The Centerville Rotary Club has been busy this fall doing what they do best - providing “Service above Self,” which happens to be the motto of Rotary. Hopefully you had a chance to participate in the annual Pancake Breakfast fundraiser in October, which provides funds for the club’s service projects. Thanks to the generosity of the community, Centerville Rotary has been able to make some significant contributions to help others this fall.

Drawing for the Super Bowl Raffle is December 8th at 5:30 pm! Did you purchase raffle tickets? Check here for more details!

WOW!!!

10% Back to Our Club

Act Now!  Only Good FROM 26 OCTOBER TO 30 NOVEMBER 2013

Chili’s vouchers are on the Centerville Rotary website! All you have to do is copy the vouchers and take with you when you eat at Chili’s on Miamisburg-Centerville Road!  Our Club will receive 10% back from people who present this voucher when dining at Chili’s on Miamisburg-Centerville Road.  So visit this location only and often,  oh, and eat a lot.  What an easy way to raise money for our Rotary Club.

In fine print:  Each person eating must have their own voucher (coupon).  Do not cut up!  Take in whole sheet of 4 each time you eat a Chili's on Miamisburg-Centerville Road.

What’s round and brown and hard to turn down? Pancakes, of course, and the Centerville Rotary Club will be whipping them up by the thousands, for eat in or carryout, during its 13th Annual Pancake Breakfast on Saturday, October 26 from 7 a.m. until noon at Hithergreen Center, 5900 Hithergreen Drive.

The time is here to nominate the Rotarian you feel deserves to be named our Rotarian of the Year. Nomination ballots will be accepted from now until June 20. Please refer to the nomination form available under the Download section on the website and submit your nomination to President Kim no later than June 20. Good luck to everyone!

The Rotary District 6670 website can be found at www.rotary6670.org or click here: Rotary District 6670

For questions on the district website, please contact Chris Celek  at chris@celekmedia.com.

A CHRISTMAS STORY

 There was a counselor of a school in Centerville who wrote this letter:

“I find myself in a position to help a little boy and his family. A 10 year old at our school has been diagnosed with a terrible, rare disease, called "Dock 8 Mutation". He has basically little or no immune system and the prognosis is not good. Mom is a single mother with 4 kids. Her paycheck depends on her being at work, which is tough because she is so often at the hospital. My heart breaks for her. We are reaching out in every way at our school with fundraisers, church donations, staff donations, clubs and groups. We are hoping to provide mom with enough money to pay her bills for four months. If he gets a bone marrow transplant, that’s about what she will need since she will have to stay near him at the children's hospital in Cincinnati.I have known this family for eight years and I know this to be a hard working woman doing her best for her children. She often works 50 hours a week, which is difficult on her children, but what choice does she have? She is not on welfare. This, finally is just a bit more than she can handle alone.

I am writing to all of you to ask if you would like to help. Maybe you are in a position to help a little, maybe a lot. So many of us hear sad stories on the news and don’t know how to help. Here’s a little guy who I know, and we can touch his life. I know whatever we collect will go directly to paying her rent, heat, food and car. Money should not be her primary worry at this most heart breaking time.”

Our Centerville club heard about this sad story and decided to give the "Christmas jar" money to this sick child. But how do we get enough money into a jar?? Just our small change would never amount to much. So we did crazy things, having members pay for chocolates in crystal dishes bought from rummage sales. Raffling off champagne with glasses, signed by a district governor from two years ago. Giving a dinner for $100.- / person which was attended by 16  people.

We wrote the counselor our good news, we were able to pay at least for one month “less problems” for the family.

We received a note back which said:

“OH MY GOSH!!! This is so exiting. You brought a tear to my eye! THANK YOUR CLUB. I hope you all know you are the embodiment of the Christmas spirit! There are no words to express how much this will help this family. Blessing to you all.”

Now WHAT is a Christmas jar? Just a jar where we saved money in, but the story started with the “Christmas Jar” book written by Jason Wright.  Money is given anonymously to people in need and this problem fit the story perfectly. So some “elves” got together having great fun and bringing three jars filled with money to the home of the sick boy. They rang the bell and ran away, but made sure that the door was opened and the jars taken in.

Then we received an e-mail with a story submitted by a Lady from Centerville in Ohio and this is what she wrote:

“My Christmas miracle was the Christmas jars I received on my front porch two nights ago from an anonymous Christmas angel! I am a single mother of 4 children and in October my youngest son was diagnosed with a very rare life threatening  disease called Dock 8 mutation The only treatment currently being tried for these patients is a bone marrow transplant. Due to the many appointments and with needing to be home more with my children I have been unable to work much these past few months. When I opened the door and saw these jars and the book “Christmas Jars”, me and my son broke down and cried. We were so touched! My youngest son said while in tears “mommy people really love me and they are helping me”. The Christmas jars are a true Christmas miracle and we are so grateful. The Centerville community have been so wonderful to me and my family during this difficult time. The community is beyond Amazing! Thanks again for bringing cheer and joy to our hearts. We are so grateful.”

Centerville Rotary is a small club of 56 members, they were able to bring together $3.600.- for this sick boy who now feels so much loved. Isn’t this what Rotary is all about?

“SERVICE ABOVE SELF”

Believe me, this club feels blessed being able to serve.

After Pancake Day has come and gone, you can still support the Centerville Rotary Club just by eating at Bob Evans in Centerville on Monday, October 24. Take this flyer with you, give to your server and our club will receive 15% of your bill back in donations! It's that simple! Print out the flyer located under the Downloads section of the website, cut in half and share with a friend or neighbor.  Support a great local business while supporting a great local service club! Hope to see you there!

Enjoy a casual gathering of Rotarians and friends at our next After Hours on September 14 at 6:30 pm. Details to follow

Vineela Appalaneni from Centerville High School will represent the Centerville Rotary Club at the District Four-Way Speech Contest on April 3 at Wittenberg University in Springfield. Vineela treated our club to her winning speech at this past week's meeting. Vineela is the daughter of Rotarian Vas Appalaneni. Many thanks to Mae Berkel and Kim Senft-Paras for their work on selecting a student to represent our club!

Member Birthdays

 Member Rotary Anniversaries

Read some interesting information on awareness of personal security in this fast-changing world, presented by a recent speaker at the Centerville Rotary Club.

25 Years - What a Difference!

Rotary District 6670 Conference will celebrate Rotary's success, share Rotary stories, recognize excellence in our activities, achievement among our new generations, and contributions to humanity. 

Hans Berkel 

1944-2013

It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our Rotary friend, and Past District Governor, Hans Berkel. Hans was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma in June, and although he put up a good fight, he passed away peacefully this morning at home, surrounded by his family. Hans was District 6670 Governor from 2009-10, and served in many leadership positions at his local Rotary Club, in the District, and for Rotary International. 

Each spring, local Rotary Clubs partner with local school districts to select one or more High School sophomores and juniors (Award Winners) to attend a leadership development program known as RYLA, which stands for Rotary Youth Leadership Awards. This camp is a terrific 48 hour Leadership training event for your Award Winners.

Watch a video message from RI President Kalyan Banerjee

Rotary club members worldwide are cautiously celebrating a major milestone in the global effort to eradicate polio. India, until recently an epicenter of the wild poliovirus, has gone one year without recording a new case of the crippling, sometimes fatal, disease. India’s last reported case was a two-year-old girl in West Bengal State on 13 January 2011. The country recorded 42 cases in 2010, and 741 in 2009.

A chief factor in India’s success has been the widespread use of the bivalent oral polio vaccine, which is effective against both remaining types of the poliovirus. Another has been rigorous monitoring, which has helped reduce the number of children missed by health workers during National Immunization Days to less than 1 percent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Rotary has been a spearheading partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative since 1988, along with WHO, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also a key supporter of the initiative. 

Sporting their signature yellow vests and caps, the nearly 119,000 Rotarians in India have helped administer vaccine to children, organize free health camps and polio awareness rallies, and distribute banners, caps, comic books, and other items.

“With the support of their Rotary brothers and sisters around the world, Indian Rotarians have worked diligently month after month, year after year, to help organize and carry out the National Immunization Days that reach millions of children with the oral polio vaccine,” says RI President Kalyan Banerjee, of the Rotary Club of Vapi, Gujarat.

“The achievement of a polio-free India for a full year is a significant step towards a polio-free world -- an example as to what can be accomplished no matter what problems need to be overcome,” says Robert S. Scott, chair of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee. “Rotarians of India are and should be proud of the key efforts they have made at all levels, without which the world would not be marking this milestone.”

Deepak Kapur, chair of the India PolioPlus Committee, also credits the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for its commitment to ending polio. To date, the Indian government has spent more than US$1.2 billion on domestic polio eradication activities. “Government support is crucial if we are to defeat polio, and we are fortunate that our government is our biggest advocate in this effort,” Kapur says.

