Recap from the March 27, 2023 Meeting.
Meeting Run by: President Nominee, Mike Wedell
Invocation: Barth Donald
We welcome the members joining us on Zoom. Melanie Alexander and Dawn Sturm Dodds.
Happy News/Announcements: All Happy News funds go towards our scholarship awards.
Carlin Lawhead- In honor of the Iowa Women’s Basketball Team win. Erika Cox- $4 for the Iowa Women’s Basketball Team making it to the Final Four. Frank Iliff- Today marks the 16th Anniversary of Rebuild Together Muscatine County. Lindsey Phillips- We held a successful Bowl for Kids’ Sake this past weekend. The day of fundraising was $34K. The entire event brought in $80K to support Big Brothers Big Sisters. Ryan Streck- Ryan attended the club’s new member orientation and club engagement challenge. Karen Cooney- Karen hopes you will make time Friday night to enjoy the screening of Encore for Murder Friday night at MCC. Charla Shafer- Get your tickets for the MCC Legends event honoring Max Collins on Thursday night at the Merrill Hotel.
Club News:
- The Rotary Club, in partnership with MCC, will host a Poster Contest to bring awareness about Human Trafficking to youth ages 16-22 years old. Contest information is posted on social media. A contest flyer is included below. Please share the information with the community.
- Follow the Rotary Club of Muscatine’s Facebook page, @MuscatineRotaryClub.
Presentation-
Amy Clove
Amy grew up moving to several states, including New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, the upper peninsula of Michigan, and Iowa. She graduated from West High School in Iowa City and received a bachelor’s degree in Human Development from Brigham Young University. She and her husband, Ben, spent three years stationed in Italy with the Air Force before coming to Muscatine in 2005. They have three teenage daughters: one in junior high, one in high school, and one in college. Amy has been a stay home for almost twenty years and thinks Muscatine is a great place to raise a family!
Amy completed the World Challenge- 7 marathons, on seven continents, in 7 days. For perspective, a marathon is 26.2 miles. The distance from Muscatine to Riverside casino is 25 miles. Seven marathons equal 183.4 miles, and the distance from Muscatine to Chicago is 180 miles. The first marathon was in Antarctica. The travel was hard, but it quickly became a favorite once there. There was a 100-degree difference for the second marathon in South Africa. The third marathon in Australia was the hardest. They were only on the ground for 12 hours for the fourth marathon in Dubai. The fifth and sixth marathons increased in difficulty as exhaustion set in. The best advice given was,“ if you can just keep moving, you will get through it.” There was a buzz of excitement for the final race in Miami. Families were there to cheer runners on.
Running the World Challenge was not only about personal accomplishment. Amy raised funds for Operation Underground Railroad, raising awareness of Human Trafficking.
Upcoming Meetings- April 3- Rotary Resources Available to Our Membership, April 10- Rotary Fellowship, April 17- Foreign Exchange Student Experience in Muscatine, April 24- Challenges Our Veterans Experience.
No recording is available due to an internet interruption.
Welcome to Week 4 of RI’s Month of Water & Sanitation.
Nothing says confidence like a strong feeling of self-worth, and in this month celebrating women, Foundation Minute picks up the story of young girls in poverty-stricken parts of the world whose sense of dignity and self-pride is often hurt by very poor hygiene and sanitation.
The District Stewardship Subcommittee of the Rotary Club of Rajapalayam Kings City (RID 3212, India) recently boosted the morale of female students at a government school by donating a girls toilet block, along with other facilities with a Global Grant aided by TRF. In an online publication in the latest edition of Rotary, the N A Annappa Raja Memorial High School is the beneficiary of a modern toilet block for girls, a Reverse Osmosis plant, two interactive boards with touch screen, a wi-fi link, a gym and a range of sports equipment and musical instruments; all set up at the cost of R48.57 lakh (USD 59,987.59). The GG project was initiated during the tenure of PDG P N B Murugadoss (2020–21) “when our charter president John Selvaraj got a request from school headmaster A Ramesh for a new sanitation block to replace the dilapidated toilet which the girls found embarrassing to use,” he says.
Every three months, the club’s grants committee will be visit N A Annappa Raja Memorial HS School to inspect the Rotary facilities. A student expresses gratitude for the new toilet block because it is “posh and neat; and the washbasins help us clean our hands easily during lunch. Now I enjoy attending school.” Headmaster Ramesh is confident of enrolling more girls with the new toilets. There are 820 boys, 630 girls in this school. Club president B Kumar Raja is happy that “we have done a GG project at a deserving school with students whose parents are mostly working in textile mills and factories.”
Rotary Club Fargo Moorhead (RID5586) is the global partner for this Water and Sanitation project.
In Rotary,
Olabisi Gwamna, Club Secretary
Olabisi Gwamna, Club Secretary
Mount Pleasant Rotary,
Editor, Foundation Minute