March 13, 2024 Breakfast Meeting Notes

 

Guests today included Sara Gresham, speaker Nathan Fink, and Erica Labella

 

Tony’s continued with his famous NH Trivia: Sin, Mayhem and Scoundrels in NH, Part 2. 

 

The 50/50 was won by Alicia.

 

Tony drew King of Hearts in the card game, so play will continue next week.

 

Beth thanked everyone, including the Holderness School kids, for helping to take down the Christmas decorations this past week. She also mentioned that Alicia, Denise, Mike and Beth and Steve/Susan were at NEPETS last weekend and had a great time seeing lots of inspiring speakers. This convention involved 7 New England districts, all except the southern tier of NH. The President-elect of Rotary International was there and Steve spoke to her about the ommon Man for Ukraine. There were about 450 attendees in total. Braden noted that he received a $500 check from the Dover Rotary to go to the Common Man for Ukraine in response to Steve’s presentation.

 

There will be a board meeting Friday at 7 am on Zoom.

 

There will be a Chamber of Commerce event on Wednesday  Mar 20 at 5 pm at Whole Village. Our Rotary club is a member so we are all welcome. This meeting is cosponsored by Gowan Realty and the Bridge House. If you would like to register for the event, the address is:

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/centralnewhampshirechamberofcommerce/1153944

 

Rotary Learning Institute will be having virtual sessions on the 19th and 21st of March from 6-9 pm.

 

Regional training and round 3 of the speech contest will be held at Lyndonville this Saturday.

 

Rabies Clinic will be March 30 from 12-2 at the police department. Show up at 12:30 to help set up.

 

The transition grant committee held its first Tuesday Trade Talk at PRHU, featuring Caleb King of Moultonborough. He is a 4th generation stonemason and he spoke to 30 kids for 45 minutes about his work. Next week the program will feature 2 nurses from Laconia.

 

Braden announced that the charitable gaming application has been accepted by the state. Now we have to contact the charitable gaming institutions and get put on their waiting list 

 

Sharon announced that at the end of March-early April we get the traditional scholarship applications from the high school. Ken and Lora are on the committee and anyone else is welcome to volunteer. 

 

Steve noted that there will the a line dance to be held at the Barn on the Pemi to benefit the Common Man for Ukraine at 6 pm on the 21st. 

 

Bill introduced our speaker, NH Children’s Trust’s senior director Nathan Fink. The Children’s Trust is the state’s lead in the prevention of child abuse and neglect in NH. April is child abuse prevention month. The Trust partners with other family resource agencies such as Whole Village to help reduce stress on parents so as to reduce the stress on families. 

 

Child abuse prevention is about much more than intervention at time of crisis. Rather, it’s about strengthening families to help reduce or eliminate the chance that a crisis will happen. Raising children can be very stressful particularly in times of COVID, layoffs, etc. When such environmental stresses increase  the rate of child abuse and neglect increases as well. Most cases result from a parent trying to correct a problem behavior and running out of options, rather than from an intentional harm. For example, when Nathan was stressed by his crying 2 year old and felt his blood pressure rising, he did some deep breathing exercises and crawled into bed with the child to calm him down. This kept him from losing his temper.

 

The family resource centers have online information and they also have home visitations to help parents figure out how to cope. These workers are trying to create  “joy in the family moment” which helps reset the mood in a troubled situation.  He asked that we continue our support of local family resource agencies, including the Whole Village and the Lakes Region Community Services. You can also be preventive in your own life; ask your neighbors how they are doing and interact with children in public to help decrease the stress on the parents. 

 

During his presentation, Nathan shared a video with us. He was kind enough to provide a link to this video for us, as well as a link to a website to help you locate Family Resource Centers near you. He also included information about a recent podcast by the Trust that mentions Plymouth specifically. These links are below:

 

 

That video we watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YKAuQ1hFds

 

The Family Support NH website to locate Family Resource Centers: https://www.fsnh.org/

 

And a recent podcast we host that actually mentions Plymouth that then dives in to family: https://www.nhchildrenstrust.org/nhfn/episode/7d1b0e68/s4-e69the-child-care-episode

 

Happy dollars were shared by Greg, Tony, Mike, Denise, Beth, and Sharon.

 

Ken Evans said that he is having an exceptional maple syrup season, so he brought free bottles for everyone!

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Lora Miller, secretary