 

Brian Hayes was our Sergeant at Arms.

 

Happy Bucks were generously given for: