March 22, 2023 Breakfast Meeting Notes

March 22, 2023 Breakfast Meeting Notes

 

Today was a combined Club Forum/Board Meeting.

 

Minutes of the last board meeting were approved.

 

Ken Evans gave a brief update on the club account. We have $3000 in the bank and no outstanding bills other than a winner for the card game (which should be about $250, when it happens). Next big expenditure is at the changing of the guard and at this time all members have paid their membership renewals. 

 

Steve was not here to update us on the Foundation account but Sharon reports that money continues to come in by mail. We voted at our last board meeting to move some of our funds into our Vanguard money market account (currently earning about 4%) so this should help improve our yield over the bank account. 

 

Tony’s Famous NH Trivia: March is Women’s History Month so today’s topic is prominent women in New Hampshire.

 

Sharon brought in a flyer for a job fair to be held at Plymouth Regional High School on Wednesday, April 19 from 10:15 to 12:45. They are hoping to get employers who want to hire students for the summer. If you or anyone you know is interested in hiring a student, please contact the school.

 

Bill spoke on First Star Tonight. This is a local organization similar to the Make a Wish Foundation. It is for children that are critically ill or have severe needs for medical conditions. Right now they are working with an 11 year old whose teeth have been neglected; he will be having extensive dental work at Main St. Dental and the organization is contributing $3700 for this. They have also sent terminally-ill children to Florida for a family vacation. They are also paying for a flight to the Netherlands for a parent of a local child who has a very rare untreatable disease that is being studied at a university there. Friday April 14 will be their only fundraiser, a gala; tickets can be purchased at Noyes Insurance. The band will be East Coast Soul. The event will be held at the Barn at the Pemi.  At 5:30 they will serve cocktails, followed by dinner and dancing. They will have several families who have been beneficiaries to speak on their experience. 

 

Mike: Renee got flyers printed for the Styrofoam event to be held at the ReStore on April 22 from 9-11. After April 1 we will have Rotarians start to sign up for various duties at the event (start time for volunteers is 8:30).  We are also going to make banners and that will say “this Saturday 9-11” so that they can be reused year after year. The ReStore will allow us to hold a styrofoam drive as often as once a month, so we need to determine the optimal frequency. We will rent a box truck so we can haul the full bags to Gilford for processing. We hope to get bins for the transfer stations in local towns (marked with Rotary logo) eventually. These cost $3000 each; the Gilford club is trying to secure a grant to pay for several of these to be distributed in towns in central NH.

 

Sharon: Any day now the high school will be dropping off this year’s scholarship applications. Once she has them, she will scan them and email them to the committee. We generally grant 8 scholarships to students seeking to attend traditional 2 or 4 year institutions and 2 to people interested in vocational or technical education. It was noted that the Holderness Fire Department also has a scholarship for students going into fire control or EMT. Programs.  In addition, Mike noted that the District has a $5000 scholarship for teachers who wish to further their education. Applications are on District website. 

 

CTE grant: Alicia has taken over this project from Steve. The committee has met with each other and the teachers at a the high school and they have decided to rename the award to a Transition Grant. They will target kids going right into a career path, transitioning from high school to whatever is next. They are going to speak at a Bobcat Block at the high school to promote the grant program and meet with prospective applicants and find out what kind of help they need. They will ask students to complete a short application form, asking for 2 references, stating why they want the grant and what they plan on doing with it. Standards for evaluating apps are still evolving. They will take the names off of the applications so as to reduce bias. Students will tell the committee how much money they need, so they don’t receive more money than they have expenses. Kudos to Alicia for putting together a PowerPoint presentation to show what Rotary does in order to promote this program. It was noted that the National Association of Women in Construction also sponsors a grant to students.

 

 

Thanks to those who cleaned up the Common on Saturday: Russ, Alex, Peggy, an Interactor, and a friend of Alex’s from Ladders (Brian). Braden and Peggy took down the lights on the common on Friday (note that half of the lights didn’t work so we will need to buy some new ones for next year). In addition, Alex has plenty of ladders that we can use next time we need to install lighting.

 

RYLA applications are starting to come in. We usually send at least 2 students and have sent as many as 4. 

 

Speech contest: Mike proposed that for our club speech contest, we consider restructuring the award so as to give $200 to the winner and give the runner up $100 with $25 to all other participants. Lily, our winner for this year, is going to a student program at Harvard the weekend of the next round so she will not be able to attend. Our area co-winner from Bristol  will go.

 

April 1 in Lyndonville, is district assembly. The District Conference is April 28-30. We approved a full page ad sponsorship for CommonmanforUkraine on the program for the district conference.

 

Our Rotary banner has vanished from the closet. Suspicions are that Steve and Alex took it for their road show. 

 

Lora won both the 50/50 (donated to Ukraine) and the chance to draw for the ace of spades. Her winning streak ended there as she drew the 5 of hearts, so the game goes on.

 

Respectfully submitted, 

 

Lora Miller, secretary