Rotary's Theme for 2019-20   Centerville Rotary Club Meeting Aug.22, 2019   Official Greeters for the week:

 

08/22/2019  Evening dinner to thank Sponsors of the Pancake Breakfast.

Greeters: Wayne Davis and Kim Senft-Paras

08/29/2019 Arnie Biondo and Doug Bockrath

09/05/2019 Jack Durnbaugh and Bob Fry

 

Our official greeters were Wayne Davis and Kim Senft-Paras.

Here's Wayne with Lee

Snyder of Snyder Block and Brick.

 

And here the gang gathers in the entrance. President Chuck King greets Tom Broadwell

and his wife Tracy at left, while Doc Hoback talks with Jim Harris at the right.

 

The wives don't often get together, but here they are: L to R: Marilyn Hoback, Janet

Harris, and Elaine King.

 

Tom and Tracy Broadwell are unstoppable when it comes to supporting Rotary.

 

Lee seems to know a lot of the members. Here he's with our membership chair Ann

Blackwell, clap, clap, clap. 

 

These ladies know good food when they see it. Here's Marilyn Hoback and Janet Harris

with a fine selection from the buffet. Just had to get a picture before it's all gone. Yum!

 

Here's a couple that each is a Sponsor for our club. Judy Budi is the new CEO at Graceworks

Lutheran Services and Gerry Budi is a vice president managing director at Paragon Financial

Services, Ltd.

 

 

Kim Senft-Paras greets Brad Huffman.

 

 

Jeff Senney and his wife Sharon talk with Sofie Ameloot.

 

And here's another look at the President of Blue Gill Consulting, Antonette Lucente

 

Brad Huffman and Arnie Biondo still haven't gotten any food yet.

 

Don Stewart and his wife Teri seem to be enjoying a glass of wine before the meal. Jen

Gibbs, our Sponsor for St. Leonard is a marketing director there. Jen was trying to get

out of this picture but is seen in the next one.

 

President Chuck's wife Elaine helped with the set up before the meal began inside the room.

 

See this man here. Vice President Brian Hayes tried to avoid getting his picture taken, and during the distraction was not sitting with his wife, who missed getting her picture taken.

Here is Erica Hayes working on Project Read... She is the one in purple on the right.

And another missing from our pix at the dinner...Irene Ullmer...The shirt says 1923, the 

year she was born.

 

Here's a picture taken with Adam Manning, our new U.S. citizen Sofie Ameloot with a hat gifted to her for the upcoming charity bike ride she participates in..Tour de Gem..and yours truly, Kitty Ullmer. After this picture, you see President King and PDG Harvey Smith, suddenly stuck with a camera pointed at them...

And the food...

 

 

 

Then he showed what Rotary actually does, such as build ball parks for kids with special needs, and thousands of other projects to help better the world.

The Centerville Rotary gets $2,000 Rotary grants to help with some projects. At our weekly meetings Happy Bucks are collected to support various local organizations in need, and projects such as Operation Warm, that provides new winter coats to needy children. Five or six $2,000 scholarships are given to Centerville/Washington Twp. seniors headed to college.

A letter from Chris Kang, a recipient of one of these scholarships was read by Judy Budi during the meeting. He expressed his gratitude for the help he got when his family was in need, and what it has meant as he pursued his college degree at UD and then Emory. 
From: chris kang <ckang710@gmail.com> 
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2019 1:12 AM
To: Kim Senft-Paras <kparas@wcpl.lib.oh.us>
Subject: Update on 2017 Centerville Rotary Club Scholarship

Hello Mrs. Senft-Paras,

I don’t know if you remember me but I am Chris Kang, recipient of the 2017 Centerville Rotary Scholarship. I just thought of you and wanted to update you, and the club, on how I have been, and that I haven’t forgotten you or the Rotary Club for all that you guys have done for my family and me. 

The last time I e-mailed you, I told you that I had transferred from the University of Dayton to Emory University. 

In my past year at Emory, I got a research assistant position in a Cancer research lab, I am an intern (currently) at the Sociology department, and I started my own tutoring business (I currently have over 30 students).

In the past, when I received the scholarship, my family was in a financial difficult position: my dad had just resigned from his position as the senior pastor of our church, and we had to pay off my mom’s medical bills. You don’t know how thankful and relieved my family was when we heard that I had received the scholarship! It was a huge load off our back and it was truly a grace of God! Looking back now, and even today, I have not lost my thanks to the club. The club helped my family when we needed it most, and I want to tell you that your investment in my education and future did not go to waste. 

In the past year God has been good to my family and me. After I transferred to Emory, my entire family relocated to Atlanta, Georgia. My sister just graduated this past May, from UD, and is now a 3rd grade teacher at an elementary school (15 minutes from our house), my brother got accepted into Emory Law School, my mom is opening up a restaurant, we established a new church, and I started my own tutoring business. I just wanted to let you know that all of this was possible because you believed in my future and helped my family in a time when we needed it most. It was thanks to the Rotary Scholarship that I was able to attend the University of Dayton with a full ride (I received a lot of additional scholarships/grants from the school) and not have to worry about college loans/debt! Now, as a transfer student, I again received a full scholarship and am now attending Emory completely debt-free.

While my business just started, there is a lot of potential (we are projected to get around 60 students this winter). Once my business takes off I will make sure that I will help as many people as I can, as the Rotary Club has. In the last e-mail I sent you, I told you that I hoped to repay the gratitude, it now seems that I will be able to do that very soon!

Thank you, once again, for believing in my future.
Chris Kang

 

President King talked about our Dictionary and Thesauri program, in which we give all the third graders their own dictionary and the fifth graders their own thesaurus in the local Centerville/Washington Twp. schools. That amounted to 800 dictionaries and 800 thesauri, President King said.

Our Rotary Exchange Student from Bangkok, Thailand, Jareonrat Chinpathirunkul, (Yok), arrived Aug. 4, traveling 20 hours alone at age 15 to arrive in Dayton.

 

Here are some more of our projects:

Last year The club donated 630 coats last year, President King said.

 

Our Projects are many:

Project Read, which operates out of Sinclair Community College, collects books to help

people learn to read, or with their language skills.

 

The club provides two students each year with funding to attend RYLA, a Rotary Youth Leadership program held at Camp Kern. The club participates in the Spirit Chain Challenge with Kettering Fairmont, built a Free Library for reading and exchanging free books, supports the Centerville Diversity Council, supports the Americana Parade, and has a vintage fire truck in the parade each year. We supported a Global Outreach student, Kim Forrester, who is attending the London School of Economics.

 This year the club has helped out Brigid's Path, Operation Warm, Building Bridges, Honor Flight, Artemis. In the first quarter of 2020 Happy Bucks will be used for the Dayton Food Bank.

The club has racked up 1,350 hours of community labor in the past three years, President King said.

We have worked with the Centerville-Washington Park District, BOGG, St. Leonard, Project Read, Hannah's Treasure Chest, the Foodbank of Dayton, and the House of Bread.

The club helped put a Life Pump in a village in Nigeria five years ago, that is still providing a steady supply of clean water to about 2,000 villagers. 

We are working with Design Outreach in Columbus, which has developed a hand pump that reaches down 500 feet. Its workings can be monitored via satellite so it can be determined if any parts  begin to fail.The club is also working on getting a global grant to help put 11 pumps in Haiti. The wells are already built. A third of the clubs in the southwest Rotary district have already made a $32,000 commitment to help get the global grant. Our club member Ron Hollenbeck has championed this project along with Frank Scott of the Dayton Rotary.

We participate in the Global Polio Eradication project that has been helped tremendously by the Bill Gates Foundation, leaving only 12 cases in Afghanistan and 53 in Pakistan, with no new cases in children in Nigeria in three years. The hope is to have polio eradicated by the middle of 2020.

Our exchange student from Bangkok, Thailand arrived Aug. 4, and has three host families lined up. She is currently staying with Ram Nunna's family. Ram is a member of our Rotary.

Adam Manning had the last word at the dinner. He thanked our sponsors for their support with the Pancake Breakfast fund-raiser, noting that last year we raised more than $20,000, and were able to fund six $2,000 college scholarships, and other projects. Around 1,000 people attend the breakfast each year.