“Marching ahead, the goal is to sustain this momentum,” he adds, describing as potentially “decisive” the upcoming immunization rounds this month and in February and March.

If all ongoing testing for polio cases recorded through 13 January continues to yield negative results, WHO will declare that India has interrupted transmission of indigenous wild poliovirus, laying the groundwork for its removal from the polio-endemic countries list, which also includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. However, because non-endemic countries remain at risk for cases imported from endemic countries, immunizations in India and other endemic and at-risk countries must continue. Neighboring Pakistan, which has reported 189 cases so far for 2011, is a major threat to India’s continued polio-free status. Last year, an outbreak in China, which had been polio-free for a decade, was traced genetically to Pakistan.

“As an Indian, I am immensely proud of what Rotary has accomplished,” Banerjee says. “However, we know this is not the end of our work. Rotary and our partners must continue to immunize children in India and in other countries until the goal of a polio-free world is finally achieved.”

A village in Bolivia now has access to clean water as the result of a project supported by The Rotary Foundation’s Clean Water for Coffee Growing Countries Donor Advised Fund. Photo courtesy of Five for Water

By selling fair trade coffee to Rotary clubs throughout the United States, a former Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar is helping to raise money to fund worldwide clean water initiatives.  

A pump provides water to a village in Tanzania -- part of a project made possible by the Foundation’s donor advised fund. Water and sanitation is one of Rotary’s areas of focus under the Future Vision Plan. Photo courtesy of Five for Water

Five for Water, a project started by Bill Prost, a member of the Rotary Club of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, USA, finances a Rotary Foundation donor advised fund for water projects in coffee-producing countries. After forming a partnership with Green Mountain Coffee, Prost invited clubs to purchase the organic coffee and sell it in their community. Funds generated from the sales would go toward water projects throughout Africa, Central and South America, and Indonesia. 

“I wanted to create a year-round project that’s fit for any size club,” says Prost, who studied in England as a 1979-80 Rotary Scholar. “Any club, no matter how large or small, can help be a part of this. It’s a really simple project.” 

Coffee sales

Even though the project was launched only a year ago, more than 300 clubs in the United States are already selling the coffee. Their efforts have netted nearly $184,000, providing more than 50,000 people in 10 countries with access to clean water. 

An estimated two million people die every year from waterborne diseases, and more than one billion lack access to clean water, according to the World Health Organization. “I told myself that, as a Rotarian, it was my responsibility to do something about [that],” Prost says.  

After the money is raised, clubs seek an international partnership with another club and apply for a Rotary Foundation Matching Grant. A big focus of Five for Water has been funding the installation of wells to serve schools, orphanages, and medical clinics -- but, according to Prost, the project’s scope goes beyond that. 

“We’re not narrow-minded on what we’ll fund,” he says. “It’s always about water and where we can have a good partnership.” 

Wells in Bolivia

Recently, Five for Water installed eight wells in Bolivia and pump stations near a reservoir in Sumatra. Prost has also partnered with a club in Missouri and Engineers Without Borders to create a pipeline in Honduras that supplies water from an existing well and a water tower. The project’s goal is to provide more than 300 families with clean drinking water. 

Because Five for Water only sells coffee in the United States, and several clubs elsewhere have expressed an interest in getting involved, Prost says the next step is to expand the project internationally. 

“This is a simple and fun project designed for any club,” he says. “It works because Rotary has so many international components, and we’re all wanting to work together for a similar cause.”

This story appeared on the RI Website. Our Centerville Rotary club is selling the coffee to (a) help with raising moneys for clean water projects around the world ; (b) raise funds for our own club. Coffee is now on sale through Hans Berkel. Contact Hans if you need/want any coffee. Remember... you can also buy coffee for your friends, family, neighbors etc.etc.

Our club has for many years now gone to help at the "House of Bread". Recently a team of Centerville Rotarians volunteered again to help prepare and cook a meal for about 250 people. In the current economic climate the need for feeding those less fortunate than we is enormous. Hence, Mae Berkel wrote a grant request to our district to receive money from our District Simplified Grants to support the "House of Bread".

In 1985 Rotary International took on the challenge of eradicating polio worldwide. In collaboration with WHO and the CDC, Rotarians have contributed US$ 850 million towards this cause. In addition countless volunteers hours have been spend by Rotarians to give the polio vaccine to over two billion children in 122 countries. Currently polio is only endemic in four countries : India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Rotarians are  determined to "finish the job" and make this world polio free.