President Sofie Ameloot welcomed everyone to the Centerville Rotary Club and led reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. PDG Harvey Smith provided the prayer.
Brad Thorp led singing of God Bless America.
Quote of the day provided by Don Overly: “Sometimes it takes only one act of kindness and caring to change a person's life." Jackie Chan (Hong Kong actor)
President Ameloot presented pins to Brad Thorp who will be our next Education Foundation Chair and Kristin Hutton, our new Membership Chair. Kelly McDonald is the Interim Chair of the Education Foundation for the next couple of months.
Kelly McDonald updated on the plans to broaden the Education Foundation to a Community Foundation, while still keeping the scholarships in a separate fund. He has lined up free legal counsel to assist with the by-laws, and other governance documents. He anticipates that by the Golf Outing, we should be fully prepared to take in foundation donations. Thanks to Boyd Preston, Frank Perez, Ron Hollenbeck, Chuck King, and Kelly who have been working on this.
Announcements:
- Thanks to Arnie Biondo and Pat Turnbull for greeting today.
- We had a great Christmas party. It was nice to see everyone and there was lots of good food & fellowship.
- We found a family for Enzyme. Dee Snow who is also a potential Rotarian, was excited to bring her in as her daughter just finished a short-term exchange with another club. We still need a host family for mid-March to mid-June so ask your friends and neighbors!
- Lisa Goris May, Ron Hollenbeck, Chuck King, Kelly McDonald, and Sofie delivered a check to Hannah’s Treasure’s Chest before the holidays. While on a tour of the new facility, Deanna mentioned the need for dental kits. Kelly then had 7,000 toothbrushes donated to them. Deanna has also applied for a non-profit Rotary membership.
- Kristin Hutton noted she is excited about her new role as Membership Chair, which she will share with her husband, Nick. She noted we are losing two members - Cody Terrell & Sherre Wright, but have three potential members. If you know someone who has a service mind, ask them to visit. Kristin hopes to start a Meet Rotary Event soon.
- Thanks to all who participated in the Adopt a Family Christmas program. Many children had a brighter Christmas thanks to the generosity of community members who help out.
- DG Dottie Meade sent an email with details: On Thursday, January 30, Mark Maloney, the International Chair of the Rotary Foundation, will be our guest for our foundation dinner. Mark is a spectacular speaker. He is a past Rotary International President, originally from Alabama. We are excited that he will be joining us for this evening's event. If you have already registered in DACdb, I thank you! (There are only 11 registered.) If you have not, please do so quickly. January 30 is only three weeks from tonight!
- Dictionaries and Thesauri were delivered to schools prior to the holidays. Thanks to everyone who helped with that project!
Uriah Anderson then announced the Pancake ticket sales winners for last October’s event.
1st place - Sofie Ameloot
2nd place - Crissy Allums
3rd place - Harvey Smith
Thanks to you all for going above and beyond to help bring more people into the event.
Brian Hayes announced he recently sent an email for the next quarter’s bill but he forgot to charge people for Pancake tickets. Watch for another email and then Pay Your Bill! Don Stewart encouraged all to pay by credit card, as that streamlines the process.
Our speaker today was Kelly Lehman with the Rotary Club of Dayton to share information on the District’s Peace Initiatives.
Kelly joined Rotary in 2005 and in 2021 chaired the District Peace Initiatives.
Kelly shared Historic Rotary Peace Milestones:
Peace building has been an Object of Rotary since 2014.
Rotary holds one of 45 observer chairs at the United Nations. In 1999, the First Rotary Peace Center was established. There are 1800 Rotary Peace fellows in the world now.
The Rotary Think Tank HQ is in Australia, NYC, England, and LA. They run statistics about the health of a community. The Positive Peace Index is generated annually.
In 2024 RI got a grant to train positive peace activators, and Kelly was one. There are now 300 in the world in 7 continents. Others can complete the training online at
https://www.positivepeace.academy/rotary
Kelly noted Rotary’s Areas of Focus and Pillars of Positive Peace can help guide everything the clubs do. She noted the work that we currently do helps promote peace building.
The Institute for Economics website provides more information about the most peaceful places.
Kelly was looking at how to bring the peace building concepts back to District 6670 and discovered many clubs are already doing peace building projects.
The first project of the District Peace committee was a Youth Symposium in 2022 at Sinclair Community College. 39 students, with some from Bosnia attended, including President Ameloot’s daughter.
In 2024, they partnered with NCCJ (Nurturing Community, Cultivating Justice) and moved it to Wright State. 21 schools were represented, with 18 coming from District 6670. 245 students and 85 adult mentors gathered to discuss the topic of “Telling messages through social media and how to discern credible resources.”
On Feb 25, 2025 students will gather at WSU again to discuss the topic voted on at last year’s event: “Mental Health: How accepting others can be more helpful in our lives.”
Kelly shared there is a Rotary Action Group for Peace and anyone can join. In order to be designated as a peace builder club, two people from the club must be members of the Rotary Action Group for Peace, fill out the form on the website, and agree to read the Rotary Peace Guide. They have quarterly zoom meetings to discuss how to frame current events around peace building and share information.
If other clubs participate, we can have better representation on the committee from the whole district instead of just the Dayton club.
There are many ways we can get more involved:
For more information, contact Kelly at (937) 760-4100 or kellymarielehman@gmail.com.
President Ameloot thanked Kelly for her good work and announced:
- Rotary Women Connect is tonight at Old Scratch Pizza, 5:30 pm. Men are welcome, too, especially if they bring a woman who would like to learn more about Rotary.
- Rotary Coffee Club was postponed due to the snow and will meet next Tuesday, 7:30 am at ContempoRoast.
- Next Board meeting is Tuesday, 5:30 pm at the Joyce Young Center.
We ran out of time for Happy Bucks, but these were sent to the editor for inclusion here:
- Jeff Senney and his wife, Sharon had their son and his two babies, and daughter and her 5 kids in town at their house for Christmas. They had a great holiday.
- Ron Hollenbeck was happy to see everyone after a long break, for a nice holiday season with family, and a new roof.
- Carol Kennard was happy for a houseful of kids and grandkids for Christmas, and an unplanned family trip to Kentucky for a celebration of life for John’s 99-year old uncle who passed away just before Christmas.
- Kelly McDonald was thankful for the legacy of Service Above Self by the late President James E. Carter who was a Paul Harris Fellow.
- Sofie Ameloot was happy for family time - visited with her in-laws and baby nephew, who’s a very happy baby, in NC. Had bad mist in the mountains on their return from Winston Salem but got home safely.
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