August 14, 2024 Breakfast Meeting Notes
Tony was away this week so we did not have Rotary trivia.
Denise shared a Rotary minute. Rotary International has selected a president for 2026-27. He is Sangkoo Yun, from the Rotary Club of Sae Hanyang, Seoul and he will be confirmed in September. Yup is the founder and CEO of Dongsuh Corporation, which engineers and markets architectural materials. He has been a Rotarian since 1987 and has had many roles in the organization. He and his wife Ensue are major donors and they have two children.
Phil had a lucky day and won both the 50/50 and the chance to draw for the ace of spades. Unfortunately he drew the 9 of hearts, so the card game continues.
Denise reported on last week’s cruise night. This was a nice new event. We had enough volunteers, and Grotto provided pizzas. The number of cars was less than expected, as cruise nights are held all over and so there was some conflict. As the concert and car show wound down, we moved up to the commons and people there bought more pizzas. We raised $400 towards drivers’ ed scholarships.
Pac a Pac will be held at Whole Village at noon on August 21.
Board meeting will be this Friday on Zoom.
On Sept 25, the district governor will visit our club. She has asked us to have no other program. She will stay afterwards in case we have additional questions.
Committee work: we want to start having meetings in September; Beth is still finalizing committee assignments.
Penny sale: Please be here next week for training on how to ask for donations. We are looking for one additional grand prize of $500.
Our speaker today is Jennifer Hunter of Whole Village. She thanked us for our contribution to replacing their front doors.
Whole Village was started 28 years ago to support young women with children and has expanded exponentially since then. It covers 19 towns in lower Grafton County and helps answer 15,000 questions per year. They support 22 kinship families, in which family members other than parents are taking care of children. They offer case management to help support the family fill out paperwork and figure out what grants or funding they are eligible for. It costs $1.2 million to keep Whole Village running each year, with support from Granite United Way and other fundraisers. Jennifer writes $300,000-$400,000 in grant requests each year.
The mission of Whole Village is to strengthen families while building communities. The idea is to empower families, not enable them. Whole Village does collaborative work with other agencies so that programs are supporting each other and not duplicating services. The program serves low and middle income families and they are seeing more middle income families than they used to.
Whole Village offers young parents classes to help train new them in child care. This is especially important for young people who may not have had a good role model themselves. They provide dinner to the parents and have child care available during the classes, although they cannot provide transportation. They are adding a course in co-parenting after separation or divorce. They are also starting parent cafes, where parents can talk to each other about a topic. August’s topic is “back to school”.
Family fun nights are held quarterly. Families that are isolated have more ACES (adverse childhood experiences), which can lead to lifelong problems for those children, and so they are trying to provide some social outlet for everyone. They provide dinner and some fun activity on a Friday night. For example at Christmas they might do ornaments, while college students bake cookies.
Whole Village also offers volunteer income tax assistance (they helped 265 people this year) for those who can’t afford to have someone do their taxes.
They also operate a collaborative garden project overseen by the UNH Master Garden program. Last year Whole Village grew 357 lbs of food that went back to the community.
Sept 20 is NH’s Day of Caring; Whole Village will send out a list of opportunities. Jennifer is starting a Whole Village web site, as in the past they have relied on a single static page on Granite United Way’s website.
Whole Village has 15 different partner agencies within the building, most of which are nonprofit. They do rent space and the building is becoming more of a community center. They have board meetings that happen in evenings, peer to peer classes, AA meetings, and a community wellness space for things like yoga classes, music and movement, tai chi and others.
In January they are starting a new parent group so that parents can engage with each other and see how they can help each other with babysitting, transportation, and other common needs.
Whole Village also works with the Central NH Veteran’s Coalition. Jennifer facilitates a gathering of 85 different organizations . There will be a training meeting on Sept 26 from 6:30 to 7:30 by Zoom to help community members learn how to prevent veteran suicides. Those interested can preregister by emailing Jennifer at jennifer.hunter@graniteuw.org. There will be a veteran’s fair and barbecue meeting on October, 26 from 11 to 1 at Whole Village, with lots of vendors and things for the kids to do. Preregister for the BBQ at crvcnh@gmail.com. They also work with Boulder Point because many of their veterans don’t have the resources to travel off site.
Jennifer is also starting a regional new parent support group, There were 8 perinatal deaths in our area the first year of life last year, with 5 related to substance abuse. The group aims to help families know what resources are available and try to keep the advice consistent between agencies.
Jennifer also did a community survey this spring which found that mental health, child care, and housing support were the 3 biggest issues of concern to community members.
Erica announced that there will be an art fest in Rumney this weekend from 11-1 and Soul Track Brewery and around town. There will also be an Open Door program for runners in the NH Marathon, including a free key at Rand’s.
Lora neglected to announce that the location of the Rotary Hikes event in Vermont has been changed. It will now be held on August 17th at 9 am and Meech Cove Farms, 109 Colonel Fletcher Road, Shelburne, VT 05482. Rain date is August 18.
Happy dollars were shared by Lora, Denise, Mike, and Erica.
Respectfully submitted,
Lora Miller, secretary